Topic: Self-Introduction

Aim: Introduce and practice vocabulary related to self-introductions

Language Level: Beginners

Learner Type: Young Learners

Time: 90 minutes

Language Skills: Listening & Speaking

Materials: Karina’s Voki, Karina’s Tellagami, Karina’s Ask Me ppt, Karina’s My Little Bird: Ask Me video, pens, paper, internet access, IWB, mobile devices

Digital Tools:Voki.Com, Tellagami app, My Little Bird Tales

Lesson Plan

Warmer

T plays the voki video clip. T asks ss who is that? What did she say? Group feedback.

Lead In

Teacher (T) shows the first ppt slide, a simple image of herself, and words and numbers that represent her: “Karina, 30, London, black, 2, cat, tea, pizza.”

T points at the different words. T asks ss What is this word? Ss try to read the word? For example, T points to the word Karina. Who is Karina? Karina is my name…

T boards the word name.

T repeats these actions, pointing to a word, asking “What is this?” in a curious voice. T encourages ss to read the word aloud and elicit what each word represents. T boards all the words. For example, Name, Age, Hometown, Brothers and Sisters, Pets, Favourite Colour, Favourite Food and Favourite Drink.

T plays the voki video clip again. T asks ss who is that? What did she say? Group discussion.

Reading Task

T hands out the transcript with her personal information underlined (name, age etc.). T reads the script and ss repeat. T asks ss to watch the video again and read the script chorally.

Writing Task

T hands out the transcript with the personal information omitted. T asks ss to complete the script with their own personal information. T asks ss to read their script aloud and shout their personal information.

(Transcript: Hello my name is Karina and I am 30 years old. I was born in the capital city of England, London. And I have one brother and one sister. I have a pet cat called Minnie. My favourite colour is black. My favourite food is pizza. And my favourite drink is tea. )

Speaking Task

T points to the words and elicits the questions. For example, Name – What is your name? London – Where are you from? Etc.T boards the questions.

T hands out a paper and asks students to draw a big circle, and a simple picture of themselves in the middle. T asks ss to write down the answers to the questions around the picture.

T asks ss to work in pairs and ask and answer their questions.

T monitors and notes down any errors.

Delayed error correction.

Controlled Speaking Practice

T hands out a class survey called Ask Me. T tells ss they are going to ask their classmates some questions and find out more about them. T asks ss to read the headings and to add two new headings about information they would like to know about (T may put some image prompts on the board – music, sport, computer games, TV).

T asks two ss to model the dialogue: one st asks a question, the other st answers, the first st writes down the answer. The two students swap roles. Then they are instructed to change partners.

T monitors and encourages all ss to mingle, and ask and answer 10 questions.

T asks ss to tell her three things they learnt about their classmates.

Creative Speaking Task

– Use Little Bird Tales to talk about yourself.

– Speak for 1 minute. Talk about your favourite things, and WHY you like them.

– Ss may use teacher’s laptop, ipad and iphone in class to make their presentation

– Quicker students can begin, others can write down what they want to say and practice.

– The tool allows students to draw a circle, and simple image using their finger or stylus, and enter simple text. Then they can record their own voice. The image plus recording can be saved and uploaded to the site. Later the T may play the recordings during class.

– T may ask the ss to listen and say if they hear any mistakes. T may ask which drawing they liked the best and why.

– T plays her tale as an example

Why use Little Bird Tales?

Little Bird Tales is a creative and fun online tool that helps young learners to create digital stories. Users can illustrate their stories by drawing on the art pad, narrate their stories by recording their voice, importing images and/or by simply typing on a keyboard. The key features are that of sharing your work with others and having the opportunity to publish it to an international audience.

Visually and aurally enhancing a short story or piece of writing, is engaging for the young writer, as well as the future reader. Also, I think this tool could be used as a prompt that models the outline of story to inspire students in the story-writing process – as I have done in a very simple way!