Teaching CVC Words

Teaching CVC Words Kinney Brothers Publishing

In a previous post, I talked about sight words; what they are, when to start teaching them, and how to effectively work with a variety of learning resources. For the most part, the major points of that post also apply to teaching CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. It bears repeating that, like sight words, when teaching CVC words, the what, when, and how are just as relevant.

A CVC word is a word that is made up of a consonant, short vowel, and consonant sound, such as cat, bed, tip, hot and rug. The goal is for students to use their knowledge of the individual sounds of each letter and ‘blend’ these letter sounds together, so they are saying the whole word and not three individual sounds. It must be explained, and repeated, that such words have a beginning, middle and ending sound that together create a word.
Before you begin teaching CVC words, a child must have a grounding in the ABCs and their phonetic associations. When students can confidently manipulate letters and identify their sounds, they are ready to begin learning CVC words.
Like sight words, CVC words can be exercised using flash cards, word-building activities, games, orthographic practice, and in text reading exercises.

It is also important to note that, whatever the age of your students, reading fluency will only come with practice. Understanding the steps children work through to understand word constructs and words in context are necessary to determine readiness and track progress.

As you set out to teach CVC words, be prepared with a ready supply of flash cards, games, reading and writing activities, and plenty of review exercises!

CVC Flash Cards

Flash cards are a mainstay for many teachers and can be used in so many ways other than flipping through deck after deck of vocabulary words. Check out my 41 Flash Card Activities if you’re in need of a refresh with your flash card routines.

Flash Cards Kinney Brothers Publishing

CVC Flash Cards Set

Phonics & Spelling, Book 2

Sorting, matching, ordering, and discovery are the most fundamental components in many flash card activities. When working with CVC words, it is best to have cards with vocabulary on the front and back to expand their use. Playing games with flash cards like races, relays, Q&A circles, slap games, missing cards, and game board type games, places the emphasis on activities that employ vocabulary rather than a focus on word drilling.

CVC Games

Game boards and card games will really engage your kids when reviewing CVC words. Laminating boards means they’re always ready and less prone to destruction. Boards, plus tokens, dice, and a few rules, and kids will forget that they are reviewing vocabulary! Even though the basic function may be the same across many games, it’s the engagement and the opportunity to practice in stimulating activities that brings about the most meaningful learning.

Games Kinney Brothers Publishing

CVC Reading & Writing

Orthographic exercises that employ reading, word building, and writing activities are perfect for fluency practice and accountability. Worksheets, combined with task cards and other types of manipulatives, make repetition less arduous and more fun. Word puzzles, exit tickets, write-round-the-room activities, and interactive notebooks are just a few of the teaching resources that keep kids engaged while learning to spell. I always look for ways to bring CVC word practice together with coloring, counting, graphing, spinners, dice, random choice, and memory skills, for activities that hold students’ focus on a variety of levels.

Spelling CVC Activities Kinney Brothers Publishing

CVC Write Around the Room

Making Sentences with CVC Words

Once students are comfortable with building and reading words and can recognize them in text, making sentences and understanding meaning in context are the next steps toward reading comprehension. Creating sentences with image and word flash cards is a great way to get kids to review learned words and learn the most rudimentary rules for sentence constructions. Here, using flash cards, not as a means to drill, but a way of exploring new connections, gives students a creative way to build on their understanding. Try keeping these kinds of flash cards available to students outside of lessons to see what kind of sentences they create on their own. You might even hear them teaching each other!

Making CVC sentences Kinney Brothers Publishing

Sight Word Flash Cards

It can’t be stressed enough that learning the concept of word, sounding out the phonemic components, setting learned words into sentences, and then deriving meaning from sentence context are skills that have to be taught, will occur in that order, and must be practiced for children to achieve reading fluency.

CVC Exercise & Review

One of my biggest pet peeves with many textbook series is the lack of quality exercise and review pages. Teachers are too often forced to create their own worksheets to fill in these gaps. For this reason amongst others, I created a phonics series that focuses solely on reading and writing with an abundance of exercise and review pages. I also made sure to include simple explanations, step-by-step exercises, rigorous practice pages where I could track student progress, and lots of coloring opportunities. You can learn more about this series here.

