S . ESL Teaching

Great game to check the newly learned or revise old vocabulary: Show a flashcard. The kids have to tell you what they see. If it's correct, the monkey climbs up the tree (1 spot), if it's wrong, he falls down (either completely or just 1 spot - depending on how well the kids already know the words). The goal is to get the monkey to the top of the tree and eat some bananas. The kids absolutely love this game. Especially when you make funny noises while moving the monkey or let him fall down.

Since I just started this new category, please bear with me.  I'll add more testimonials once they got sent in.

Just a quick message to thank Svenja for her help and support. I had no background whatsoever in teaching and she has helped me (and is still helping me) through coaching to find my potential.I appreciate a lot her professionalism; a quality that is becoming rare and her knowledge not only in teaching but also in psychology. I hope that one day I will become as professional as she is. A quick message now to all the people that are looking for coaching. I recommend you this lady that knows exactly what she is talking about. She will help you the best way she can. She is a real professional. It is so wonderful to see this kind of potential. I hope that I will one day give her back as much as she is giving me right now. Thanks

I'm a mother of three children who had the chance to have Svenja as a private teacher of English. My eldest daughter, although being very good student in general, had difficulties to appreciate the English language, and her marks in English were mediocre. Today it can be said that she excels. Svenja transmitted her love for the language with playful methods and hands-on workshops, which stimulate the visual and auditory memory. Within a couple of months my daughter enjoyed learning the English language and  the school method doesn't frighten her anymore today. It was also a success with my two other children. The teaching methods of Svenja are adapted to each child, whatever the level, the age or their apprehension. The capacities of her to teach English are undeniable.

I had the opportunity to take courses with Svenja and it enabled me to improve my speaking in English so much! Thanks to her, it was a piece of cake during my exams! She uses innovative and easy ways of learning. I recommend her to every studet who needs help in English. 

Svenja has been my English teacher for 3 years now. At first I didn't like English in school but with Svenja we tackled English differently. She is very patient and understanding. Her methods were interesting and I came to like English. Today I can say that thanks to her, I have excellent results and I really like English. Thank you Svenja. Syrine 5e

One of the routines I have been using with the small kids is the following text. I have pictures of animals and do a lot of gestures in order to help them recognize what's going on. The animals come to school. (walk around) The lion is very tired. (show lion picture, yawn and look very tired) Lion, stretch your arm and yawn. (stretching and yawning) ROAR! And now let's go to school (walk around, have the kids do the same) The kangaroo is hungry (show image and rub your belly) Kangaroo, eat your sandwich (chew) MMMmmhhh! And now let's hop to school (hop around, have the kids do the same) The frog is having a bath (show picture, pretend to take a bath, rubbing your arms and singing lalalaaa) Frog, wash your legs (rub your legs) Splish, splash! And now let's jump to school (jump around, have the kids do the same) The owl is reading a book (show picture and pretend to read a book) Owl, pack your schoolbag (pretend to pack a bag) And now let's fly...

This week I sat down with one of my trainees and we discussed how a lesson for small children should look like. She will take over a class of 3yo. Our lessons are 90 minutes long and this is what we came up with. This plan is one that she will keep for the rest of the year, just changing up the   songs, games and activities for each lesson. Cuts down planning time quite a bit. 1. Routine: Circle time: - singing hello song - asking "how are you", always adding more feelings throughout the year - weather chart - once they are a bit older, the today's day - TPR - show the children a box with a puppet inside (the puppet is scared when there is too much noise, so they have to be quiet in order for it to come out of the box. And of course, it only speaks English!) - have a conversation with the puppet and with the kids (good time to repeat old vocab and questions and get the kids talking) - repetition of old topics through old song, vocab game etc - repetition of l...

My fellow teacher, Christine has shared those wonderful pictures of her ESL kids class with our facebook group. What a great idea! (Thanks again, Christine ;) ) When I saw the cups, it reminded of this game where you have 3 cups and somebody hides a ball under one of them, switches them around and you have to guess where the ball is (and in most cases it is not where you believe it is!). That would be a great activity for the kids. Make paper cups with animals, hide a ball, mix things up and then the child has to say "It's under the cow" or "It's under the lion". Or if they are capable of more, they can make longer sentences such as 'the ball is under the cow).

Last week something happened in school that got me thinking quite a lot about how we see failure. What is failure to us and why are we so scared of it? Yes, we are teachers and yes, we have a high responsibility, especially when teaching children, but we are also only human and all we can do is to do our best and learn from our mistakes to do it better next time. I was working in the teachers’ lounge when one of the teachers I coach” came in and started crying. I knew what happened, because half an hour earlier, there was this little 3 year old guy who came to us crying because he fell off a chair (by the way, he is doing great, it was just the first shock). As a side note: when little children cry, the best method to calm them down is to acknowledge their pein, but not for a long time. The best way is to completely change the topic to something unexpected, for example "what did you do yesterday or what did you eat today". And then have a conversation about it....

Time: about 45-60 mins  (notice that the time can be very different according to class size and abilities of the students) Routine: (5mins) Make a circle, have a small soft ball. Pass the ball and ask the child on your right side “What’s your name?" or any other question you want to teach them. The child answers and then passes the ball to the next child and asks the same question and so on. After one round spice it up and take the time the children need to finish one circle (I usually take my cell phone as a stopwatch) and encourage them to be quicker. I usually tell them that another group did one circle in 10 seconds (not true, but they don’t know that, so you change the time according to which results the children had in the first round and take away 1,2,3 seconds), and ask them if they can do better. Intro (5 mins) Have a set of flashcards (or simple construction paper in every color). Hold up the first card and elicit the color....

