Miatoll Morning Welcome from Kuwait

by maria
(Kuwait)

Morning Board

Hi - I teach English to KG2 children aged between 5-6 years old at a Bilingual school in Kuwait and our 'Morning Welcome Session' lasts about 15 - 20 minutes.

We begin with a 'good morning - how are you today?' song which helps the kids warm-up and encourages them to start 'thinking' in English after 2 hours of learning in their native language, Arabic.

Our morning board is brightly colored and full of interesting pictures and themes. We sing a variety of songs and rhymes about the colors, the weather, months of the year and days of the week to reinforce the language and help with pronunciation. I find singing songs reinforces vocabulary which is new to the children and allows them to practice it in an un-threatening atmosphere and provides a cheerful start to the lesson.

The kids enjoy practicing their counting as we add the appropriate dates to the calender each day and I draw images of special events as they occur which helps with the concept of time i.e. yesterday, tomorrow, next week etc. We also keep track of how many days we are at school to celebrate the 100th day and I find the morning session a great time to review this as the kids love taking it in turns to show how well they can count in tens as well as units of one.

We also have a 'What's up' poster to introduce the activities that the children will be participating in that day, which helps with the transition from one activity to another and avoids chaos if the kids need to line up or clear up an activity at short notice.

Finally, we end our 'Morning Welcome Session' with a short game using flashcards or pictures, which revises letters and language introduced in previous lessons. This really raises the children's confidence and gets them motivated to participate eagerly in the lesson to come.

Overall, I think a systematic and lively 'Morning Welcome Session' lays the foundation for an enjoyable and successful day:)