Idioms are fun to teach in a fourth grade class and is one of the most entertaining ways to foster your students’ fluency in the English language.

There is always a lot of excitement when, on a Monday morning, the students are introduced to the idiom of the week with an image. They immediately start imagining what the phrase might mean and start acting out, for example, what having ants in your pants might mean. Idioms are great in the way they add colorful imagery to our students’ imagination and they promote a higher level of thinking, as words and phrases in an idiom represent completely different and mostly abstract ideas.

It is important for us to teach idioms in context in form of a dialogue to help students understand when and where to use them. We expose them to the same idioms in the following days and weeks by creating a context where we can use the target idioms. Fourth grade is an ideal time to teach idioms, as students become familiar with the notion of an idiom in their mother tongue as well. Teaching idioms works because students enjoy this code-breaking game. Teaching idioms works because idioms make sense. 

Yazar Hakkında

Yazarın Adı: Özlem Erdoğan
Unvan: English Teacher
E-Posta: ozlem.erdogan@acischools.k12.tr