Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Macaomiao Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Huanggang Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
Flashcards are easy, simple and useful resource that a teacher can use in her class. Flashcards can help improve knowledge and ability to understand and improve visual memory. There are many benefits in using flash cards in class. You can use them for games, warm-ups, drilling activities, elicit or practice vocabulary and many more. Flashcards are really good and effective teaching tool to any age but I will focus my essay on how I use it for young learners in a non-english country. I would like to share some of the flash cards activities that I use in my class. Flashcards can be an excellent tool in introducing new words to the students. In a preschool class, I use flashcards to show pictures of the new words that I want to introduce. At this age, learners can’t read yet, so giving them a visual picture gives them an idea on what the word is. We do a lot of drilling practice to say the words and how to pronounce it. By doing this, the children have a visual memory of the word is and get the chance to practice their vocabulary and use it in lessons or in daily conversation. Children get motivated and engaged, when the activity is fun. They get more involved in class if they find an activity catchy and interesting. I use flashcards for educational games. it is simple, ready to use, and enjoyable for children. One flashcard game that I always use in my class is “Guess The Card”. The teacher will show the card (it can be fast or slow, as it excites the children) and elicit the answer from a student. A student can win the card if they answer correctly. The student with most cards win. And at the end of the game, the teacher will ask them about the cards that they have in hand. Another game I play using flashcards is “Matching Game”. Children gets curious and excited with the things they cant see. I put all cards face down, and allow the children to flip two cards and look for its match. It may be matching colours, shapes, or words-pictures (for students who can read). I can also use this matching game in learning alphabets too, where students will pair the Lower case and Upper case. It is challenging and fun for students to play this game, and it can fill up the extra time in learning. Ordering and Sorting are of the simplest games I can do with flashcards. Ordering is putting cards in order such as numbers, alphabets. Sorting are putting the cards who are in the same categories like shapes, colours, etc. Aside for learning the vocabulary, the children will be able to observe patterns in every card. It tests the students visual and auditory skills. Another activity that I do for flashcards is for Story, I can personalise and create my own story for the children. Story books are too small for the whole class, by the use of flash cards for story telling, I can adjust the size of the picture to make it more visible to the entire class. In this TEFL and CEYTL course, we have learned that when teaching young learners, we have to prepare variety of activities. for me, flash cards are versatile and ready to use for teachers.
