Names of different animals that are found in their surroundings.

Major Concepts

To learn about animals; numbers in English from 1 to 20

Learning Objectives

• Listening: Listen to the poem with actions and gestures.
• Speaking: Reciting the poem with actions and gestures.
• Reading: Learn new words and numbers from one to twenty.
• Writing: Write numbers in English from one to twenty.

ENGAGE

Activity 1 - Animal song

Teacher sings a song on animals or numbers (E.g. Old Mac Donald..../One two buckle my shoes). The student sings along using actions. The teacher assesses the students’ listening and singing skills.

Activity 2 - Worksheet on identifying known animals

Teacher gives students a worksheet with images of various animals and asks them to circle the animals that they have seen. Teacher assesses the students using this worksheet.

EXPLORE

Activity 1 - Animal Show

Animal masks are made and given to students. They are asked tochoose and enact their favourite animal and say a few lines about the animal. This can be done as a role play with jungle/farm as the theme.

Teacher assesses students’ imagination skills and their understanding of animals.

Activity 2 – Counting

Teacher divides the class into two or three groups. Each group is given pictures of different animals like cats, rats, dogs, fishes, donkeys etc.

Alongside, they have to pick a number chit from a separate bowl. According to the number that they have picked, they have to paste the corresponding number of animal pictures in the activity sheet.

From the activity sheet, the teacher assesses the students understanding of numbers from one to ten.

Activity 3 – Counting worksheet

EXPLAIN

Activity 1 – Singing the poem / Video

The teacher sings the poem with the right stress, pause, intonation, in tune and with actions. Teacher also plays the video of the poem using ICT. Students sing with actions along with the teacher. Teacher assesses students speaking and comprehension skills by asking certain questions like:

1. How many different kinds of animals are there in the poem?
2. Where do the fishes live?
3. Which animals have you seen before?

Activity 2 – Picture cards

Teacher gives picture cards of vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and asks students to read the letters. The students have to read the letters until they are familiar with the sounds of each vowels. This is followed by a worksheet, where in, the student has to identify the vowels in each of the words representing the pictures (E.g. bat, cat, duck, pig, rat, dog, hen etc.)

Child identifies ‘a’ in the word “bat” Or ‘e’ in “hen”

The teacher assesses the students’ ability to identify vowels and use it appropriately.

Activity 3 - Tracing

The teacher divides the class into two or three groups and gives an activity sheet. The activity sheet has the first ten lines of the poem and images of animals for a tracing activity.

The students have to underline the name of the animals in the poem and trace the animals in the activity sheet.

ELABORATE

Activity 1: Emotions

The teacher asks the students to draw different smiley faces (sad, brave, nervous, happy, worried etc.) and asks them to enact the emotions. Teacher then frames a sentence using these adjectives and helps students frame some more sentences.

• I am happy now.
• I am a brave boy/girl.
• He/ She is sad.

The students have to draw the smiley faces and enact it according to the teacher’s instructions. Students frame few sentences using these adjectives and the rest of the class repeats it. The teacher assesses the students understanding of these words and ability to frame sentences using it.

Activity 2 – Number vocabulary

The teacher writes the numbers (1-20) and names (one-twenty) in 20  chits.  These  chits are to be folded and kept in a bowl. The teacher prepares a chart with 20 words in it and marks the numbers 1 to 20 adjacent to it. (10 two letters words and 10 three letter words).

Each student picks a number chit from the bowl, looks at the chart, finds the number in it and reads the corresponding word from the chart. The teacher guides the student through this entire process.

The teacher tests the reading ability of the students.

Activity 3 – Animal video

Teacher plays a video using ICT, to make students understand about domestic and wild animals.

(Domestic and Wild Animals from You - Tube- https://youtu.be/xGQiV6Ykl4U)

Students watch the video and learn about domestic and wild animals.

The teacher assesses students by asking questions like:

1. Name some wild animals.
2. Name some domestic animals.
3. Are dogs wild or domestic animals?

EVALUATE

The teacher provides a worksheet for students to match the number name with the animals count.

The students are made to read two or three letter words with the help of the picture cards.

Through both these activities, students learning process can be assessed.

Reflections:

I am teaching only English for class 1 and there are six students in my class. Three of them have joined school in class 1 and have not been to KG classes. Since this is their first school experience, they are slowly getting used to a classroom environment. Students have just begun writing Tamil in class 1 and we are simultaneously introducing English language to them.  Hence the challenge is greater as they are not exposed to the language outside the classroom. I have to ensure they get excited to learn the language and hence it needs to be taught in a manner that is meaningful and familiar to children.

I showed my students a video of the rhyme called Old Macdonald’s Farm to excite the children. While I managed to get them   excited, I realised that they were not able to follow the words in the poem except the chorus eiya eiya yo. So I have decided to use poems that are simpler and more relevant to their environment.  We can do so by modifying the existing poem and rewriting it to suit our needs.

For example:

Hen, Hen, Count To Ten, Hen, hen, count to ten; Goat, goat, get your coat; Pig, pig, dance a jig.

Mouse, mouse, build a house; Chick, chick, make it quick; Cat, cat, find your hat.

Bear, bear, go upstairs, Mite, mite, say good night;

One 1, two 2, three 3, four 4, five 5, Once I caught  a fish alive.

Six 6, seven 7, eight 8, nine 9, ten 10,

Then I let it go again. Why did I let it go?

Because it bit my finger so. Which finger did it bite?

The little finger on my right.

The objective of the lesson is to teach about animals and numbers from one to twenty in English. Since children may not know the English names of many of the animals, they will be trying to acquire a new vocabulary of 10-15 animal names. To aid recall and reinforce this vocabulary, it helps if the worksheets have the same set of animals.

The pictures should also have the names of the animals so that they slowly get familiar with identifying and reading the names of the animals. The starting latter of each animal name can be highlighted for easy recognition.

The animal show can be made exciting for students by  asking  them  to  color  the  masks of their favorite animal and say a few  lines about the animal initially in Tamil. E.g.: I like cats, they eat rats. I like rabbit and rabbit eats carrots, I like dogs, I have a dog at home. This will create opportunities for them to express their ideas. The teacher can then guide them to speak those lines in English. This can also be used as an opportunity  to  introduce  children to new vocabulary while reinforcing the words they have already learnt in the lesson. We can then convert in it the form of a small role play with jungle or farm as the theme of the play. The play can be made lively if students are made to act like their favourite animal.

As we are teaching students a foreign language, it is good to begin from the known to the unknown, from the familiar to the unfamiliar. All the activities can be aligned such that students retain the newly acquired vocabulary. Opportunities for students to express themselves, their thoughts and imagination also plays an important role in language learning. Creating such spaces will also help eliminate students’ anxieties towards learning English language.