Preparing Young Learners for a Future at UK Universities: Language Skills that Matter

As more families aim early for international study, teachers play a crucial role in laying the language foundation that later opens doors to UK universities. This article will help ESL/EFL teachers, preschool and primary educators, and homeschooling parents understand the English language requirements students will face (IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge exams and the like) — and, more importantly, how day-to-day classroom work with young learners builds the academic English skills those tests measure.

Why Visually Stimulating Material Helps Kids Learn English Better

Teaching primary kids English, is becoming easier with the advent of classroom technology. It wasn’t long ago that a grade 3 teacher had to purchase non-customizable task cards to re-use class after class, or try and painstakingly create her own task cards, with limited design skills, Microsoft Word and the school printer, then cut out!

By introducing meaningful visual elements to the curriculum, educators can help students with information retention and being truly engaged. In school, a child receives a multitude of visual messages daily, so teachers are essentially competing with the kid’s attention span. By turning learning into a game with fun school clip art and custom task cards, the child has a better chance of performing and studies have also shown that children who are taught with visuals, get better grades and report cards.

Teaching English to Kids

There are a few reasons why you may want your kids to learn to speak English. It may be that your family has moved to a country where English is spoken, or you may have a situation where English is not usually spoken at home but you want your children to learn to speak the language as contact with persons outside of the home and your community increases. In other cases, you may be living in a country where English is not natively spoken, but you want your children to learn the language as early a possible, so that they will eventually be able to communicate like native speakers of the language. Whatever your reasons or motivations, teaching your children to speak English is not as difficult as it may seem at first. There are a few ground rules, tips and trick that you can used to have your kids speaking and reading (if they are old enough!) English in no time.

School image created by Pressfoto - Freepik.com

Children learn some their most valuable lessons inside the home, and learning the English language is no different. You will find that as you incorporate the language in all that you do at home, the children will begin to learn and retain what you have taught them.

How Early Is Too Early to Teach a Child to Read?

Blog author’s note: this is the second guest article on my blog. And just as the first one it tells about reading with kids. I hope parents and teachers will find this information useful.

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Learning how to read is an important step in a child’s life, and it’s often the parents’ responsibility to start teaching their children how to read. Because this task is placed in the hands of parents, it’s often questioned when a child should learn how to read. Some parents think they should wait until their child is in school while others feel like it’s something that can be taught before their child has reached their first birthday.

Image by Marc Levin

So when it comes to deciding the right time to teach your child how to read, how early is too early?

Why Are Interactive Books So Good for Kids?

Blog author’s note: I’ve made a decision to accept guest posts from other educators and businesses offering children’s educational products & services. I believe such articles will help me share a collective experience of many experts in the most efficient and progressive ways of teaching and bringing up kids. This is the first article I would like to bring to your attention.

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These days it seems like more and more of the toys our children scribble the name of on their Christmas and birthday wishlists are electronic devices. From games consoles and computer games, to radio controlled cars, electronic board games and learning devices, everything is being updated for the modern age with the addition of a battery or a plug.

For parents who were brought up playing with Barbies, action figures and puzzles, it seems a bit of a shame that youngsters are no longer using their imagination in the way they once did. It seems like you’re more likely to find your child playing games on a tablet computer than you are to spot them running around in the garden or building dens.

Unfortunately there’s not much we can do about the rise of electronic toys, but there is one way to encourage your kids to sit down and read instead of staring at a screen, and that’s with interactive books.