When I was a student at a primary school ,many years ago, two of my dear teachers applied these "innovative" methods:

1) Teacher "A" used to challenge us to read an English text in the most clear rapid way while understanding what is read. With all humbleness, I won over my classmates.

2) Teacher "B" carried out contests. The one agreeing on participation was requested to write a short English essay, ,memorize it, and present it while standing in front of the class in 5 minutes. Any one in the room was allowed to ask a question to the presenter. Of course, I participated and also won.

I work through Teach For India with children whose parents are very low in literacy & cannot support learning at home. One way is reading aloud. Another is asking them to do story telling & creative writing in English. Both are learning boosters.

In Australia there is a pedagogy known as 'Walker Learning' devised for early childhood and Foundation to Year 6. It is practised by perhaps 1000 individual teachers and 100 diverse schools. I am not aware of current numbers. There are three books explaining the theory and pedagogy, which among other extols students interests, inquiry, individuality: their literacy, numeracy. Stockland Road PS in Victoria has developed their school practice over some years on this model. Check out their website. Also Anula PS in Darwin.

Reading practice , clear reading and encourage the students to read

Correction through the student reading should be done

The teachers will applied these "innovative" methods, by adopting Reading practice , and encourage the students to read aloud in the class room.

Thank you all for sharing it seems many suggest reading. Some new ideas or method e.g. Walking Learning. I do agree that Reading is a key to literacy . A little surprise that nobody mentions technology-based innovation? We have that doubt too referring to STEM, but I think they can use the language as a medium in STEM so students can learn the langauge while learning the subject matters too.

'Innovation' in primary schooling can be the initiative of a single teacher, a school, or a system. It depends largely on the prevailing (theoretical?) paradigms of children and learning, and the practicalities of pedagogies permitted by architecture, leadership, finances and potential collaboration within/across (a) student and teacher year group(s). A seemingly trivial example comes from a Year 3 teacher who visited local markets and second hand stores. He bought from his own money a piece of coloured 'gauze', found some pieces of wood and created an overhead frame which he fixed to a 2 person desk, and labelled it 'a quiet space', where 2 students could go to read or plan together a piece of work. He also bought a 2 seater couch to put in the corner to provide further variation of seating and working. Over time, with parent and student interest, the classroom was reinvented to allow for more flexible individual and group student learning, arranged in learning area work stations. When funding allowed for 2-3 computers, even without an interactive white board, they provided further opportunity for more flexible T and L. But he also wanted an underpinning 'philosophy' of pedagogy for his classroom. He opted for one that encouraged student inquiry learning, student interests, individual and group learning, with strong literacy and numeracy. He developed a 'news board' and weekly film to show parents what was happening and how they could support their children. To me, the most powerful aspect of his 'innovation' was his interest in and care of individual children. His key questions (for each child) were: "Who is this child in front of me?" "How does he/she learn? His answer (in each case) was: "I don't know, but I will bend over backwards to find out."

Using technology in reading practice will improve student reading

Individual teachers may adopt the principles of creativity and innovation to enhance their students' English literacy. Both creativity and innovation could be likened to two sides of the same coin - the are not mutually separable. Teachers at the lower primary level need always to bombard their individual students with simple bold pictorial paper books that are labelled for the students to be guided to pain/color and pronouncing them. Another interesting way is for teachers to introduce and constantly make available to students, cartoon stories involving kids and toys on television sets. Students will watch and sing with the toys and discuss the stories they watch on the tv. Third, students often love free-range learning and interaction and as such, teachers need to sometimes walk around their vicinity to talk and discuss things in the environment. After all these, teachers may use the Language Experience Approah (LEA) by writing down individual student's stories and reading back such stories to the students for the to try and retell the stories in their own English Language.   

Research on bilingual education has resulted in several major recommendations for teaching English as a second language by the US department of education (2009):

1. Begin instruction with a formative assessment of reading to determine what students know, what they are ready to learn, and where their problems lie

2. Use small group interventions to target problem areas

3. Target teaching essential vocabulary for the content in the curriculum

4. Directly teach academic English

5. Make wide use of peer-assisted learning, particularly in pairs

"Sheltered instruction" is the latest approach to teaching English as a second language, which involves putting words and concepts in contexts that allow them to become concrete and make practical sense.

Overall, as with so many things, when children’s parents are involved in the schools, children are generally more successful. Three ways in which this can be propagated and built-upon (vis-a-vis a "strengths" model) are:

1. Allocating sources of knowledge in the community for the langauge-users family

2. Creating welcome centers, and instructional spaces where immigrant families in the school can come to trade a variety of expertise, meet others, and trade information

3. Holding student led conferences to get students in on parent-teacher conference interactions (more concrete interaction leads to better language proficiency)

Hope this helps...

Eugene

I found that when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Swaziland, Africa, who had teaching responsibilities in science, maths, and English, that my students preferred to learn English to explain what they learned first by direct experience in the classroom. Teaching a few new English vocabulary words regularly, and using them over and over again throughout the year, was much more successful a teaching strategy rather than presenting them a flood of new English terms and definitions. I am interested to learn from this RG discussion what others have found successful in their teaching practices.