CVC Worksheets Kinney Brothers Publishing

I will finish this post by quoting from Sight Words: What, When, & How:

“As you move from ABCs through emergent reader activities, you’ll want to have reading goals in place. As a teacher, it is important to be able to recognize when a student has a command of the sounds of the alphabet, achieves the concept of word, is displaying rudimentary reading ability, and finally, capable of decoding and deriving meaning from connected text. These concepts must be developed in this order and practiced to achieve reading fluency. The habits that you build into the children’s learning activities will help them to acquire new words more quickly, build on their knowledge base to infer meaning, and progress more confidently in their studies.”

Teaching kids CVC words sets the stage for future reading comprehension and language acquisition. As you move kids from relying solely on their ears and memory to reading and writing, be prepared with a variety of tools to make learning enjoyable, engaging, and productive.

If there are activities that you use in class that are not listed here, help a teacher out and leave a comment!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

kinneybrothers.com

Sight Words: What, When, and How

What are Sight Words?

Whether you call them sight words, popcorn words or high frequency words, they are, by definition, “commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole or by ‘sight,’ so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode.” ^[1]

The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists claims that the first 25 most frequent words make up about one-third of all printed material in English, and that the first 100 make up about one-half of all written material. Let that thought sink in. 50%! The obvious advantage of learning sight words is that it can have a powerful impact on student’s reading fluency.

‘Sight Word’ is a bit of a misnomer because it implies that a word is learned simply by seeing it in its complete form. For this reason, flashcards are the most common way teachers will try to ‘drill’ the recognition of given words simply by repetition. If students are developmentally not ready in their spoken or orthographic skills, no matter how hard you may try, the words will not stick in their brains.

One problem with sight words is that many, though not all, lack dependable letter–sound correspondences (of = /uv/ and is = /iz/). Most words are more regular than not, especially in the consonant features. For example, the high-frequency word said is 50 percent regular; what would otherwise be a dependable ai digraph is irregular compared to the pronunciation of words like tail or paint. Nonetheless, it’s important teachers address these irregularities with students rather than avoiding them or assuming that students will eventually ‘pick up’ the differences.

In addition, high frequency words can be abstract, difficult if not impossible to represent using pictures, and especially difficult to understand where meaning may have an inferred understanding through context (something a second language learner doesn’t have the advantage of in early language development.) It can be very elusive to create a clear mental model of words like have and get, both of which can cross several different word choices in a language learner’s native language. Just as complicated is a word like was which refers to a past existential state of being. I remember trying to explain to students that “I win a prize” infers that if I win a game, I will get a prize, whereas, in Japanese, it is akin to saying “I prized a game.”

This is why students of English need to be exposed to the patterns of speech and inferred meaning of sight words early on in oral exercises, chants, and songs. Inevitably, as you move children from decoding individual words to decoding language in connected text, sight words should be a regular part of your ESL program.

Two popular sight word lists you might want to check out are Dolch’s Sight Words (by frequency) and Fry’s Sight Words (by grade level). Both of these lists are offered for free on sightwords.com.

When to Teach Sight Words

If you are teaching ESL students with the eventual goal of reading (and you should be), you need to begin thinking about sight words long before students encounter them in writing exercises. Building a vocabulary base that includes high frequency words that is not exclusive to nouns and verbs, contributes to a sense of word and meaning in context. Vocal chants and early Q&A exercises should include sight words in anticipation that these words will be encountered again in written text. Reading story books in class is also important for showing children how you read in English and, where possible, should include picture prompts and word cues so children can participate in the reading of the story.

Before teaching children sight words orthographically, it is necessary that children have a solid foundation of the ABCs, phonemes and understand concepts of word. From there, learning sentence structure and decoding meaning in context should be taught in that order.

