Vocabulary · Tier 1: everyday words
Daily routine language
Teach the language of the school day as a set of routines: arriving, the register, lining up, lunch, changing for PE. Repeated every day, it quickly becomes students’ first reliable English.
- Bands
- 1 to 2
- Stages
- Early Years, Lower elementary and Upper elementary
- Settings
- Mainstream class and Push-in support
- Prep
- Low prep
How to do it
- List the routines in your day and the key phrases for each.
- Make a visual timetable with a picture and a phrase for each routine.
- Use exactly the same phrases every day.
- Give students speaking roles in routines, such as taking the register or announcing the next activity.
- When the day changes, preview the change with the visual timetable.
In a lesson
Early Years
Each morning the class sings the same tidy-up song, and the teacher says, “Books in the box, chairs under the table.” After two weeks, a new arrival is the one telling her table, “Chairs under the table!”
What commonly goes wrong
- The wording changes each day, so the phrases never become familiar.
- The visual timetable falls out of date.
- New arrivals are kept out of routine roles until their English seems ready.
Adapting it
For a lower band
Pair every phrase with a picture and a gesture.
For a higher band
Ask students to explain a routine to a new arrival in full sentences.