Teaching the students how to spell some words is really interesting. A few students could already spell the words perfectly, and other were on the right track starting with Katakana and knowing that it wasn't quite right. Ending with the posters worked fantastically.
Introduce the Alphabet to the students, and sing the Alphabet song. Then play some games.
Introduce some objects, and associate the beginning letters to the objects. Introduce a grammar point: "___ is for ___" to emphasis this. For example: A is for Apple. B is for Banana.
Now that they know the starting letters, ask the student to spell the rest of the words. If they student need more practice, this can take 2 classes instead of just 1.
Continue spelling out words, and have the students complete a Crossword puzzle.
Have the students think about their favorite English word (or at least their favorite Japanese word), and then make a poster! On one side, they'll have a drawing of their word. On the other side, they'll have the word written out for everyone to see.
Students will present their poster to the class. They'll say their word in English, and then spell it out for the class. The class will spell the word, too. This goes by really fast, even for really big classes, so having a back-up game is a must.
Is there any song better for this lesson than the Alphabet song? I used the version from the Kumon CD. This version is a little because it splits up LMNOP into separate lines of the song. This is really nice for placing the flashcards on the board, because there's 7 letters per line. But it's a little difficult to get used from growing up in the US. Also, one of the knew the US version of the song and say that instead screwing up the rhythm of the song for the other students.
For the objects, I used Google Image search. For the letters, I just made everything in Word. Arial 350pt works just fine for the capital letters.
The posters went over really well. I wanted the students to have some physical they could show their family and demonstrate the English they've learned. Also, having the students choose their own words makes for excellent variety, and a lot of unique posters and vocabulary. Plus, because it's what they like, they're more interested in drawing it, and having fun. :)
Some students obviously weren't confident in their drawing ability, and drew some terrible pictures. Two students choose "Cat" as their word, completely copied each other, and drawing the shittiest stupidest looking cat. Some of the other difficult students drew "Machine Gun", and "Bomb." One student had "Gundam Model." That was a good one. Lot's of the girls drew really cute drawings of dogs, cats, and dolphins.
This lesson was a lot of fun, and I think the students that paid attention really got something out of it. :)