In other words, you can’t teach kids the concept of word without first teaching the ABCs. Trying to use flash cards to teach sight words, like visual designs, out of context and with no relationship to connected meaning, will NOT make the words stick nor will they transfer to automatic written understanding. Likewise, expecting a child to write and rewrite a sentence when they can’t yet decode the individual words is not going to eventually impart meaning.

When students understand the ABCs and their associated sounds, can combine those sounds into a concept of word, and are capable of understanding sentence constructs, THAT is the time to begin teaching and exercising sight words. The good news is that many children learn these concepts in their own language at a very young age and have the ability to transfer that understanding to a new language and a new set of rules.

How to Teach Sight Words

There are many ways to strengthen your students’ knowledge and recognition of sight words in text and out of text.

How do you begin to teach sight words? Again, start early by reading to your classes, and importantly, showing kids how you are reading. By simply pointing to each word as you read, you’re teaching them much more than just the words associated to colorful illustrations. You’re also teaching them about print concepts, moving from left to right, top to bottom, and the return sweep. All of these concepts can operate very differently in a child’s native written language.

Anticipating future exercises by building a targeted vocabulary and sentence pattern base is helpful when it comes time to introduce students to orthographic exercises. You will rely on that knowledge base to help them transition to written text and a speech-to-print match.

Keep in mind that eventually you’re going to be taking students beyond decoding words and into the realm of decoding sentences. The reading goals you set for your students should begin long before they start reading and writing.

If you have been teaching phonics and simple CVC words and your kids are ready to start using those words in easy sentences, you’re ready to begin teaching easy sight words. Along with your regular phonics exercises, start throwing sight words into the mix! If you want more ideas for working with flash cards, check out my 41 Flash Card Activities post or download the pdf from the Kinney Brothers Publishing Web site.

Writing Phrases and Patterning Mentor Texts

Children can write phrases that include high frequency words that build off patterned mentor (sample) texts. With ESL students, offering prompts and spelling can help children build sentences and understand the importance of the sight words in their placement amongst already learned words from their phonics lessons.

Matching

Using flash cards, line up a sentence and have students read the sentence until they are familiar with the order and meaning. Then cover up the sight words or pull them out and have students replace or match the words of the original sentence. This same activity works well as a worksheet with cutting and pasting to replace the missing words.

Matching is also an excellent way to reinforce learned words in out-of-text activities. The pages below, including Bingo, when reduced to their most basic skill, are simply matching activities. But, don’t tell the kids this! They think they’re playing a game or doing a puzzle! When you combine sight word matching with writing, coloring, counting, spinners, dice, random choice, and memory skills, you have activities that will engage and entertain students on a variety of levels.

Highlighting

In this example of an in-text exercise, students use a marker to highlight sight words. Like the sample at the beginning of this post, you can hand out highlighters, choose any random text, and have students highlight the words being learned. This is also a great cool down exercise for the whole class or activity for early finishers!

Pick Up

Pick Up is a super simple activity that keeps students engaged. Ask students to pick up all the words that begin with a particular consonant, vowel, or capital letter. Or have students listen to a spoken sentence and line up the words in order. Sentence Fishing is simply a pick-up type game and kids can’t get enough of it! Remember, when errors are made, it’s a rich opportunity to lead children to helpful conversations so they can articulate why a word doesn’t fit.

Sorting

Another out-of-text activity for developing sight words is sorting. Have children sort their word cards based on letters, sounds, or key words. Guide students in reflecting on what’s the same and what’s different. Grouping words with their beginning letters and then putting them in alphabetical order is another sorting plus ordering activity that will serve future dictionary work! Remember, always think ahead!

Flash Cards

Making sentences is a great way to get kids to review and use learned words to make more orthographic connections. Here, using flash cards not as a means to drill, but a way of exploring new connections gives students a creative way to build on lessons learned. Challenge your kids to see who can make the most surprising sentences!

