What (food/colour/sport) do you like? I like (noun)

Greetings and Warm-up: Greet the class with a good-morning or good-afternoon depending on the day. Have the class stand up and respond to your greeting and do the warm-up. Ask the students, "Do you want to sing a song?" Usually, they'll nod and begin to twitch and move their bodies. Some will respond with a yes. Songs I teach young learners include the "Eensy Weensy Spider", "Head & Shoulders, Knees & Toes", "The Alphabet Song", "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush," "Ring Around The Rosey", and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat".

After the warm-up, sit the students down. Introduce the new vocabulary using flashcards. Show the flashcard or place them on the blackboard. Point to the flashcard and say pizza. Have the students repeat after you. Do this a few times for all the new vocabulary.

Model the dialogue with a puppet. I use a Panda puppet to help me do this. Place the flashcards on the blackboard. Take Panda out of a special bag. Say "Hello Panda" and then introduce him to the class. Ask Panda "What food do you like?" while pointing to the pizza flashcard. Panda's answers: "I like pizza." Do this for all the flashcards and repeat the question/answer routine a couple of times. Make a mistake or two along the way. Point to the ice cream flashcard. Have Panda say, "I like donuts." then turn to the students, and have them tell Panda the correct answer.

Divide the class into 2 groups. One group asks the question "What food do you like?" And the other group answers, "I like pizza." depending on the flashcard shown. Run between the two groups. Better still, if you have a helper or if the homeroom teacher is present, ask them to help you. Alternate the dialogue between the two groups a few times until they get the hang of the dialogue.

Pass activity: Sit the students in a circle. Hold up a flashcard and say, "I like pizza." Pass it to the student beside you. Have the student say, "I like pizza." Then, the student passes the flashcard to the child next to him/her who says, "I like pizza" who then in turn passes it on to the next child and so forth. Follow the flashcard along encouraging and helping the students to say the target language.

Activity: Sit the students in a circle. Hold up a flashcard (pizza), point to it and say, "I like pizza." Then hold up a ball and say, "What food do you like?" Demo with several students. Give the ball to one student and the flashcard to another student. Have them stand up. Get them to practice the dialogue. Do this several times with several different students until the class gets a feel as to what they are suppose to do. If some of the students are very timid or shy, have two students do each part. So, two students say, "What food do you like?" And the other two students say, "I like pizza." Play the music and get the students to pass the ball and flashcard around the circle which are going in opposite direction of each other. Stop the music. The students holding the ball and the flashcard stand up and do the dialogue.

If I there's a Chinese or Japanese teacher or helper in the class, I'll play the "What food do you like?" game. Divide the class into two equal groups, teams A and B. If there's one team with an extra member, have one student play twice. Line up the two teams in two single straight lines. Demo the game with a few students. Team A students go to Team A teacher and Team B students go to Team B teacher and is asked the question "What food do you like?" while being shown a flashcard. The respective student responds. They then go to the end of the line and the next student advances. When ready, start the game by shouting out go and encourage the students to advance to the front. Show your student a flashcard and ask him/her "What food do you like?" S/he answers, "I like pizza." Have them go to the end of the line and the next student advances. The first team to get through the questions wins. As a reward, the winning team gets a round of applause.

If there's time remaining, teach them a new song or sing again the song you did in the warm-up.

End the class with a good-bye and say, "That's all for today. See you next time."