Kinney Brothers Publishing

ESL Teaching & Publishing

ESL Games

Communication Series – A Closer Look

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The Kinney Brothers Publishing Communication Series is designed to extend students’ skills and interest in communicating in English. The four-book series includes Stories For Young Readers and Dialogues For Young Speakers. The textbooks work in tandem to provide students with exercises in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Each textbook is detailed below with links for downloadable previews and purchase.

In Japan, The Stories For Young Readers series is published by Independent Publishers International (I.P.I.) and available through Nellies English Books and David Paul’s ETJ Book Service.

You’ll find an abundance of support materials for this series in our online store, Donald’s English Classroom.  Visit for downloadable audio files, Lesson Packs, and Teacher’s Answer Keys. You’ll also see links for Lesson Packs on Google Slides for online courses and Kindle Books for your digital library.

Kinney Brothers Publishing offers a wide range of ESL textbooks including a Phonics Series that begins with your youngest students, an Easy Sight Words Series, and Trends for secondary and adult English language learners. If you’re looking for more support materials, be sure to check out Q&A, Cursive Writing!, and a treasure trove of games, charts, and flashcards in Donald’s English Classroom!

Fun Facts About English #59 – Words of Spanish Origin

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Fun Facts About English 59 Kinney Brothers Publishing

All of the highlighted words in the story below came into the English language via Spanish.

The English language is an amazing amalgamation of many European and other languages. Check out these posts about the linguistic influence of Native American languages, French, and classical languages like Greek and Latin!

See the previous or next Fun Facts About English

Donald's English Classroom

A good set of flashcards is worth its weight in gold! Check out all the vocabulary-building flashcard sets in Donald’s English Classroom!

Planning Ahead

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No matter the time of year, I get inquiries about the best way to purchase Kinney Brothers Publishing textbooks and downloadable resources.  You shouldn’t have to worry about getting the materials you need for your students.  We offer many options so you can make the best choice for your classes.

In Japan, the Stories For Young Readers series, published by Independent Publishers International (I.P.I.), is available with a special discount through David Paul’s ETJ Book Service.  Print-on-demand services make this series available online through Amazon.com worldwide!  For full textbook pdf and paperless (Google Slides) downloads, visit Donald’s English Classroom!

The Stories For Young Readers series includes questions, grammatical explanations, exercises, and puzzles for beginning students. The books are designed to extend students’ skills and interest in communicating in English. Teachers can utilize the stories and exercises for listening comprehension, reading, writing, and conversation.  Book 1 focuses on present simple and present continuous reading exercises.  Book 2 takes students further with simple past, past continuous and simple future tenses.

Check out the previews or download the first readings from Book 1 and Book 2  for free!  They include audio files, answer keys and dialogues!

Stories For Young Readers Book 1

You’ll find an abundance of support materials for this series in our online store, Donald’s English Classroom.  Visit for downloadable flash cards, charts, games, textbooks, answer keys, and audio files.

Stories For Young Readers Book 2

You might also be interested in Dialogues for Young Speakers – a series of dialogues and surveys designed to extend students’ conversation skills. Following Stories for Young Readers, the dialogues progress from present simple to present continuous in Book 1, and simple past, past continuous, and future tenses in Book 2. Not only will teachers find a wealth of material that will get students up and talking, the dialogues also prove that students can effectively communicate with even a limited vocabulary. You can download these textbooks online, order directly from the Kinney Brothers Publishing web site, or order on Amazon.co.jp.  Download previews for Book 1 and Book 2 here!

Dialogues For Young Speakers

If you’d like to learn more about all Kinney Brothers Publishing has to offer, please download our catalogues!  Peruse the complete lineup of our Global Edition ESL Textbooks or check out our ESL Store right from your desktop!  Sign up for our newsletter and download a free CVC I Have/Who Has Activity Set!

Kinney Brothers Publishing Catalogues

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at info@kinneybrothers.com.

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

kinneybrothers.com

Swimming With Sharks

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On the lookout for games…

In my kids classes I am always looking for ways to anchor the question and answer dialogues they are learning with ‘real world’ application. Of course, there’s only so much that the ‘real world’ actually enters the classroom to allow repeated practice of such basic dialogues as What’s your name?, How old are you?, Where do you live?, Do you like…?. Do you have…?, What’s this?, and What’s that?  So I’m always on the lookout for games that can serve this purpose. Swimming with Sharks is one that I regularly use, and that the students really love to play.

Swimming With Sharks is a game that is introduced in Phonics & Spelling, Book 2, and is designed to get the students to practice reading and speaking the three-letter words they are learning. The game is very simple. Students place a game piece (an erasure, or some other small personal object) on Start. Then, each student takes turns rolling a die and moving their game piece that many places on the board. They have to then say the word they land on out loud.  If they land on “net”, they can climb over the net to the next space, thereby getting further along on the board to the goal of reaching the safe space of the ship. If they land on “red”, they must go back to the previous “red”, or back to start. And if they land on the “shark’s nose”, they must go back to start.

To use the same game to practice dialogues, I use a separate Swimming With Sharks game board that has blank spaces along the board instead of words. When students land on a blank space, they must ask another player a question. If the student cannot think of a question to ask, he or she must go back the same number rolled on the die. Likewise, if the student who is asked cannot answer the question, he or she must move their game piece back that many spots on the board. The same rules apply for landing on “net”, the color “red,” and “shark’s nose” as in the game in Phonics & Spelling, Book 2.

This “blank” version of Swimming With Sharks can be used with any set of questions-and-answer dialogues you want your students to practice. Download it!  It’s on us.   Let us know what games you use to get your students talking!

What games do you use to get your kids talking?

If you like to play board games in your classes, take a look at this Blank Game Boards Bundle from Donald’s English Classroom.  These blank boards offer teachers the flexibility of creating their own game boards.  It includes Swimming With Sharks and a whole lot more!

Best of luck in your classes!

Michael Kinney
Kinney Brothers Publishing

The Last Story

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When Robert passed away in June of 2013, he had plans for a third book in the Stories for Young Readers series.  This was the first installment in that book and the last story he wrote and illustrated.  At the time that he wrote this, he was teaching at Saitama University and was deeply interested in fairy tales and their histories.  As he said in a discussion, he thought the story could be seen as a parallel to larger cultural issues and would be useful for promoting discussion in class.  You can click on the image to make it larger.  Enjoy.

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