In my classroom, kids often want to use English, but forget the sentence they need. This has resulted in more than a few kids hopping about on one foot, almost in tears from their desperation for the loo, but refusing to give in and say what they want in their own language… In an effort to help them succeed, I made some cards which I either stick up on my wall, or keep handy to hold up to children when they need something. Kids find the picture of what they want and simply read the sentence out. After a while, they just glance at the picture to jog their memories, and by the end of the year, they’ve got classroom English down!
Here are cards for the toilet, spelling, forgotten items, and a request to borrow something:
Here are the pictures I drew for a couple of the cards:
One for children to use when asking to borrow something:
And one for “How do I spell … ?”