Kinney Brothers Publishing

Word Games

Word games are a fun way to reinforce sight words and can include I Have/Who Has activities, word search and crossword puzzles, and many board game type games. Introducing and playing these kinds of games in class is important. Students may be playing these kinds of games in their own language, but the only opportunity to do so in English may be in your classroom.

Sight words promote confidence. Because the first 100 sight words represent over 50% of English text, a child who has mastered the list of sight words can already recognize at least part of a sentence. Sight words provide clues to the context and promote reading comprehension.

As you move from ABCs through emergent reader activities, you’ll want to have reading goals in place. As a teacher, it is important to be able to recognize when a student has a command of the sounds of the alphabet, achieves the concept of word, is displaying rudimentary reading ability, and finally, capable of decoding and deriving meaning from connected text. These concepts must be developed in this order to achieve reading fluency. You won’t get there without teaching sight words. The habits that you build into the children’s learning activities will help them to acquire new words more quickly, build on their knowledge base to infer meaning, and progress more confidently in their studies.

If you are interested in more of the same kinds of exercises illustrated in this post, check out my Easy Sight Words worksheets for ESL students. If there are activities that you use in class that are not listed here, help a teacher out and leave a comment!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

[1] Ravitch, Diane. (2007). EdSpeak : A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, ISBN 1416605754.

A Game with Legs

I have… Who has…

‘Reading, speaking, and listening’ is the triadic core of this all-in-one activity – and I wish I’d known about it sooner.

I Have – Who Has activities are very simple, easy to set up, can be played with just about any age or grade level, and importantly, can be played again and again as students progress. They’re perfect for centers or a whole class exercise, as a warm up and a cool down activity. The topic is interchangeable and, what I’d like to show you in this post, can be extended to get even more out of the game.

I use this activity not only for lessons learned from my textbooks (see my last post), but also extra vocabulary that can only be practiced through games and activities – like flags, sports, or clothing. If you use another textbook series or want to create games with your own vocabulary ideas, I’ve provided a blank game template at the end of this post to get you started.

Basics

Here are two very simple I Have – Who Has sets I created to get my youngest students started playing. They’re both free to download from my ESL store. I have 20+ sets available with a variety of vocabulary banks. I hope I can convince you to check them out and start playing in your own students!

Again, I Have – Who Has activities are very easy to set up and play. Once students understand the concept, you’ll never have to explain it again. Simply deal the cards out to however many are playing and have them arrange the cards face up on the table in front of them. Players must be able to see all of their cards. Then step back. It’s their game.

All of my game sets have designated “Begin” and “End” cards. The player with the “Begin” card reads their card first by asking the question, “Who has…?” Whoever has the next card reads their card by stating, “I have…” and asking in turn, “Who has…?” After reading a card aloud, the card is finished and turned over. When the player with the “End” card reads their card, the game is finished.

Many of the game sets in my collection also have differentiated versions depending on the vocabulary bank. For example, Clock I Have Who Has has separate games for the time elements students have learned: hours, half-hours, quarter-hours, etc. Verb I Have Who Has has three sets; one with phrasal verbs. The ABC and Phonics cards have letters and phonetic associations so you can play different games each time and challenge kids with prompts. Click on the images below to learn more about each set and download previews.

Language Variations

You can see how the game can be adapted for a lot of Q&A practice. With the goal of getting students to use language they normally wouldn’t use in a classroom setting, you can set the sentence patterns and change them each time the game is played.

For example, with the Community Places set, determine the language used with these kinds of sentences:

I have airport. Who has restaurant?
I’m at the barbershop. Who is at the fire station?
I’m going to the dentist. Who is going to the hospital?
I want to go to the station. Who wants to go to the bank?
I went to the beauty salon. Who went to the pool?

With Food I Have – Who Has, try this kind of language:

I have salad. Who has soup?
I like apples. Who likes broccoli?
I am eating pasta. Who is having juice?
I want potato chips. Who wants cake?

With Flags I Have – Who Has there are a number of language patterns that can be used:

I have Taiwan. Who has Italy?
I am in Mexico. Who is in Brazil?
I went to Korea. Who went to Indonesia?
I’m going to go to China. Who is going to go to Canada?

