Teaching English to Kids: A Journey of Fun Learning

Paola
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Education

"Teaching English to Kids: A Journey of Fun Learning" is the podcast that bridges the gap between rigorous methodology and engaging practice. Each episode delves into the core foundations of ELT – from SLA theory and classroom management techniques to curriculum planning and phonics fundamentals – and translates them into practical, game-based learning activities you can use immediately. Discover creative strategies for immersive storytelling, effective song use, and designing lessons that spark curiosity and build genuine confidence in your young learners. Whether you're a seasoned teacher or new to the classroom, join a community of dedicated educators who are transforming language learning. Move beyond the theory and find actionable inspiration to make your classroom more effective and incredibly fun. Subscribe now for your weekly dose of evidence-based strategies and playful teaching inspiration!

  1. 2d ago

    One Lesson, Four Skills: Why Integration Works

    Send us Fan Mail A seven-year-old points at the window and says, "Look! It's a bird! It can fly!" She heard that sentence, said it, read it and wrote it — all in one lesson. After ten episodes taking the four skills apart, we begin the second half of Season 3 by putting them back together. In this episode, you'll discover: The tapestry image: Rebecca Oxford's case for weaving the skills together, and why so much "segregated" teaching is already partly integrated.Why talk carries everything else: Lynne Cameron and Pauline Gibbons on the road from spoken language to text.What the research says and doesn't say: meta-analyses on reading–writing programmes and on repetition in vocabulary learning, a look at multisensory learning (and why it isn't "learning styles"), and an honest note on how few studies compare integrated and segregated teaching directly with children.Four practical strategies: the skill chain, receptive before productive, the same content in four modes, and a theme as the thread.NEW  Lesson Plan Walkthrough: a complete 45-minute integrated lesson, "Who Is in the Garden?", minute by minute.Two ready-to-use activities: Mystery Animal Riddles and Freeze, Say, Find, Write.Next week: one picture book, a whole week of English, from read aloud to retelling to rewriting. 🎧 If you're enjoying the podcast, please take a moment to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Follow Paola on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook @PaolaPandoDiaz. #IntegratedSkills #LessonPlanning #TeachingEnglish #YoungLearners #ESL #EFL #MindfulFacilitator #SLA#kidslearning#childrenlearning#teachers Support the show

  2. Oct 28

    Feedback that grows writers: Correction, Models and Motivation.

    Send us Fan Mail Three red corrections in two sentences. A week later, the same child writes four words, and no mistakes. What did our feedback teach her? This week we close our writing block with the question every teacher asks with a pile of notebooks in front of her: what do I do with all these errors? In this episode, you'll discover: Does correcting written errors work?  from Truscott's famous challenge to two meta-analyses (Kang & Han, 2015; Brown et al., 2023), and why most of that evidence comes from older learners.Corrections vs. model texts , what studies with Spanish EFL children aged 11–12 reveal about the different jobs each one does (Coyle & Roca de Larios; Luquin & García Mayo).Who should give feedback?  the meta-analysis showing that teacher, self- and peer feedback all improve children's writing (Graham, Hebert & Harris, 2015).How to keep children wanting to write , Bruning & Horn's conditions for writing motivation, and an honest look at the praise debate.Five practical strategies: focused feedback, models and reformulation, self-assessment and guided revision, peer feedback, and portfolios and publishing.Three ready-to-use activities: the Two-Minute Star-and-Step Conference, Model Detectives, and the Writers' Gallery.Next week: we begin the second half of Season 3 ... putting the four skills back together, with complete lesson plans. 🎧 If you're enjoying the podcast, please take a moment to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Follow Paola on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook @PaolaPandoDiaz. #TeachingWriting #Feedback #ErrorCorrection #TeachingEnglish #YoungLearners #FormativeAssessment #MindfulFacilitator #SLA#kidslearning#childrenlearning Support the show

  3. Oct 21

    From sentences to stories: Scaffolding children's written texts.

