by Björg Jónsdóttir, Hofsstaðaskóli, Garðabær
Björg is a mentor and supervisor of student teachers, particularly in the area of teaching English to young learners. She has been very active in developing ideas and materials for teaching English to young children and regularly shares her knowledge and experience with students in courses in English teaching methodology at the School of Education.
What is topic based teaching?
When the teacher decides what he wants to teach and chooses the topic he wants to use to teach vocabulary to the students we call that topic based teaching. It might sound complicated but it really is very simple.
Target groups
I have been trying topic based teaching out with children in grades 4-7 and used many topics.
What topics can we use?
It all depends on their knowledge but here are some ideas.
Animals, sports, clothes, body parts, family, colors, seasons, weekdays and months….
pirates, fairy-tales, town, school, jobs, music, hobbies, space….
Where to start:
- When you have decided on a topic start thinking about the procedure.
- What would be a good way to introduce the topic, how do you get the students interested and involved from the start.
- Next collect materials that are connected to the topic and decide how and whether you want to evaluate the students’ learning.
- On the following sheets you can find some examples of my topic procedures.
