Busy Beavers Teaching Philosophy
By Busy Beavers
Busy Beavers Teaching Philosophy
The Busy Beavers teaching method is founded on several key principles.
Songs, images, questions, answers, sentence structure, repetition and review are the fundamental elements of our teaching method.
This article discusses how these elements come together in the Busy Beavers material.
Let's begin by looking at the basic elements used throughout the Busy Beavers series.
Songs - Music is used as a memory tool to help students remember common phrases. The melody acts as the glue that holds the sentence structure together.
Images – Busy Beavers is a "picture-based" learning method. Students discuss the images they see in full sentences before seeing any written words on a page.
Questions and Answers – Asking and answering questions in full sentences is the basis of every lesson.
Sentence Structure – Why let them only say "Hat" when they can say "It's a Hat"? Why let them only say "Black" when they can say "The hat is black"? Students build grammar skills automatically by always speaking in sentences.
Repetition - These exercises are repetitious for a reason - to build good habits. There is no easy solution to learning. Practice and repetition are the only ways to improve.
Review - We suggest 2 steps forward and one step back throughout the material. It will boost the students' morale and ensure that they are retaining what they are learning. Watch how these videos illustrate all of the points above:
The Alphabet Song below combines images with melody and repetition.
The accompanying lesson Alphabet Words combines the images and words that we've learned in The Alphabet Song with questions and answers in full sentences.
Likewise The House Song uses a catchy melody to help learners remember the sentence structure of the question "Where's..." and "He's / She's in the..." It teaches both vocabulary and grammar at the same time - and it's fun!
This lesson Everyday Activities builds on the line of questioning "Where is he/she?" "What is he/she doing?" as learned in The House Song, but expands on it with many new examples to help build vocabulary.
By learning English in this way students will learn to form sentences and communicate rather than simply memorize vocabulary. The Busy Beavers method is the opposite of simply reading words from a page. It is about being able to speak perfect questions and answers based on the images on the screen.
You may be thinking "How does a teacher combine all of these elements into every lesson?" That is where the Busy Beavers "5 Component Teaching Method" comes in. Read the next article here to learn more about it.
By Busy Beavers
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July 18th, 2011