I'm a little surprised that so many answers have included reading but not one has mentioned writing as an important means of acquiring/improving literacy in English. Before we even begin to think about innovative practices, how about the plain old-fashioned one of asking students (at all levels but especially primary school children) to write a small amount every day? Keeping a diary would give students a chance to use English at a personal level, as they describe their interests and activities or reflect on things that have happened to them. English would become part of their daily engagement with life, an empowering (if you will forgive this overused word) instrument rather than an alien object they must grapple with. Also, in my own experience with language acquisition, actively generating material in the target language by writing (in addition to the passive comprehension involved in reading) helps learners to internalize deep-structure patterns more quickly and, ultimately, more thoroughly.

Asian students feel not comfortable to use english if they were not fluent with the language. One of the way to solve is build their confident level through 'morning speak up' that is use everyday the language to communicate about 'pre-session talk'. Teacher have to ensure that students communicate with the language.

the are so many innovation which have been found by Indonesian teachers, start from, strategies, methods, learning medias until learning models. all of that was come from the different problem. the problem they found become a starting point to create kinds of their innovation.

i was an English teacher at primary education, and made alphabetic English game as a learning method. it is a modification of a traditional game that i used to play when i was child.. if you interested to know more about this innovation,, please leave me a message.. and i am going to be happy to share it with you

all the best

As a student and a tutor, i think children are mostly able to learn with games. After talking about the subject, playing a match-up game, tabu, or ludo( i made our own ludo for writer and work matching) will help them to involve in the topic. Also, drama is one of the most effective ones because with the help of this way, children are not only reading or listening the story, but also they are given a chance to participate in the story

It could be story telling, as a children we are always attentive to stories and story telling is effective from ancient time till today. Integrating language concepts in stories with colorful pictures and images and posters could help to engage kids in language learning or in any type of learning.

Above, story telling has been mentioned by many so, it is effective.

Move from roteism instructional practice to critical instructional practice. With critical instruction, students learn to think, read, and write based on the natural science of how the mind learns. For more on critical literacy, visit www.criticalinstruction.com and click "Critical Literacy Basics" in the left-side vertical menu.

It is very important to improve the student readings

Use of pictures, videos, actual objects.

Practice in class to write and speak will also be helpful. To improve pronunciation and sentence delivery, one may try to make videos and show the same to the students to help in improvement .

Using technology in teaching is very important

Story telling , creative writing, and reading are the ways to learn English in developing countries. However, these days concept of smart classes is being developed in all private good schools which makes easy to learn foreign languages like, English, french, Japanese, etc.

Exercise and homework are very helpful

Puppet show carried by teacher or assistance could be taken from anyone, with less expensive dolls and teddy bears, and some other toys; children love to see and engage in puppet show,personal experience!

Lesson plan should included the time for reading and writing practice

What worked for us as pupils, employed by our tutors in the primary level were:

1. Dictation of words

2. Reading of compulsory story books while finding meanings of all key words, their synonyms and antonyms.

3. Weekly essay writing

They really helped many of us to bettter our English writing and speaking skills.

Precision Teaching combined with Direct instruction were demonstrated to be among the most effective strategies to both teach and improve academic skills. Although there's a huge literature on the effectiveness of these procedures, in my country they are virtually unknown, but are very common in the US. Here some references. I hope it can be of any help.

- Binder, C., & Watkins, C. L. (1990). Precision teaching and direct instruction: Measurably superior instructional technology in schools. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 3(4), 74-96.

- Kubina Jr, R. M., Commons, M. L., & Heckard, B. (2009). Using Precision Teaching with Direct Instruction in a Summer School Program. Journal of Direct Instruction, 9(1), 1-12.

- Kubina, R. M., & Yurich, K. K. (2012). Precision teaching book. Lemont, PA: Greatness Achieved Publishing Company.

Motivate the pupils are very important

I would suggest the use of MOVING ALPHABETS but I'm not sure if its is new to you or an innovative one, but it helps little children to increase their level of literacy in English.

using role play

I think the most innovative way to teach and improve english literacy among learners shoukd be approaching language from communicative approach than teaching language rules. In that way role plays, drama, using current media, interschool open days, discovery learning through field visits etc. are some of the authentic activities which may motivate students to master the language in a natural way.

To Maria Victoria, to help me a little bit more what Moving Alphabets is.

Round table reading and discussion

Moving Alphabets are materials used by the teachers for pre-schoolers. These are cut out letters where children love to use in constructing words, phrase or sentences.

Role play is a good method to improve students' awareness of how dialogue is spoken when they are reading silently

moving alphabets are cut out letters. and You can use them by letting your learners construct their own words.

Please visit my website to see two fully developed art-and-literature-based approaches to teaching writing that have been proven effective for a wide range of learners. www.picturingwriting.org