    Send us Fan Mail "The elephant is big. The elephant is grey. The elephant is nice." Every sentence is correct, so why doesn't it read like a text? This week we continue our writing block with the next big step: how children move from writing single sentences to writing stories, descriptions and other texts with a purpose and a shape. In this episode, you'll discover: Why every text has a shape: Genre pedagogy and the Sydney School (Rose & Martin), and why making text shapes explicit is a matter of fairness.Pauline Gibbons' teaching–learning cycle:  Build the field, model the text, write it together, then write alone.What the big meta-analyses say: Reading feeds writing (Graham et al., 2018), and strategy instruction, text structure and goals work, while grammar taught on its own doesn't (Graham et al., 2012).Why writing together works for young EFL learners : New studies with Spanish children aged 11–12 on collaborative writing and dictogloss.Five practical strategies: Mentor texts, joint construction, frames that fade and sentences that grow, the Story Hand as a planner, and collaborative writing.Three ready-to-use activities: Read It, Borrow It, Make It Yours; The Story Hand Planner; and Mini-Dictogloss.Next week: feedback that grows writers – correction, models and motivation. 🎧 If you're enjoying the podcast, please take a moment to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Follow Paola on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook @PaolaPandoDiaz. #TeachingWriting #GenrePedagogy #TeachingEnglish #YoungLearners #Scaffolding #CollaborativeWriting #MindfulFacilitator #SLA Support the show

  4. Oct 14

    From talk to text : What a child's brain has to juggle to write in English.

    Send us Fan Mail He told you a hilarious story about his dog. So why did he write only three flat sentences? This week we reach the fourth and final skill of the season: writing. And we start with what makes it the hardest juggling act in the classroom — and what we can do to lighten the load. In this episode, you'll discover: Why children say more than they write – Hayes & Flower's model, McCutchen's capacity theory, and Bourdin & Fayol's classic experiment on speaking versus writing.The Simple View of Writing – reading's twin – transcription and text generation (Berninger and colleagues), and why oral language is the strongest predictor of young children's writing quality (Kim & Schatschneider).Why tracing isn't writing – what brain imaging shows about handwriting (James & Engelhardt), and what a meta-analysis says about handwriting instruction (Santangelo & Graham).Why English spelling trips up Spanish speakers – predictably – from Fashola and colleagues to a 2023 study of Spanish EFL children, and why explicit teaching closes the gap.Five practical strategies: talk before you write, share the pen, make English spelling visible, celebrate and guide invented spelling, and short, frequent writing that builds automaticity.Three ready-to-use activities: Say It, Count It, Write It; The Class News; and Spelling Detectives.Next week: from sentences to stories – scaffolding children's written texts. 🎧 If you're enjoying the podcast, please take a moment to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Follow Paola on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok @PaolaPandoDiaz. #TeachingWriting #EarlyWriting #TeachingEnglish #YoungLearners #Spelling #BilingualLiteracy #MindfulFacilitator #SLA#kidslearning#EFL#childrenlearning Support the show

  5. Oct 6

    From words to worlds : How children move from reading words to understanding stories.

    Send us Fan Mail She reads every word correctly. So why can't she tell you what happened? Last week we cracked the code. This week we look at what happens after the code: how children move from reading words to building a whole story in their heads, and how to choose texts that make them want to keep reading. In this episode, you'll discover: Why decoding can leave no room for meaning – LaBerge & Samuels' automaticity theory, Perfetti's verbal efficiency theory, and fluency as the bridge to comprehension.Why fluency is not speed – accuracy, automaticity and prosody (Kuhn, Schwanenflugel & Meisinger), and why expressive reading is a window into understanding.The surprising truth about "word callers" – what Meisinger and colleagues found when they tested teachers' nominations.How comprehension really works – Kintsch's situation model, the power of background knowledge, and how many unknown words a page can hold (Hu & Nation, and the 2023 replication).Five practical strategies: assisted and repeated reading, Readers Theatre and phrasing, choosing the right text, retelling and story structure, and growing readers through structured, guided reading volume — from the Fiji book flood to a 2025 meta-analysis.Three ready-to-use activities: Three Reads, Three Purposes; Friday Readers Theatre; and Story Hand Retell with a Book Basket.Next week: the fourth skill of the season... writing. 🎧 If you're enjoying the podcast, please take a moment to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Follow Paola on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook @PaolaPandoDiaz. #ReadingFluency #ReadingComprehension #TeachingEnglish #YoungLearners #ReadersTheatre #ExtensiveReading #MindfulFacilitator #SLA#kidslearning Support the show

