#1368. The Ticket Inspector

Language, level: Pre-School
Posted Wed Oct 27 02:41:09 PDT 1999 by Peter Houry (phouri@yahoo.com).
ECC, Yala, Thailand
Materials Required: 4x4 cm pictures of known vocab items, scissors
Activity Time: 5-10 minutes
Concepts Taught: L2 sound/letter recognition

(I teach Thai pre-schoolers English as a second language and they really seem to get into this simple activity. It wasn't planned, it just sort of evolved. If you want to take it further in any direction please do.)

The children line up their chairs one behind each other or in pairs and sit down. I have a wad of paper slips in my hand with pictures on (at the moment its animals). In turn I give each child a' ticket'. After everyone has one, I go from onechild to the next, saying with theatrical gusto, 'May I see your ticket please?, the child gives me the ticket saying, 'Here you are' and I then 'check' their ticket, ie. I ask them to repeat the name of the picture. I then write the first letter(s) sound on the back of the ticket, snip it half way through with some scissors and hand it back saying, 'Thank you'. After all this everyone gets up and plays a conventional game of choo-choo trains with various instructions issuing from the front, 'stop, go, turn around, crash...' At some point in the future I hope to be able to bow out so that one of the children can play the inspector.