Hello and welcome to English Grade 8!
We hope you have a fantastic year and have as much fun teaching the materials as we did write it!
The idea of the book This book is designed to be fun! Students learn better when they are having fun, and teachers teach better too! The idea isn’t to have students copying things off the board and being bored (and getting naughty!), it is about students using the language to play games, solve puzzles, express themselves, communicate and have fun! What do students learn? This book is designed to be the main text book for Grade 8 Cambodian students. By the end of the book, students will be well on their way to being A2 level English learners! Students learn the four skills, grammar and 21st century skills.
There is more speaking and listening than reading and writing. Skills – Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing This book is all about students always doing and always being interested! The readings and listenings are a great mix of engaging, interesting and funny storylines. The speaking and writing encourages students to use their fantastic imaginations! You will probably notice there is very little grammar in this book the way you learnt it as a kid (Hurray!). That’s because kids at this age learn grammar much better by actually using it! By listening to it, reading it, writing it and speaking it. There are lots of great listenings with actors from all around the world so students get to hear lots of different accents and be able to talk from people from all around the ASEAN community and the world! If you don’t have the recordings yet, just go to the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport and download them for free! Grammar This book does teach grammar, but don’t worry! It’s not boring! Teachers don’t talk forever and students don’t copy off the board!
As I’m sure you remember from your school days, young learners ind grammar and copying boring, and if they are bored they won’t learn. There is almost never a point in explaining grammar to children in the same way you would an adult. Don’t worry! They will still learn grammar! But they will be able to read it, listen to it, write it and say it! More than just English – 21st century skills We don’t know what skills and knowledge people are going to need in the jobs of the future, so teachers today need to be helping kids to be independent learners, great communicators, creative, lexible, and ready for anything life throws at them. As teachers we have to help students to learn to think, cooperate, communicate and work well, fairly and supportively with their fellow students. This book is designed to encourage a classroom environment to support this where students feel well supported in making mistakes and playing with the language. Students learn group work, how to be supportive of other students, and how to think for themselves and be creative. They also start to look at the world beyond Cambodia’s borders and explore how different countries and culture live. This way, students learn and appreciate different cultures (and hear different accents!). The idea of teachers teaching knowledge is dying. Teachers teach students to think and learn! So, how do students learn all this? This book has been written with the latest research about how kids learn in mind. This book is all about students always doing and always being interested and enjoying themselves, but that doesn’t mean they are screaming round the classroom all lesson! Stirrers and settlers Any good young learner’s teacher knows about this golden rule of teaching! The idea is that a lesson will switch from stirrer to settler to stirrer to settler throughout the lesson. “Stirrers” get the kids excited and “settlers” calm them down.
This way, kids can concentrate and learn and behave! Welcome to grade 8 English! How to use this book - 6 - That’s why our lessons are written as a good balance of both. If you look at a lesson plan in the book, you’ll see that the activities change from exciting activities that wake the students up, to quiet activities that calm the students down and then back to an exciting activity again. Learning in context Students learn new grammar and words as well as the 4 skills through games, stories, songs, tongue twisters and being interested! The book has been written with 13 year olds in mind using themes and contexts that they will ind funny, sad, interesting, and fun! Our aim is that students will be interested in the context of every lesson. You will notice that new words and grammar are hardly ever explained. That’s because young learners are really good at learning new grammar and words just by seeing them in context. Long explanations and talking about nouns and adjectives only make students bored, they don’t make them learn, so instead we just skip them and try to keep students having fun and interested, and engaged with the language! Through creativity Often there is no “correct” answer to some questions and many different grammatical forms are possible. By not giving a “correct answer” and by focusing on effective modeling, students are encouraged to explore the language and play with it as they go. Why the book is great for teachers too! Easy to use lesson plans We have written ‘grab and go’ lesson plans so all you need to do is to read them before class and think about the reason for each stage – no other preparation needed!