Extend the Exercise

Now, here are some ways to make the game walk across the room!

For additional language practice, and to get the kids familiar with their cards before playing, take the opportunity to do a Q&A with each student. For example, if the game set is using verbs, ask the students questions like, “What are you doing?” or “What did you do yesterday?” As each card has two verbs, students can work in small groups or do a round-robin type Q&A.
Up the ante on the game by setting a timer and having kids try to ‘beat the clock.’ Post a chart on the wall with group names and challenge classes against each other.
In a usual game, a player directs their question to the whole class. This keeps everyone on their toes and listening. Try having students move amongst each other asking individually, “Do you have…” When they find their card partner, they stick together by linking arms or holding hands. Eventually, the entire class becomes one connected line reflecting the order of the game.
Have students sit in a circle. The player with the “Begin” card asks the person next to them, “Do you have…” If not, the player answers, “No, I don’t.” and asks the same question to the person sitting next to them in a Q&A chain until the person with that card says, “Yes, I do.” and starts a new question cycle. Once a person reads their card, they drop out of the circle until only one player is left. I recommend holding the “End” card so students don’t know when the game will end.
Have students arrange the cards in a dominoes fashion on a desktop. This will work with any set of the I Have – Who Has cards.
Set the cards up like a ‘Concentration’ or ‘Pairs’ activity with the cards facing down and the Begin card facing up. The next card has to be the “Who Has…” aspect from the Begin card. Leave the matched cards face up on the table or lined up outside of the playing area. You can also play by finding random pairs. This really gets the kids thinking forward and backward as they try to find the matching cards.
Before sending your kids home, distribute the cards and have the kids line up in the order of the game. Basically, they’ll have to play the game again to negotiate their place in line. Once lined up, collect the cards and send the kids home! This is so much more productive and entertaining than fifteen kids rushing the door to be first in line!

You can see that these kinds of exercises will work well for any grade level or language ability, from kindergarten through adults. Please help me add to this list by letting me know how you play in class!

As any ESL teacher knows, the value of a game is only as good as the language that can be practiced. I Have – Who Has activities, though not a game that ends with a winner or loser, has the potential to involve students with all the components of learning a foreign language: reading, speaking, and listening.

If you want to get started making your own I Have/Who Has activities, I’ve created a pdf template to get you started. It’s free!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

Planning ahead… 2

In the last post, I talked about Stories For Young Readers from Kinney Brothers Publishing and how to purchase the series for your classes. In this post, I’ll focus on our Phonics & Spelling series. I’ll provide links for purchasing and recommended support materials for each text to help you plan for new classes in the spring.

The Phonics & Spelling series, published by Independent Publishers International (I.P.I.), is available with a special discount through David Paul’s ETJ Book Service. The five-book series is designed to teach kids the fundamental sounds and spelling of English in a multi-year, step-by-step ESL program. For many teachers, a solid phonics program is the cornerstone of their pre-K thru elementary classes. Focused phonics lessons and phonemic awareness improve pronunciation, listening comprehension, and give students the confidence to read and understand English.

You’ll find an abundance of support materials for this series in our online store, Donald’s English Classroom. Visit for downloadable flash cards, charts, games, and activities.

A to Z is the first step to introducing very young ESL students to the ABCs and phonics. If your kids are just learning to hold a pencil, this is the perfect primer. Children love coloring the large images and build dexterity writing the upper and lower-case letters. Included are easy dot-to-dot coloring pages, mazes, and matching exercises. Check out the preview to learn more.

Flash Card Set – ABC Flash Card Set – Phonics Bingo – ABC & Phonics I Have/Who Has – ABC Bingo Animals – Sea Fishing

ABC & Phonics, Book 1 lays the groundwork for phonetic based learning and focuses on writing and identifying upper and lower case ABCs. With basic writing, matching, and ordering exercises, teachers can readily assess student progress. The alphabet is broken down into four sections, a-f, g-l, m-r and s-z with review for each section. Click here for support materials that include flashcards, charts, games, and activities that make learning the ABCs fun! You can download a preview for this textbook here.

