Whenever parents or English teachers ask me to recommend a book to help teach children English, I always include Where’s Spot? by Eric Hill on my list. Although it is a small book seemingly written for preschool children, it is a book I love to read and use in class. I have used it successfully for many years to teach children of all ages and it is one of my favorite books to read to my classes.
Where’s Spot? – The story
If you don’t know the book already, Where’s Spot? is the story of a mummy dog who is looking for her puppy because it’s time for supper. She searches for him in different spots around the house where she thinks he might be hiding and meets a variety of animals along the way. Finally she finds Spot and they eat their supper together. Kids love it because it has lots of flaps for them to lift to see if Spot is hiding behind them and there are lots of questions for them to answer. It’s a fun to read, colorful book and I’m positive that the kids in your classes will love it too.
How I use Where’s Spot? in my classes
I use Where’s Spot? as a teaching aid to teach in three main areas:
- animals
- parts of the house and furniture
- prepositions of place
You could probably find other ways to use it too but I think that these are the three main areas where the book would be useful. Use your imagination though and you might be able to find alternative ways. Otherwise, just use it as a fun book to read with your class at the end of a lesson or in a calming down moment.
If you need flashcards, you can find a huge variety of them if you search the internet. Choose a set which is adapted to the theme you are covering or make your own.
Animals
In Where’s Spot?, you will come across eight different animals as well as the two dogs. There is a bear, a snake, a hippo (with bonus bird), a lion, a monkey, a crocodile, penguins and a turtle. So, you probably won’t be using the book for a lesson on pets…. You could use it to introduce the names of the animals. Or as a practice exercise to see if the kids remember the names of the animals if you have already introduced them with another game.
You could also use it as a prompt to talk about different places where animals live. Make a poster or use flashcards with different animal habitats – forest, jungle, river, ice, etc. Ask the class, “Does a bear live in a house?”. Get them to reply, “No. it lives in the forest”. You could do this as a mingle game where the children each have an animal and have to ask each other the question and reply with the correct habitat.
With a class of older children, you could ask them to make their own version of the book where his mum travels around the world to look for him. “Is Spot in the forest?” “No, it’s a bear”. There are really lots of possibilities and different ways to adapt the story if you use your imagination and let your creativity go wild.
Rooms of the House and Furniture
While Spot’s mum is looking for him, she goes through the house looking in and around different pieces of furniture. Again, you could use the book as a prompt to introduce the names of the furniture if you wanted. Alternatively, you could use it to discuss which different rooms the furniture goes in. “Is Spot in the wardrobe?” “No, he’s not, it’s a snake”. “Where is the wardrobe?” “It’s in the bedroom”. Draw a picture of the house on the board and ask the kids to draw the furniture or stick a flashcard in the correct room.
With smaller children, you could also talk about the color of the furniture. What color is the wardrobe? What color is the bed? Ask them to find furniture of the same color in your classroom. Then give them flashcards and ask them to work in pairs and ask each other the questions. After this, they could draw a picture of the house with the different furniture and animals and color it together. They can describe their house and the different colors to the rest of the class.
Prepositions of place
This is perhaps the most useful way of using Where’s Spot? in your classes. It is a perfect illustration of the different prepositions of place and a fun way for the kids to see them. As well as using the prepositions in the book, you could use it as a launching point to teach other prepositions. Use flashcards of Spot or a soft toy and hide it around the room. Now go around with the kids and ask “Is Spot under the rug?” and see if they can find the animal. When they’ve found all of them, split them into two groups and let the first group hide the cards or some toy animals. Once they are all hidden, ask the second group to look for them. If a child finds an animal, he or she has to say where it is. “The dog is under the chair” etc.
Get the kids to make their own Spot book using different prepositions and different places to hide. Or act out the story in class together and pretend to be different animals hiding in different places. If you use your imagination, there are endless possibilities and it’s such a good way to get the kids playing and really speaking English.
Have you used Where’s Spot? in your classes?
I doubt that when Eric Hill was writing this book he was thinking about classes of children learning English all around the world. It is such a good book for English language teaching though and I would really encourage any teachers who are teaching English to children to get a copy of it. I read it to my own children when they were toddlers and I’ve been using since then to teach and it is a favorite in all my classes. You’ll find that even much older kids love the illustrations and the odd animals popping up from behind the flaps.
Do you use Where’s Spot? in your classes? Do you do something different with it? What’s your favorite book to use in your English classes? If you have any brilliant ideas for this book or any other, please do share them in the comments. If you want to see any of my other ideas for teaching, you can find them here. To keep up to date with new posts and teaching ideas, you can follow the GoogooEnglish Facebook page. Otherwise you can sign up for email updates at the bottom of this post.