We have even written the answers in and provided tapescripts just in case! And, everything is in English so you can remember to be all in English as well! But just because everything is done for you, don’t think that you can’t try out your own games and activities. We hope this book helps you get the conidence to play around with your own ideas as well! As long as they’re fun and in English, your students will love them! Relection We have written some things to help you relect on your teaching at the end of each lesson and help you get better and better every day – just like your students! Glossary Teaching English Dictionary: Words, ideas and fabulous teaching tips! Ask and answer questions as a class: This is when students ind out if they were right or wrong. Students need to know they have understood correctly. There’s lots of different ways of doing this. If you have a busy lesson, it’s often enough to just yell out the question, and have students yell back the answer. Another way is to ask students to answer one by one. Be careful!
Some teachers only ask “good students”. This makes other students wonder why you didn’t ask them. They might think things like “Does the teacher think I’m stupid?” Another thing to watch out for is some teachers waste a lot of time copying the answers on the board and then allowing students 5-10 minutes to copy the correct answers in their notebooks. Students aren’t really learning while they are doing this, and this is valuable time that could be used to actually practise the language, which students will learn a lot more from! Boarding useful target language: This is great for reminding students of the structure/ pronunciation they should be using. e.g. Just say students are talking about what their friends like, but are forgetting the ‘s’ sound. Why not write “She likes …” in a speech bubble on the board? That way you are not interrupting students, but you’re reminding them of the grammar without using grammatical terms. Brainstorming: This is a great habit to try and get your students into and will help them in university and beyond! Students brainstorm before they write (and sometimes speak depending on the activity). There’s lots of ways to try and do this. You can have students draw, talk, draw pictures or even close their eyes and listen to music! e.g. You want students to write about their best friend, but worried that students will say that they don’t have any ideas. You could have students draw a picture of their best friend and write as many adjectives as they can in a few minutes. This helps students to get ideas without worrying about sentence structure or being neat. Copying from the board: This has been very popular in Cambodian classrooms for a long time. The problem with English class is though, that it only goes for 50 minutes!
A rule of no more than 3- 5 minutes copying a lesson is probably a good idea! Class discussion: This is when you talk about a subject as a class. These can be useful, but make sure that you are not talking too much and students know to listen and be respectful about other people’s opinions! Concept checking questions: These are questions you can use instead of “Do you understand?” Students don’t want to look dumb in front of their friends so they always say “yes”! Concept checking questions are usually about vocabulary or grammar. They can be - 7 - very easy! e.g. You have just taught the words “pen” and “pencil”. Point to a pen and ask “Is this a pencil?” Connected speech: Native English speakers don’t say one word at a time. They say things quickly and all together and they don’t say some words clearly. e.g. Native speakers won’t say: Where. Are. You. From? /weər/ɑ:r/ju:/frɒm/. They’ll probably say Wheraya from? /weərə/jə/frɒm/. Make sure students listen to and practise the way words are said naturally.
Controlled practise: This is when students answer grammar questions when there is really only one right answer. These exercises are supposed to be quick and are just so that students check that they understand a grammar rule. Encourage: Tell students what they are doing well a lot! It’s much easier to encourage good behavior than to punish “bad” behavior. Kids need a lot of this, even (or sometimes particularly) ‘naughty kids’! The best English classrooms are fun and supportive! End sounds (terminal consonant sounds): In Khmer, we don’t really make the last sound of a word, but in English it’s really important! Remembering to make the last sound in English can be really hard for students! Words ending in ‘s’ or ‘ed’ are extra hard because the noises change! Helping students make the end sound means that people will be able to understand them a lot better, especially native speakers! English only classroom: An English only (or almost English only!) classroom is the best way for anyone to learn English! Let’s look at some of the reasons why. • If students don’t speak English, they won’t learn English. If everything is in English, students spend more time practicing English!
• The more practise students have, the more conident and comfortable with English they’ll be! • Students will learn meaningful English. e.g. “May I go to the bathroom?” “What do you think?” • If students are switching from Khmer to English, they are probably using Khmer grammar and pronunciation which is very different to English grammar and pronunciation. Students can form bad habits this way. • If students are speaking in Khmer, they aren’t thinking in English. • The more students speak in English, the more students are thinking in English. When students are able to think in English, they learn so much faster! But if you want to make your kids speak only in English, you have to do it, too! In an A1 classroom you’re going to have to use a lot of body language, but you can do it! Give yourself a daily challenge. See how much of your lesson (from you and your students) can be in English! Error correction: Telling kids when they’re wrong is tricky and much less useful than when you tell an adult they are wrong. You have to make sure kids still feel great about taking risks and making mistakes. It’s better to look for correct usage and then tell the class how good it is (and the student who did it obviously!) There is no point being fussy and jumping on every little mistake!
