Early Years activities for young ethnic minority learners

The information on the pages above is available as a downloadable booklet called Early Years activities to promote understanding and use of English.  118kb

General activities

1. Simple board games - to develop social interaction and to develop counting on and number recognition
2. Games for learning specific vocabulary:
   • make a man / make a fish etc.
   • matching games or lotto type games e.g. transport lotto
   • matching shapes
3. Stories - the young bilingual learner needs to become very familiar with a wide variety of stories. Choose stories that have good visuals and repetitive phrases or sentences and encourage the children to join in with the telling of the story.
4. Describing games - have a collection of pictures and describe one of them e.g.: 'The boy has a red coat and a blue hat" or with a collection of animal pictures "This animal has a long neck and long legs.' The children need to listen to the clues and pick out the correct picture. Later the children can give the clues to the rest of the group in turn.
5. Kim's game can be adapted to fit in with the current topic by using:
   • model animals
   • vegetables
   • fruit
   • model cars, buses, ambulances etc.
   • classroom objects
   • objects linked to specific rooms
6. Play activities using:
   • dolls and the doll's house
   • the farm or the zoo
   • the garage
   • the road mat
   • construction toys e.g.. Lego.
   • Adult help will be needed to monitor the language used and to provide the necessary input.
7. Recording activities:
   • drawing objects that float or sink
   • or that are bigger than ……
   • filling in charts and grids
8. Many games can be adapted. The game 'I went shopping and I bought ' in which each child adds an extra item to the list can be adapted to fit many topics (it is a good idea to use picture cards in order to make tile game accessible to the bilingual child) e.g.:
   • I went to the seaside and I saw ……..
   • I went to the park and I saw ………
   • I packed my suitcase and in it I put…….
9. Puppets can be made and used to tell a story or to help tell a rhyme
10. Make simple books.