Word Aliens/Monsters

Well, I'm finally back online after buying a new laptop. My old laptop died and I lost lots of my files and photos, including many shots of art projects :( I'm also devastated because I lost all of my saved bookmarks, many of which were related to new art projects that I'd been meaning to try. Very annoying!

Anyway, today's ESL art project is Word Aliens/Monsters. I did this with my Grade Two class a few weeks ago and they really enjoyed it. It's a very quick and simple lesson, and it uses pretty basic supplies too.

The three aliens above were the samples that I prepared before my class, but the ones that the kids made were waaaaaaaaay more creative. Many of their aliens had multiple legs, bizarre spikes and even wings. The kids really enjoyed the activity and the aliens looked great displayed on the back wall of the classroom. I especially liked the fact that the kids were able to do some spelling and vocabulary revision without even realising that they were doing it :)

For more info, including step by step instructions, click Read more below.

You will need:

• white A4 paper
• pencils and markers
• scissors
• glue
• scraps of coloured paper or cardboard
• pre-made example
• googly eyes (optional)
• word cards (optional)

Step by step instructions

Begin the class by asking the kids "What is an alien?" or "What is a monster?" Get a student who knows to come and draw one on the board. If no one knows, draw a picture yourself.

Next, stick a pre-made Word Alien or Word Monster on the board and say "This is a word alien". If you have time, ask the kids what they can see - How many legs, arms, eyes, etc? Challenge the kids to read the word alien (you may need to rotate it to make this easier)

Allocate a word card and sheet of white paper to each student. Keep a word card for yourself and stick it to the blackboard. If you don't have word cards, just verbally inform each student of the word they need to write or let them choose their own word from particular vocabulary sets (such as clothes, furniture, months of the year, animals, words starting with S, etc)

Draw a large rectangle on the blackboard to represent a piece of paper. Make sure the kids understand this by pointing to it and saying "paper" or hold a piece of paper next to the rectangle and say something like "This is my paper".

Tell the kids to take out their greylead pencil. Write the word from your word card  in the rectangle on the board. You must use cursive writing (all letters joining) and try to make the lettters as large as possible. Go around and check that each student has successfully written the word from their own word card (not yours) on their paper. Don't forget to keep an eye out for spelling errors!

Next, tell the students to take out a marker. Using chalk (preferably in a different colour to the previous step) trace widely around the letters on the board. Don't forget to do the circles inside letters like a, e, and o. Go around and check that students are successfully tracing their own words with their markers.

Take the blackboard eraser and remove the inside word (the pretend greylead pencil) from the board. You should now have only a neat outline of the word. Again, go around and check that the kids have used their erasers to remove the pencil word from their paper.

 Use chalk to colour in the word on the board. Tell the kids to colour their aliens with colour pencils.

 

Next, hold up a piece of scrap coloured paper - on it draw arms, legs, tail, horns, hair or anything else that your alien needs. Take suggestions from the kids. This is great vocab revision. Hand out scraps of paper to the kids and get them to draw body parts for their aliens.

When students have finished, tell them to cut out their aliens and body parts carefully.

Using glue, students attach the body parts to their aliens - make sure that the body parts go behind the white paper. This is a good opportunity to revise in front of and behind!

If available, give each student 1, 2 or 3 googly eyes for their alien. If no googly eyes are available students can draw eyes on the scraps of white paper leftover from their aliens.

If time, get students to come out individually to show their alien to the class - see if the other students can read them.