A big part of my students are elementary school kids. That is why I have designed a good number of printable English teaching materials for my 1st grade students. The printables include flashcards, posters, awards, worksheets, games, coloring pages etc. Many of them have already been published in my blog. In this blog post, I’d like to show some of those printables that I use for grade 1 to help my fellow EFL and ESL teachers find my earlier publications and see the bigger picture of what I create for my classes and what I can offer for their classes as well.
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| I have designed a lot of printable worksheets, charts, flashcards etc for my grade 1 students. |
The first year of learning English at school is an important stage for young students as well as for an ESL/EFL teacher. The teacher should help kids “fall in love” with learning English which might seem weird for children who learn it as the second for foreign language. I do my best to design colorful worksheets, games and visual aids to make the learning process fun and engaging at the very outset.
There are two key types of printable teaching resources that I use for grade 1 English classes: resources for teaching to read in English and those for teaching to write. Of course, the first grade suggests acquiring the basic reading and writing skills at the alphabet level. So here are some printable visuals, awards, worksheets and coloring pages I use at this beginning stage.
English Alphabet and Basic Reading for Grade 1
At the very beginning of studying English kids learn to
recognize English ABC letters. I use my
big printable alphabet letters to show them to the class. Large letters are good for big classrooms where kids may struggle seeing them from a distance. I also use these letters for online English classes with kids.
Alphabet coloring is another way to help children
remember the appearance of new letters through their usual activity of coloring pictures. This is why I use my English ABC coloring pages for my classes.
I have also designed
big and colorful alphabet posters that I stick to the classroom walls
to attract kids’ attention with what they are going to learn. Many pictures on the posters makes little students get excited about learning this or another ABC letter and so many cool words that start with the letter.
An English alphabet letter being learned, I hand out printed
ABC awards for the great job of learning the alphabet that my students do. When giving these “trophies” to kids, I make a big deal of their accomplishments and
encourage them to keep up with learning and memorizing all the letters. Children love collecting those awards and thus love learning the ABC.
Simple ABC games help a lot with memorizing letters thanks to the intensive brain activity they involve kids into. Here is one of the games I play with my grade 1 students to teach English alphabet to them.
When students know all the ABC letters, it’s time to move to the next level and find out how these letters and their combinations sound in frequently used words. We start
learning basic words such as
Dolch sight words and at the same time pay attention to
phonetics of English language. The reading stage has begun for the first grade students.
I have designed more than 550
printable Dolch sight words flashcards to
teach basic vocabulary to kids. Those flashcards help my first grade students better memorize some words and string them into short sentences to start reading in English.
I have also created a series of
reading comprehension stories that are written with short words only (maximum four letters). They are super easy to read. When kids read those stories and understand most of the words even at the early stage of studying English,
they feel empowered, motivated and excited about their success.
Another
set of reading comprehension passages is dedicated to animals. This kit includes worksheets and a large number of colorful flashcards designed to introduce animal-related vocabulary to young English learners. Some reading passages of this set are quite short and simple to be used for grade 1.
As my first grade students learn to read in English, I draw their attention to sounds in English words. Phonics are extremely important for non-native speakers but at the same time they are not as interesting as reading stories. In other words English phonics are boring and weird for many non-native speaking kids. Therefore I did my best to design bright printable flashcards and charts to help children learn phonics in a more or less fun way.
English phonics being quite challenging for many EFL and ESL students, I have designed tons of flashcards, charts and worksheets to make the ride through the sound system less bumpy for young learners. I keep on working on new printables related to phonics almost daily. Below are some of them, and I’ll be adding more as I design new teaching materials.
Basic Writing for Grade 1
My grade 1 students do not write a lot for obvious reasons. The key writing skill they need to acquire at this stage is
writing English letters. Therefore I print out my
letter tracing worksheets to help kids train their hands for writing letters.
Other Printables for Grade 1
I have designed
thousands of colorful printable flashcards to introduce English vocabulary to my young students. I use them a lot for my grade 1 classes as well as for other elementary and middle school grades. Some of these vocabulary flashcards are bilingual. I designed them for kids whose native languages are
Spanish,
French and
Chinese.
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