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I had an awful day today. I was teaching at my second worst school but worse than that the subject was Months. I hate teaching Months. Its no fun. For anyone, seven new English words in 45 minutes is more than enough but there are 12 months in the year which follow no pattern whatsoever.

When teaching English, my lesson strategy is to bombard them with the words in flashcard form and then play a game from the excellent Genki English site to get the words in their memory. This works fine with seven target words but there`s 12 months and it`s no fun saying, “OK this is January. Can you say January? San Hai (all together now) JANUARY. OK The next one is February. Can you say February….?” 12 times over and over again. They hated it.

When I learnt the months in French when I was 12, we had the amazing “Quelle est la date de ton anniversaire?” song which I can still remember now and I`m sure others who took no further interest in modern languages would still be able to sing it. Unfortunately I don`t feel confident enough to sing songs in front of 30 students and I`m sure they`d not want to sing it either. Anyone know any ideas how to teach the Months in English without songs and still make it interesting?

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