Every morning, when I open my emails, I get "Today's inspiration" - a newsletter with a tiny quote of the day. Today it came up with a quote that made me think of a discussion I had with a teacher a while ago. The quote is the following: "Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else."  – Judy Garland Now I had this conversation with this first year teacher, who, after 2 months of starting work was on the edge of a burnout already. She sat in front of me and cried for about one hour nonstop. I don't know if she read the quote above or where she got her ideas from, but she thought that everything she is using in order to teach must be from her herself. The games must be from her own head, the flashcards must be made by her own hands and so on. So she literally drew all her flashcards by hand herself. I had asked her many weeks prior to this meeting why on earth she is doing all this? There are tons of things o...

I played this game with a group of kids yesterday and they totally loved it. All you need is a die, blank paper and pencils. We did it with the snowman topic, but it can be played with other topics as well. The goal of the game is that the children should draw a complete snowman. BUT it's not that easy. They have to role the die and are only allowed to draw one part at a time. For example nk emotico They have to role the die and are only allowed to draw one part at a time. For example 1 = body 1= head     2 = eyes     3 = nose     4 = mouth     5 = arms     6 = hat Now one child throws the die and lands on 3, so the child is allowed to draw a nose (even though nothing else is on the paper yet, not even the body). Next time the child throws the die again and it lands on 5, it's allowed to draw the arms. If it lands again on a 3 - no drawing. The child who is able to finish his or her snowman first, wins. There can be some pretty funn...

picture from:smartteachersblog I came across this blog post about labelling children and the consequences (you can read the article here: https://theconversation.com/labelling-kids-the-good-the-bad-and-the-adhd-31778 ) This reminded me of a case of a young child that sticks in my head for many years now. And I always love to tell his story, when I give workshops on classroom managment. How often do you come to the teachers' lounge and you hear teachers discussing a certain child and how their behavior is incredibly disrupting or how slow this child is or how funny this kid thinks he is? And how often do you find yourself treating this very child as neutral as all the others when you have to teach him? As a teacher trainer I don't know all the children that my teachers are teaching. They let me know when they have a problem with a child so I can give them advice on how to deal with him or her. Funny, that you barely never hear about how great a child is ... Anyhow, I ...

This is a project about seasons I'm doing with a group of students (small group). I took them out to the park and each child chose a tree that he/she particularly liked. We took a picture of them with the tree, took a leaf and drew the tree (made a little booklet about seasons). Then we will come back again when the season changes and take a picture with the same tree every season and have a look at how it changed over the time (and maybe have a look at how much we changed and grew also :p). We sing songs that match the season and play games and basically have a great English lesson outside.

A game you can play using this song ...  Have the kids sitting in a circle and close their eyes. (Prepare a biiig cookie, that you can reuse all the time, maybe using salt dough or just a paper cookie), walk behind the kids, sing a song together, drop the cookie behind one of the children without them noticing and sit down with them. Start the nursery rhyme using the real names of the kids instead of the animals. Each time a name is mentioned this child has to look behind them and then say "Not me"  or "Yes I have the cookie, mniam mniam mniam."

Sounds familiar? Ever had those anxious parents that wonder why their child doesn’t speak English fluently yet after having been with you for a few weeks? Ok, maybe not fluent, but at least being able to communicate without problems in case they would go on holidays to England now? Ok maybe no conversation, but at least a few useful sentences? Honey, your 3 year old daughter has been with me for 3 lessons … No, she can’t order a menu at the restaurant in England yet and no, she also can’t ask for directions! The child barely speaks its first language anywhere near well, but parents want you to teach them the entire English language in a couple of months, because you can perform miracles :o I know, it’s exaggerated, jokes aside (well, I have heard of some parents actually really being that way!) , but you will have this question popping up sooner or later: “Why doesn’t my child speak yet?” When parents ask me this , I always ask them back “How long did it tak...

Let's start a new fun category - GAME TIMEEEE!!! Every now and then I'll post a game you can play in your classroom that are classroom proven! Since it's getting cold and the winter topic is coming closer, I would like to introduce you to a game that's one of the favorites in my classroom at this time of the year. Preteach: You preteach winter clothes; jacket, pullover, boots, scarf, gloves, beanie .. whatever you feel you need to teach the kids. For very small children you might just want to pick 2 or 3 things. Prep: For this game you ask the parents  to bring all those things along. Now for the game you put all the clothes on one side of the classroom. Make sure they are all mixed up and all over the place, so that nothing is neatly put together. The students stand on the opposite side of the room. How to play: You ask them to "Put on the scarf (or any other object)", give a signal and the kids have to run to the other side, find the right object, put it o...

If your classroom looks anything like this ↑ , you probably need to talk about classroom rules again! Just kidding. Well at least I hope your class doesn't look like this :o. The above picture is a project I love to use in my classes when talking about rules. It is essential to fix rules right at the beginning and you might have to remind the children of those rules every now and then. First of all it is important that you don't just stand in front of the class and dictate your rules. How much do you like to be told what you have to do? Isn't it much cooler when you can do what you have in your mind? So the first thing I do is to discuss WITH the children how they want their classroom to be and how do we achieve that. What can they expect from me and what I can expect from them. Now as an ESL teacher this is the tricky part, because explaing them all this in English ... if they would understand all that, they would probably not be with you! So you might hav...