This article is primarily for the teachers who teach English online and here I would like to share my experience of teaching children English using cartoons for teaching English and Padlet. Padlet is like a blackboard/whiteboard that both the teacher and student can access and collaborate on either before, during or after the lesson. I will give you an example of what I did with Padlet when teaching a ten year old boy from Russia.
First, I put myself in the shoes of a 10 year old boy in Russia and asked myself what kind of things he would need to know at this age if he were with British children. Since I only have 7-year old twins, I guessed that Horrid Henry and his life with his family and classmates could be similar. My little learner had studied English for a year and a half with another teacher but I wasn’t really sure if he could speak well or not. He did have the ability but wasn’t very forthcoming with it.
Anyway, I decided to use the Padlet as a platform for working together on the same project and since the boy does swimming twice a week, he should ideally like an episode from Horrid Henry related to swimming lessons.
Normally I can ask my online students to watch the cartoon before and then we can match the scenes from the cartoon on Padlet.
Here is the link to the Padlet with the activity: https://padlet.com/tonemulti/odwzur98bka
