Teaching Tips for Teachers
Work smarter, not harder
We know that teachers lead busy lives. Therefore, we have created a ready-to-use package of books and accompanying educational resources for you. All you need to do is pick one of our seven Brown Owl books, decide how long you want to spend on it, choose your activities and plan your lessons accordingly. Our finished package enables you to create engaging English lessons and reduce the time you spend on lesson planning and resource hunting. To help you understand our approach and methodology, we have created some video tutorials.
Let’s take a closer look!
This is what teachers have said about Read and Rhyme with Brown Owl:
First, we recommend deciding if the book is going to be the main topic of your lessons or if it is supporting a topic. For example, have your pupils been learning about bees in their mother tongue and you would like them to hear the corresponding vocabulary in English? This would be a good opportunity to read ‘Brown Owl and the Bee Hive’. Or have you been working on zoo animals and want your pupils to hear the animals in a new context? In this instance, ‘Brown Owl at the Zoo’ would work.
Alternatively, pick one of our stories and plan a set of lessons around it. You can use our flashcards and games to introduce vocabulary from the picture dictionary at the back and then use our activities, craft ideas and worksheets to consolidate and as a final step, independently use the new language.
Working with the picture dictionary:
Talking about the cover & characters:
Follow the story with a craft:
Big versus little book:
There is more to reading a book aloud than meets the eye. We need to engage our listeners and get them to participate and interact with the story.
Nadja, the Brown Owl illustrator has hidden objects in some of the books. You can ask younger children to look out for these, which helps to keep their attention. E.g. Can you spot Mabel Mouse? (Book 3)
Children can make story sticks and hold them up when they hear the words/characters as the story is being told. These can also be used for roleplay.
Furthermore, you can encourage interaction by asking your pupils questions related to the story. Do you like worms on your pizza? (Book 3) Who do you think is going to win the pancake race? (Book 6)
Of course, reading aloud isn’t just the privilege of the teacher. There are many ways to motivate children to read aloud and improve their confidence, fluency and accuracy along the way.
You can see some examples in use in these videos:
How to read "Brown Owl's Birthday Tea" in an English lesson:
How to retell "Brown Owl" with actions:
How to read a book together:
How to play with a picture dictionary:
TIP: If you would like Rachel to come to your school and bring a book to life with a reading and/or workshop, please get in touch.
There’s no way around it. Learning a language entails learning vocabulary. The easiest and most efficient way to pick up vocabulary is by hearing or reading it in context. And that’s why picture books are worth their weight in gold.
Picture books appeal to a variety of senses and learning channels. Children can hear, see and engage with the language. In addition, our books are written in rhyme, which helps children to memorise words and patterns, and it makes learning a new language enjoyable.
Finally, children identify with the topics that our stories cover (animals, friends, family outings, birthdays, holidays, baking etc). This simple, age-appropriate language and lovely full-page illustrations in the books help children assimilate English.
That said, simply hearing new language is not always enough. Our vocabulary games, worksheets and activities help to consolidate it. Here are some examples:
How to play a vocabulary game – Repeat if Correct:
How to teach new vocabulary with flashcard games:
How to practise key words with Bee-Bots:
More ideas with the Bee-Bot mat:
You can find more vocabulary games in our free handbooks, on our Instagram account, in our webshwebshopop or on EdukEdukii.
TIP: Why not recommend our books to parents and encourage them to read English at home?