Target group
Young learners
Greetings
Good-morning everyone. How are you? Have the class stand up to do the greeting.
Warm-up
Ask the students, "Do you want to sing a song?" Usually, they'll nod a yes, and some students will jump up and down. Sing a song. If your students don't know a song, spend a few minutes teaching them an easy song such as 'Row, row, row your boat' or do a chant like the 'Teddy bear Teddy bear turn around'.
After the warm-up, sit the students down. Introduce the target language, numbers from 1 to 12, using flashcards. Place the number flashcards on the board. Have the students repeat the numbers while counting up to 12. Point to the flashcard and say one. Have the students repeat after you. Repeat a few times. Flashcards can be purchased at most bookstores but you can easily make your own, something which I have done.
Model the dialogue with a puppet or your helper. I use a Panda puppet to help me do this. The kids love it. I take Panda out of my special bag. I say "Hello Panda" and then introduce him to the class. I ask Panda "How many?" while pointing to a flashcard. Panda looks at the flashcard for example flashcard number one, counts the number of items on the card and says, "One". I say, "Yes, it's one. Very good." I have Panda count the number of items on each flashcard before giving me the answer. Have Panda give the wrong answer a few of times and get the students to tell Panda the correct answer. The students love to shout out the correct answer.
Divide the class into 2 groups. One group asks the question "How many?" and the other group answers depending on the flashcard, which is shown to them. Run between the two groups. Better still, if you have a helper or if the homeroom teacher is present, ask them to help you with the activity. Alternate the dialogue between the two groups a few times until they get the hang of it.
Activities
Sit the students in a circle. You are holding a ball and say one. You pass the ball to the student sitting beside you who says 2. Then that student passes the ball to the next student who says 3 and so on until you reach 12 and then repeat again starting from one. Move with the passing ball to help and encourage the students along.
Hold up a ball and say "How many?" and then hold up a flashcard and point to it and say "One". Demo with several students. Give the ball to one student and a numbers flashcard to another student. Have them stand up. Get them to practice the dialogue. Do this several times with several different students until the class gets a feel as to what they are suppose to do. If the students are very timid or shy, have two students stand up for each part and do the respective dialogue. Two students say, "How many?" and the other two students say, "One". Start the music and get the students to pass the ball and flashcard around the circle, both objects going in opposite directions. Stop the music. The two students holding the ball and the flashcard stand up and do the dialogue.
Matching the flashcards game. You will need two sets of flashcards to play. Divide the class into two teams, A and B. Shuffle the number flashcards and spread them on the floor, the numbers side face down. Demo the game. Randomly pick two flashcards and show them to the students. If there's a match, the team keeps the matched cards and scores a point for the team. If there's no match, they are placed down again. The team with the most points wins. Each team takes turns playing. Have one student from each team play rock, paper, scizzors to see which team starts off the game.
If I there's a Chinese or Japanese teacher in the class, you can play the "How many?" game. Divide the class into two equal groups, A and B. If there's one team with an extra member, have one student play twice. Line up the two teams in two straight lines. Demo the game with a few students. Have one student from each team advance to the front. Team A student goes to Team A teacher and Team B student goes to Team B teacher. Each student is asked the question "How many?" while being shown a flashcard. The respective student responds. They then go to the end of the line and the next students advance. Start the game by shouting out go. The first team to finish answering wins. As a reward, the winning team gets a round of applause.
Another fun activity is playing "Follow the leader". You call out an action and then do it, for example, jump 2 times, clap 3 times, kick 4 times, hop 5 times, turn around 6 times, stomp 7 times. The students copy the action and count the times they do the action. Although this activity is very tiring, it's a lot of fun.
Wrap up
To wrap up the class, have the students do a connect the dot activity. Pass out activity sheets, and offer pencils to students who don't have one. Place the activity sheet on the board. Demo the activity. Have the students watch you connect the numbers dots from 1 to 2 with a line. Get them to do the same. Have them watch you connect the dots from 2 to 3 and get them do the same. Many students catch on quickly and are able to connect the remaining numbers dots on their own without any further instruction. This is a good opportunity to move around the classroom to monitor their progress and help out the slower students with the activity.
If there's time remaining, teach them a new song or sing again the song you did in the warm-up.
I end the class with a good-bye and say, "That's all for today. See you next time."