Flash Card Set – ABC Flash Card Set – ABC Bingo – ABC Fishing – Alphabet Charts – Exit Tickets

Phonics & Spelling, Book 2 begins with a review of the ABCs and sets students on their first exercises in sounding out, reading, and writing three-letter (CVC) words. Learned vocabulary is then set into easy sentences to teach students fundamental sentence constructs and meaning. Step by step, students also learn how to read and write a simple self-introduction. The exercises progress in an easy-to-teach, easy-to-comprehend approach adaptable to any program. Included are review pages, puzzles, games, and reading exercises that students find challenging and fun! Be sure to check out the preview here!

Flash Card Set – CVC Word Charts – CVC Word Puzzles – CVC I Have/Who Has – Swimming with Sharks – CVC Write Around the Room

Phonics & Spelling, Book 3 takes students further in building English reading and writing skills. Book 3 begins with a review of CVC words and then takes students to the next challenge of reading, writing, and spelling silent ‘e’ (CVCe) words, words with ea-ee-ey spelling, as well as th, sh, and ch digraphs. Exercise pages also include practice with numbers, plurals, more extended reading practice, and basic question forms using do and can. Check out the preview here!

Flash Card Set – CVCe Word Charts – CVCe I Have/Who Has – Silent e Bingo – Phonics Activity Set – ESL Pronunciation Practice

Phonics & Spelling, Book 4 completes the phonics series with almost two hundred packed pages of phonics lessons, reading and writing practice, puzzles, spelling tests, and Q&A drills. Exercises include consonant blends, digraphs, dipthongs and practice with silent k, g, and ion. The phonics lessons in this textbook create a solid foundation that supports students in their future English language learning. Download a preview here.

Flash Card Set – Dipthong & Digraph Charts – Task Cards – 320 Word Flash Card Set – Clock Bingo – Community Places

If you’d like to learn more about all Kinney Brothers Publishing has to offer, please download our catalogues! Peruse the complete lineup of our Global Edition ESL Textbooks or check out our ESL Store right from your desktop! Sign up for our newsletter and download a free CVC I Have/Who Has Activity Set!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at info@kinneybrothers.com.

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

kinneybrothers.com

Planning ahead…

With the school year in Japan wrapping up soon and teachers planning for new spring classes, I’ve been getting inquiries about the best way to purchase Kinney Brothers Publishing textbooks and downloadable resources. In this post, I’ll provide links and recommended support materials for the Stories For Young Readers series to help you schedule the year ahead. In the next post, I’ll focus on the Phonics & Spelling series for teachers looking for preschool through elementary education materials.

The Stories For Young Readers series, published by Independent Publishers International (I.P.I.), is available with a special discount through David Paul’s ETJ Book Service. The series includes questions, grammatical explanations, exercises, and puzzles for beginning students. The books are designed to extend students’ skills and interest in communicating in English. Teachers can utilize the stories and exercises for listening comprehension, reading, writing, and conversation. Book 1 focuses on present simple and present continuous reading exercises. Book 2 takes students further with simple past, past continuous and simple future tenses.

Check out the previews or download the first readings from Book 1 and Book 2 for free! They include audio files, answer keys and dialogues!

You’ll find an abundance of support materials for this series in our online store, Donald’s English Classroom. Visit for downloadable flash cards, charts, games, textbooks, answer keys, and audio files.

You might also be interested in Dialogues for Young Speakers – a series of dialogues and surveys designed to extend students’ conversation skills. Following Stories for Young Readers, the dialogues progress from present simple to present continuous in Book 1, and simple past, past continuous, and future tenses in Book 2. Not only will teachers find a wealth of material that will get students up and talking, the dialogues also prove that students can effectively communicate with even a limited vocabulary. You can download these textbooks online, order directly from the Kinney Brothers Publishing web site, or order on Amazon.co.jp. Download previews for Book 1 and Book 2 here!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at info@kinneybrothers.com.

