Humans learn and experience life through their five senses: touch, sight, sound, taste, and smell. They are all memory triggers, and can therefore be ways to communicate information. However, in a classroom setting the easiest ways to teach and learn is by auditory and visual methods. Though teachers should be aware of the main methods of learning, they should also incorporate teaching by means of touch, taste, and smell, if and when possible. In certain circumstances these senses can be an easier way to understand and learn new information, especially at the beginning English level.

If you have experience in teaching young students, then you’re aware of the occasional difficulty of keeping them interested and engaged. Usually, students between the ages 5-12 need constant stimulation. The repetitive use of traditional teaching methods can be boring. By providing a dynamic educational experience you will create a new, fun, and exciting learning environment. So here are some teaching ideas revolving around learning through touch, taste, and smell. These examples will help you start thinking out of the box when you’re planning your future TESL/TEFL lesson plans.

Touch: Haptic touch, is seeking out and acquiring information through touch, it is the third most widely used method of learning. A student can learn through touch by storing a touch memory in their brain in terms of an object’s: vibration, surface texture, wetness/dryness, surface temperature, shape, hardness/softness, weight, elasticity, and pliability. The following are teaching ideas that involve haptic touch.

• Adjectives and Objects
 • Bring in 3 different random objects to class. Break your students into groups of 2 or 3 groups and have them do the following:
• State the object’s name
• Describe it
• Using the adjectives, write a creative short story about the object
• Have them present it to the class
• Describing an object takes thought and a wide vocabulary of adjectives. Depending on the level of English you’re teaching this game could be a stimulating exercise for your students. If you want to get your student’s focused and eager to learn English from the start of the lesson it’s a great exercise to do at the beginning of each class. Especially, if the objects correlate to the previous day’s lesson.

• What’s In The Bag Vocabulary?
• Once you have gone over the vocabulary for the week, and your students understand it. Bring in several objects that were apart of the lesson’s vocabulary, and place them in individual opaque drawstring bags.
• While the students are sitting at their desk. Have the bags passed around one by one to each student, and allow them 20 seconds to explore the object within the bag without looking.
• They then have 40 seconds to figure out what the object is, and must write down: the name of the object, where it can be found, and what it is used for.
• Once all of the bags have been passed around select various students to say what they wrote.
• This a great learning exercises for TESL/TEFL teachers with youth students. Especially, if your lesson plan for the week revolves around nature or the park, and some of your vocabulary consists of words like: dirt, leaves, tree bark, flowers, water, rocks, grass, and sand.

Taste: Teaching through taste is a fun learning exercise for students when you’re going over food, especially universal fruits and well-known cultural dishes. The taste memory will help the connect words like sour, sweet, salty, delicious, etc. with the proper foods. However, be sure to find out if anyone has any allergies before conducting the lesson. The best thing to do would be to have your school’s secretary ask each of the students parents if their children are allergic to any fruit a week before you begin the lesson.

• The Fruit Stand Game
• Divide your students into small groups and designate who will play the roles of shop keeper and indecisive customer
• The shop keeper’s role is to help the indecisive customer choose fruit, and will suggest fruit to taste based on the customer’s wants.
• The indecisive customers will ask the shop keeper for help, and will describe the fruit they want based on the taste adjectives taught in the lesson plan.
• At the end of the lesson have the kids try a mixed fresh fruit salad that you prepared, and while they’re eating have them take turns describing the fruit they’re eating to a classmate.
• The fruit stand game is a fun activity to conduct at the end of a lesson because you can involve the names of fruit and fruit adjectives, but also go over money, counting money, and store greetings.

Smell:  Is probably the most difficult of the five senses to use as a teaching aide, due to the limitations in subject matter it can be used with. It is usually easier to incorporate a smell exercise in addition to a touch, and or taste exercise. A good activity that incorporates all three is the no peeking game.

• No Peeking
• There are two roles in this game, the writer and the describer.
• The Describer: Is blindfolded, and will describe the object in front of them to the writer by touching, tasting, and smelling the object, but they are not allowed to tell their partner the name of the object if they figure it out.
• The Writer: Writes down everything the describer says about the object in their hand, and must decide what the object is, based on the adjectives their partner gives them.
• In order to provide students to practice their oral and writing skills. The roles are switched after each object is passed around.
• Divide the students up into pairs. Have them sit with their backs against their partner. So the writer cannot see the object being passed out, and then decide who will be the first writer or describer.
• Pass out blindfolds, and the object
• Allow each group 3-4 minutes with the first object, and then have them switch
• This is a fun activity to conduct towards the end of a lesson, and could even be used as a mini test.