S . ESL Teaching

So I had this conversation with a principle of a school who is not happy with her ESL teachers as they have quite some classroom management problems. We had this meeting where she talked about how the lessons of the teachers are too boring and that this is the reason the kids start acting up. Sure, this is one of the reasons why kids start talking and not paying attention, but then there was this other class, where the kids had fun … actually, too much fun. The kids had so much fun, that they didn’t  think of “working” but started to act out because they see English as some sort of playgroup or break, where they can do what they want. And let's say, it was quite hard to teach English words to those children. That’s why we started to talk about a new approach that would be used when teaching the children and also made me think a lot about rewards and punishments, because this is you need to think about when dealing with difficult classes. This the story behind why I wanted to g

Now there are literally hundreds of games out there that you can play when teaching colors. Here are 3 of my favorites: 1. Coloring Prepare crayons (several of each color) and place them on a table. Hang coloring pictures on the wall everywhere in the room. Say the name of a student and a color. The student has to run to the table, take the color and choose a picture to color. He or she colors a part (one part only!) and sits down again. To not have the other students waiting and to make things more fun, call many names quickly after another with different colors or with the same color). You can also allow the students to be more creative and add things to the picture. Once finished, look at what the coloring pictures look like after the game. There may be some pretty wild combinations. 2. Tapping Place a few flashcards on the floor (or table). Have the students sit around the cards. Tap on one card and say its color (eg “blue”). The next student has to tap your card a

Doesn't everyone love to get presents? But those ones are really special to me: the little cards or pictures from my students. Sometimes a child would come to my class and give me something they made for me at home. It is really touching to see that they want to take time out of their day to give something to you. The picture you see on the photo was created by 4-year-old Tasnim (guess which topic we talked about in class before ;) ) I guess my all time favorite is a get well card from one of my students, that she wrote entirely in English and had her brother and sister create one for me as well. This is when you get assured that you are doing a good job and the children love to come to your classes. That is worth more money than anybody could pay you! Cheers to being a teacher <3

So introducing new vocabulary with flashcards can be great fun and there are tons of games to play with flashcards. But as I said before, it can get quite boring if you always do the same stuff. I bought those little farm animals (nothing fancy) and introduced them to the kids. Having a surprise box is a lot more exciting than just placing the animals in front of their noses right away and telling them "This is a cow".  Make it a bit mysterious and take out one animal at a time and wonder what this is and what sound it makes. joke around and show a cow, but make a pig sound, for example. and then have the children correct your sound. A game I love to play is to put all the animals in a bag. One child gets blindfolded and takes an animal from the bag. He/She then has to feel the animal and guess which one it is without peeking. If the child can't guess it or guesses it wrong, the other children are allowed give some hints, but not say what animal it is. The kids al

(bunting - activity. Examples from kids 4, 6, 10, 11 yo) When I do my teacher training, I often come across new teachers who have never written a lesson plan in their lives. Especially when teaching small children they are often a bit lost and don't know what kind of activities to do with children or how long an activity should last (please, don't plan an activity that takes 40 minutes ....) among many other things . So here is an idea on how you could start (see at the bottom of the post). It can easily be adapted for different ages. For beginner teachers, I often advise them to do a detailed plan. It takes a loooot of time and you may feel like it's nor worth it. After all the goal is not to plan for 4 hours just to teach 1 hour (and only get paid for that one hour!). Been there, done that! But believe me, at the beginning it is really worth it (I will write another blogpost about why you should have lesson plans), with time it will get easier and you will teach more