Learning through play is fundamental to children's intellectual, emotional, social and physical development. And in the case of English, play does something more: it increases the motivation to learn.
In today's lesson we played and answered every question in turn. That format — taking turns — changes the atmosphere of a conversation lesson completely. In an open discussion the same two or three children always speak and the rest hide behind them. When the question comes round to everyone, nobody has anywhere to hide, but nobody feels cornered either: it is everyone's turn, not just yours.
What is more, a mistake inside a game costs far less than a mistake in a marked exercise. The child tries a phrasing, gets it right or not, hears the correct version straight away and moves on. Repeated dozens of times in an hour, that mechanism does more for speaking than any list of rules learned by heart.
And at the end what remains is the thing that matters most at this age: the children spoke English and did not feel they were being tested.
About English courses at PlusKids: https://pluskids.ro/en/courses/cambridge-english