  6. Sep 29

    What a child's brain has to do to learn to read in English

    Send us Fan Mail She's a great reader — in Spanish. So why does said come out as "sa-eed"? This week we cross into our third language skill of the season: reading. And we start underneath the classroom, with what a child's brain actually has to build to turn marks on a page into meaning. In this episode, you'll discover: Why no child is born to read – Dehaene's neuronal recycling hypothesis, and the striking evidence that learning to read rewires how the brain processes spoken language too.The two ingredients of reading, and why they multiply – the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer), Scarborough's Reading Rope and Duke & Cartwright's Active View.Why English is one of the hardest alphabets to learn – Seymour and colleagues' comparison of 13 European orthographies, and Ziegler & Goswami's grain size theory.What travels from Spanish to English, and what doesn't – phonological awareness transfers; vocabulary has to be built (Durgunoğlu et al.; Melby-Lervåg & Lervåg).Five practical strategies: building the oral foundation first, growing phonological awareness from big sounds to small, teaching the English code with Spanish as a bridge, orthographic mapping for tricky words, and dialogic reading with cognates.Three ready-to-use activities: Hear It, Say It, See It; Word Family Houses; and Cognate Detectives.🎧 If you're enjoying the podcast, please take a moment to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Follow Paola on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook @PaolaPandoDiaz. #EarlyLiteracy #ScienceOfReading #TeachingEnglish #YoungLearners #Phonics #BilingualReading #MindfulFacilitator #SLA#kidslearning Support the show

  7. Sep 23

    From Words to Conversation – Turn-Taking, Dialogue and Assessing Oral Production

    Send us Fan Mail She can produce a perfect sentence. She just can't have a conversation with it. Last week we found the words and the willingness to speak. This week we build the machine that turns isolated sentences into real, back-and-forth talk. Topics: turn-taking rules almost nobody teaches (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson), linguistic vs. interactional competence, whether children really negotiate meaning (Oliver; García Mayo & Lázaro Ibarrola; Lázaro-Ibarrola & Azpilicueta-Martínez), the trap in the IRF pattern and how to move past it (Sinclair & Coulthard; Gibbons; Alexander), teaching communication strategies so breakdowns become repairs (Nakatani), and Dynamic Assessment for zero-anxiety formative assessment (Poehner & Lantolf). Plus three ready-to-use activities. #TurnTaking #DialogicTeaching #OralProduction #TeachingEnglish #YoungLearners #FormativeAssessment #MindfulFacilitator #SLA Follow me @PaolaPandoDiaz on Linkedin, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook Teacher course and resources at www.educratica.com ESL Young Learner section Support the show

  8. Sep 15

    Speaking Skills: How to build oral fluency through meaningful interaction

    Send us Fan Mail For three weeks we have built the listening foundation. This week, we let them speak. Some children understand everything and say almost nothing. Others repeat everything and freeze when asked a real question. Both raise the same question: how do we get from comprehension to communication? In this episode, you'll discover: Why speaking is the most cognitively demanding of the four skills – Levelt's model of speech production, and why a child who understands your question perfectly can still stand there in silence.The Output Hypothesis (Swain) – how producing language triggers noticing, hypothesis testing and metalinguistic reflection, making speaking a driver of acquisition and not just evidence of it.The Interaction Hypothesis (Long) – why negotiation for meaning needs a genuine information gap, and can never happen in a drill.Willingness to Communicate (MacIntyre et al.) – the research that shows the immediate cause of speech is not proficiency but confidence and affiliation. Building a warm classroom is language work.Four research-backed strategies: input-based tasks before output-based tasks (Ellis); task repetition and the power of three (Sample & Michel) – with an honest caveat from Boers on why the stopwatch should stay in the drawer; teaching chunks rather than only words (Wray; Boers et al.); and engineering willingness to communicate through extended wait time (Rowe).Three ready-to-use activities: Spot the Difference Three Times, the Chunk Bank Challenge, and the Expert Chair.Adaptations from the Silent Period to intermediate fluency – plus a word on pronunciation: aim at intelligibility, never at erasing an accent (Derwing & Munro).If you've been following since Season 1, this is the next step in your journey. If you're new, this is your starting point. Next week, Episode 5: from single utterances to real conversations. 🎧 If you're enjoying the podcast, please take a moment to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Follow Paola on LinkedIn, instagram, TikTok and Facebook @PaolaPandoDiaz. #SpeakingSkills #OralFluency #TeachingEnglish #YoungLearners #TBLT #WillingnessToCommunicate #MindfulFacilitator #SLA Support the show

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About

"Teaching English to Kids: A Journey of Fun Learning" is the podcast that bridges the gap between rigorous methodology and engaging practice. Each episode delves into the core foundations of ELT – from SLA theory and classroom management techniques to curriculum planning and phonics fundamentals – and translates them into practical, game-based learning activities you can use immediately. Discover creative strategies for immersive storytelling, effective song use, and designing lessons that spark curiosity and build genuine confidence in your young learners. Whether you're a seasoned teacher or new to the classroom, join a community of dedicated educators who are transforming language learning. Move beyond the theory and find actionable inspiration to make your classroom more effective and incredibly fun. Subscribe now for your weekly dose of evidence-based strategies and playful teaching inspiration!

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