Learning English with an integration of Art, Craft and interacting games, is involving students in activities that promote language and then develop language both in the home tongue and in the new language being taught.

Language is the art of communication, and creating events that enable language to happen, makes the learning more natural and also the new language becomes the extension of the home language.

By using the home language for clarification and discussion, and then linking the new language, we give students scaffolding and a bridge, which they can use to form word associations that are meaningful and memorable.

Using a color coded cap system; activities are linked so the students use their different senses and intelligences in their learning.

The Green Cap symbolizes the Creative. This section uses illustrations and drawings where students link color, shape and the simple art of coloring, drawing and painting as stimulation. The color activities are relaxing, and also an oral test as the teacher discusses the items in the illustration with the student. By asking students to color the leaves of the tree in blue instead of the usual green, gives an instant answer as to understanding as well as listening. Spatial and creative intelligences are incorporated in this aspect.

The Blue Cap symbolizes oral and speaking activities. These are based on either questions and answers or simple dialogues and writings that the students can repeat or vocalize. Poetry and repetitive lines incorporating tongue twisters and riddles are used to help the students familiarize themselves with hearing their own voices speaking the new language. Taping the students and having them listen to their own voices and participating in simple plays and multi role dialogues and story telling are Blue Cap activities.

The Yellow Cap Activities include puzzles and brainstorming where the student solves something that involves a measure of thought. Word puzzles, simple crosswords, Find a Word, mazes and games all introduce new vocabulary. Simple games including hangman, tic tack to, Snakes and ladders, Dice games and matching games involve the students as a team and they learn new words by playing them. There are many simple games that students can play in pairs or as a group and incorporate skill and decision as well as thought and discovery.

The Red Cap involves writing and recording language, and students have activities that make them record what they have learnt or are learning. This gives them a visible format of the spoken and heard word, and also formalizes and also provides a revision and a record of what has taken place. Reading words and recording responses are part of the Red Cap Learning.  Using chat lines and robots are very modern ways of having students write. Here they see even more clearly that writing a language has a clear purpose and learn how to ask and answer questions, as well as interpret what the exchange involves.

The Purple Cap is the Listening. This takes place using CD’s and tapes, Movies and excerpts from videos, and Power Points and presentations where the student listens and learns. The Internet has many sites that provide simple learning activities from nursery rhymes and Fairy Tales, to advanced News Videos and broadcasts. Listening that involves new learning is always more affective than simple words, and nature and animal facts are a good beginning. Listening to numerous voices speaking the new language reinforces that there are differences and prepares the student for a more capable listening experience.

Incorporating the five types of learning into a weeks lessons, gives the student a more balanced and directed involvement into learning a new language. Students learn far more effectively in this manner and they learn a living language.

http://M-carstairs.com/englishlessons

©Marguerite Carstairs 2005