There is more speaking and listening than reading and writing. Skills – Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing This book is all about students always doing and always being interested! The readings and listenings are a great mix of engaging, interesting and funny storylines. The speaking and writing encourages students to use their fantastic imaginations! You will probably notice there is very little grammar in this book the way you learnt it as a kid (Hurray!). That’s because kids at this age learn grammar much better by actually using it! By listening to it, reading it, writing it and speaking it. There are lots of great listenings with actors from all around the world so students get to hear lots of different accents and be able to talk from people from all around the ASEAN community and the world! If you don’t have the recordings yet, just go to the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport and download them for free! Grammar This book does teach grammar, but don’t worry! It’s not boring! Teachers don’t talk forever and students don’t copy off the board!
As I’m sure you remember from your school days, young learners ind grammar and copying boring, and if they are bored they won’t learn. There is almost never a point in explaining grammar to children in the same way you would an adult. Don’t worry! They will still learn grammar! But they will be able to read it, listen to it, write it and say it! More than just English – 21st century skills We don’t know what skills and knowledge people are going to need in the jobs of the future, so teachers today need to be helping kids to be independent learners, great communicators, creative, lexible, and ready for anything life throws at them. As teachers we have to help students to learn to think, cooperate, communicate and work well, fairly and supportively with their fellow students. This book is designed to encourage a classroom environment to support this where students feel well supported in making mistakes and playing with the language. Students learn group work, how to be supportive of other students, and how to think for themselves and be creative. They also start to look at the world beyond Cambodia’s borders and explore how different countries and culture live. This way, students learn and appreciate different cultures (and hear different accents!). The idea of teachers teaching knowledge is dying. Teachers teach students to think and learn! So, how do students learn all this? This book has been written with the latest research about how kids learn in mind. This book is all about students always doing and always being interested and enjoying themselves, but that doesn’t mean they are screaming round the classroom all lesson! Stirrers and settlers Any good young learner’s teacher knows about this golden rule of teaching! The idea is that a lesson will switch from stirrer to settler to stirrer to settler throughout the lesson. “Stirrers” get the kids excited and “settlers” calm them down.
This way, kids can concentrate and learn and behave! Welcome to grade 8 English! How to use this book - 6 - That’s why our lessons are written as a good balance of both. If you look at a lesson plan in the book, you’ll see that the activities change from exciting activities that wake the students up, to quiet activities that calm the students down and then back to an exciting activity again. Learning in context Students learn new grammar and words as well as the 4 skills through games, stories, songs, tongue twisters and being interested! The book has been written with 13 year olds in mind using themes and contexts that they will ind funny, sad, interesting, and fun! Our aim is that students will be interested in the context of every lesson. You will notice that new words and grammar are hardly ever explained. That’s because young learners are really good at learning new grammar and words just by seeing them in context. Long explanations and talking about nouns and adjectives only make students bored, they don’t make them learn, so instead we just skip them and try to keep students having fun and interested, and engaged with the language! Through creativity Often there is no “correct” answer to some questions and many different grammatical forms are possible. By not giving a “correct answer” and by focusing on effective modeling, students are encouraged to explore the language and play with it as they go. Why the book is great for teachers too! Easy to use lesson plans We have written ‘grab and go’ lesson plans so all you need to do is to read them before class and think about the reason for each stage – no other preparation needed!
We have even written the answers in and provided tapescripts just in case! And, everything is in English so you can remember to be all in English as well! But just because everything is done for you, don’t think that you can’t try out your own games and activities. We hope this book helps you get the conidence to play around with your own ideas as well! As long as they’re fun and in English, your students will love them! Relection We have written some things to help you relect on your teaching at the end of each lesson and help you get better and better every day – just like your students! Glossary Teaching English Dictionary: Words, ideas and fabulous teaching tips! Ask and answer questions as a class: This is when students ind out if they were right or wrong. Students need to know they have understood correctly. There’s lots of different ways of doing this. If you have a busy lesson, it’s often enough to just yell out the question, and have students yell back the answer. Another way is to ask students to answer one by one. Be careful!
