Using ‘Realia’ to Learn English for Children

“Realia” is frequently used in an English classroom throughout the world and most of teachers have applied this technique for their students. Many studies showed that the use of ‘realia’ in English classroom or to learn English is very effective. When I joined online course, it discussed about the use and the advantage of ‘realia’ in English learning. It is very effective and useful to teach vocabularies since this technique can give a real and memorable experience to the students, particularly for children. They can hold, touch, smell, even taste the real object while memorizing the vocabularies. This technique lets the students to have real experience in learning English vocabulary and engages to the classroom activities as well.

Yesterday, I also applied the use of ‘realia’ in my English classroom for children. They are about seven to eight years old with their own unique characteristics. For couple of weeks before, I have tried some techniques and methods to solve problems occurred in my classroom. The children in this class cannot recognize pictures well, so I think flashcards are not suitable for them considering their background knowledge. Besides that, noisy class and unnecessary talks might be reduced by using drilling activities of ‘realia’. Well, this is my class of English for children!

The goal of the lesson was to introduce things we can find in the kitchen. The classroom consisted of 10 children. Teacher prepared plastic spoon, fork, plate, and glass. Before the lesson teacher drew a house on the white board and its four parts (living room, bed room, bath room, and kitchen). Teacher delivered some questions, such as, What is it? Is this your house? What parts of house is it? Then I showed them four picture flashcards of those rooms. But, today the children only focused on things in the kitchen.

The first drilling activity was pronunciation practice of single word. Teacher showed four real objects of things in the kitchen, they were spoon, fork, plate, and glass that the children are familiar with. Children sat in a circle and repeated the teacher model how to pronounce them, then, the first child was given a ‘realia’ (spoon or others). She/he gave the object to the next child by saying ‘spoon’, the second child repeated and gave it to the third child, and so it was going on until the last child and all real objects have been practiced.

The next round was pronunciation practice of simple sentence, like ‘it is a spoon’. The same as the first activity, children took in turn repeating the simple sentence in a circle. They were enjoying this activity, because they could see and touch the real objects to be learnt in English. It was also easy to memorize. At last, they drew and colored the four objects in a simple way on their book and they practiced the right spelling of each object by writing the names under the pictures.

Based on the teaching experience above, teacher thinks that the children enjoy the activities because they study English in real world rather than using pictures. Sometimes, the children do not recognize what the picture it is since it is different from they usually find at home. Besides that, teacher can have full of their attention in these activities and noisy classroom or unnecessary talks or movements can be minimized as well. Next, I would like to use ‘realia’ in a different activity to drill another topic/vocabulary.