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

kinneybrothers.com

TpT Sale Starts Tomorrow!

Get Ready!

Leave Feedback! – If you have previously purchased items on TpT, leave feedback and build credit you can then use during the sale!

Stock Up Your Wishlist! – Browse now and add items you want to your wishlist. When the sale starts, your wishlist will help you checkout quickly!

Celebrate! – Getting 25% off doesn’t come around often – and that includes EVERYTHING in my store! These are the absolute lowest prices you’ll find on ALL products in Donald’s English Classroom, including bundles!

Happy Valentines Day!

Teaching Adults

Though Kinney Brothers Publishing is best known for its Phonics & Spelling and Stories For Young Readers series, we also have teaching material for adults! Like all of our textbooks, our Trends: Business and Culture Reports series was created out of a need for classroom resources that, in this case, would spark the varied interests of adult language learners.

The first time I lived in Japan…

The first time I lived in Japan in the early 1980s, my classes were almost exclusively adults. I had a couple private junior high school classes that were a lot of fun, but for the most part, I and most teachers I knew while living in the gaijin house in Takadanobaba, all taught adults. The kids’ market just wasn’t there yet for many ex-pats living in Japan.

When I returned to Japan in the mid ’90s with my brothers in tow, a lot had changed. For one, every school I worked at came with a roster of children’s classes. These classes had become the new bread and butter for many private schools. Though I had taught children’s theatre in the U.S., I wasn’t so sure about teaching kids in language courses. Within a short period of time though, I found my niche and gave up teaching adults altogether.

My brothers went in the opposite direction. Robert focused on university curricula at Saidai University and the language demands of those clerking for the Japanese government at the National Diet. Michael moved between adult classes in private schools and an intensive language program for young adults preparing to study abroad. For these classes, topical lessons that promoted critical thinking and a more nuanced response in conversation were the lessons du jour.

Catering to the interests of his students…

Catering to the interests of his students, Robert put together a series of readings and exercises specifically geared toward adult intermediate and advanced students. These exercises became our Trends: Business and Culture Reports, Books 1 & 2. Each topic has a 1-2 paragraph reading with comprehension questions, rigorous language drills, and roleplay or business-oriented activities.

Below are a few examples from the Trends series. Three are free. As these readings are intended for adults, we had more room to broach culturally delicate, complex or dangerous topics. You can download individual lessons or the full textbooks by clicking on the images below. This series is also available as printed books from my Web site.

I’d love to hear how your students respond to these lessons! Please let me know in the comment section below!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

Free Digital Files

Free and Ready!

Not sure how to get started in Google Classroom? Here are four free files you can download now and try out in your new virtual classroom! Play games, work with flash cards, or assign work from our digital textbooks!

Click on these links to learn more about Google Classroom, watch an introductory video or read this FAQ. Anyone with a gmail account can sign up for free!

Donald’s English Classroom has lots of digital files to get you started! Check out our popular Bingo Games and Flash Cards. We also have the complete Stories For Young Readers series, Book 1 and Book 2 available. Download individually or get the discounted Bundles.

Download the files below for free! Be sure to comment and let us know how you used these files in class!

Happy Halloween!

Looking for some Halloween activities? Look no further! We’ve got two awesome activities you and your kids are sure to enjoy! Halloween Bingo is a classic that’s easy to set up and easy to play! Halloween House is a craft activity that you’ll want to keep around all year! With ghosts and goblins in every room, just print and fold! Click on the images below to learn more!

Wishing you and yours a very safe and happy Halloween!

Games on Google Slides

Google Slides is an excellent way to test the waters in your new Google Classroom! You can download two free ABC Bingo game sets and start playing today! Truly no prep fun! If you don’t have a set of ABC flash cards, just print out the included Draw Cards and you’re good to go!

If you’re looking for more digital fun, check out all the digital games Donald’s English Classroom has to offer!