Some teachers only ask “good students”. This makes other students wonder why you didn’t ask them. They might think things like “Does the teacher think I’m stupid?” Another thing to watch out for is some teachers waste a lot of time copying the answers on the board and then allowing students 5-10 minutes to copy the correct answers in their notebooks. Students aren’t really learning while they are doing this, and this is valuable time that could be used to actually practise the language, which students will learn a lot more from! Boarding useful target language: This is great for reminding students of the structure/ pronunciation they should be using. e.g. Just say students are talking about what their friends like, but are forgetting the ‘s’ sound. Why not write “She likes …” in a speech bubble on the board? That way you are not interrupting students, but you’re reminding them of the grammar without using grammatical terms. Brainstorming: This is a great habit to try and get your students into and will help them in university and beyond! Students brainstorm before they write (and sometimes speak depending on the activity). There’s lots of ways to try and do this. You can have students draw, talk, draw pictures or even close their eyes and listen to music! e.g. You want students to write about their best friend, but worried that students will say that they don’t have any ideas. You could have students draw a picture of their best friend and write as many adjectives as they can in a few minutes. This helps students to get ideas without worrying about sentence structure or being neat. Copying from the board: This has been very popular in Cambodian classrooms for a long time. The problem with English class is though, that it only goes for 50 minutes!
A rule of no more than 3- 5 minutes copying a lesson is probably a good idea! Class discussion: This is when you talk about a subject as a class. These can be useful, but make sure that you are not talking too much and students know to listen and be respectful about other people’s opinions! Concept checking questions: These are questions you can use instead of “Do you understand?” Students don’t want to look dumb in front of their friends so they always say “yes”! Concept checking questions are usually about vocabulary or grammar. They can be - 7 - very easy! e.g. You have just taught the words “pen” and “pencil”. Point to a pen and ask “Is this a pencil?” Connected speech: Native English speakers don’t say one word at a time. They say things quickly and all together and they don’t say some words clearly. e.g. Native speakers won’t say: Where. Are. You. From? /weər/ɑ:r/ju:/frɒm/. They’ll probably say Wheraya from? /weərə/jə/frɒm/. Make sure students listen to and practise the way words are said naturally.
Controlled practise: This is when students answer grammar questions when there is really only one right answer. These exercises are supposed to be quick and are just so that students check that they understand a grammar rule. Encourage: Tell students what they are doing well a lot! It’s much easier to encourage good behavior than to punish “bad” behavior. Kids need a lot of this, even (or sometimes particularly) ‘naughty kids’! The best English classrooms are fun and supportive! End sounds (terminal consonant sounds): In Khmer, we don’t really make the last sound of a word, but in English it’s really important! Remembering to make the last sound in English can be really hard for students! Words ending in ‘s’ or ‘ed’ are extra hard because the noises change! Helping students make the end sound means that people will be able to understand them a lot better, especially native speakers! English only classroom: An English only (or almost English only!) classroom is the best way for anyone to learn English! Let’s look at some of the reasons why. • If students don’t speak English, they won’t learn English. If everything is in English, students spend more time practicing English!
• The more practise students have, the more conident and comfortable with English they’ll be! • Students will learn meaningful English. e.g. “May I go to the bathroom?” “What do you think?” • If students are switching from Khmer to English, they are probably using Khmer grammar and pronunciation which is very different to English grammar and pronunciation. Students can form bad habits this way. • If students are speaking in Khmer, they aren’t thinking in English. • The more students speak in English, the more students are thinking in English. When students are able to think in English, they learn so much faster! But if you want to make your kids speak only in English, you have to do it, too! In an A1 classroom you’re going to have to use a lot of body language, but you can do it! Give yourself a daily challenge. See how much of your lesson (from you and your students) can be in English! Error correction: Telling kids when they’re wrong is tricky and much less useful than when you tell an adult they are wrong. You have to make sure kids still feel great about taking risks and making mistakes. It’s better to look for correct usage and then tell the class how good it is (and the student who did it obviously!) There is no point being fussy and jumping on every little mistake!
Post a Comment