When teaching ELLs, specially for those who are starting to understand and grasp the English Language, I ALWAYS include poems, folktales or nursery rhymes, in this case….Humpty Dumpty.
Humpty Dumpty is a cute character & an easy to recite story that come in handy as a complement to my English language lessons & here are some of the reasons why:
- It helps speech development. Students learn to recognize word & music in a repetitive way.
- It develops their brains. The younger, the better because it improves their memory skills, comprehension & also their critical thinking. At some point they start debating on it in class which makes it a richer experience.
- It can improve their reading comprehension. If your students are old enough to read or are starting to, it seems an amazing opportunity to add the reading component to it. Understanding the sequence of events, introducing words, pronunciation, and more.
- It adds up more vocabulary to their mental data base. They relate meaning to words and interpret words based on context and incorporate a wider range of vocabulary, synonyms and antonyms to the language.
- It involves social situations. There are specific behaviors in the essence of every nursery rhyme waiting to be decipher & we can analyze them in class as well.
- It sparkles interests & imagination. Your students’ creativity will fly high if you let these stories sink in their heads for a little bit & allow them to show you how they perceived them in pretend-play activities or in some arts & crafts.
I must confess, I always start with Humpty Dumpty in kindergarten because it’s a great introduction, it’s easy, catchy and there are a lot of ways to make this story more complicated till they get to preschool.
I start by introducing the nursery rhyme and moving my hands, recreating the scenes. See carefully the picture below how I place them .
After a few days, I add the visuals, flashcards where I emphasis the words and pronunciation, play with a crossword & each day 1 or 2 kids with recite the poem using the cut-outs.
Everyday, I bring a new activity or a set of activities to make in different stations. The worksheets I designed are a complete set for Kindergarten & preschool like: crossword, sequencing, I spy, matching depending on each year students’ level, interest & motivation.
We also play memory cards together at the beginning of the lesson, then I make a different activities per station, this way at the end of each class, they ALL had done all the activities.
One of the few, I do with the whole group, is the story sequencing included with the memory game, which they really enjoy doing. At the end of the whole unit, they get their take-home mini book which we assemble together, read together & they write their names on it.
Here, I share with you a model of what a planning of a Nursery Rhyme would look like & all the sequence of activities I add. I always try to be flexible and read my students, then sometimes I have to change, include or skip one or some activities. The ideal duration is 7 days totally flexible.
I hope you enjoyed this post and HAPPY TEACHING!
Do you want them? Here I show you all activities I’ve been using in my classes, click on each:
Elda
