S . ESL Teaching

(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...

We often think that greeting is something that the children do automatically, when they enter the classroom.  But this is not necessarily the case, especially when you are teaching very small children.  You will find kids that might just walk past you, as if you are not even there, staring blankly and running towards the toys they want to get to as soon as they can (who wouldn’t run to the cool stuff!!). If you are lucky, you will see some children smile at you. If you are very lucky they may say good morning. And if you are very very lucky, they may even shake your hand, look you in the eyes and say good morning. But those are usually very few (ok, reeeaaalllyy few). So it is on you to teach them. First of all, you should always stand in the door and greet the children with a big smile on your face.  Don’t do the mistake being busy with something in the classroom, preparing some last minute things  and waiting for everybody to come in and sit down. Help th...

At the beginning of my teaching career I saw this awesome fellow teacher who was a master puppeteer. She knew exactly what she was doing and the kids were literally glued to their seats and listened to e-v-e-r-y word she said and answered ALL the questions the puppets asked them (yea, she had two puppets! :o! ). I was completely hooked and thought "man, this is so amazing! I gotta do this!!" I went out, totally motivated and happy, buying all the stuff I could find to set up a great scene. I got to the classroom with my 3year old kids (18 of them), was sooo looking forward to this and thought they are going to looove this and took out my puppet: "HELLOOOOO, my name is Waldo (it was a dog). What's your name??" What I expected was something like "My name is Maya".. boy, was I wrong! What happened? The kids jumped up, tearing the ears of the dog, hitting it on the head, tearing the tail and hitting some more...  So I silently put it back i...

So the new school year will be starting soon. I know in some countries you are already in the middle of it, but here it officially begins in September. As I was sitting down with "my teachers", we talked about the classroom supplies, making our lists of what has to be bought for the upcoming school year. One of the teachers told me she won't need a binder and said she wouldn't know what to use it for. It is her first year of teaching, so for all of you out there in the same situation, let me give you a couple of ideas on where you should (or could) use binders in your classroom, because you don't want to NOT have them in your classroom ;) 1. The teacher's binder Here you might want to put everything related to you, your students and your lessons. Just some ideas: - copy of your schedule (and maybe schedule of the kids you teach in case you might have to switch classes and have to see about the availability of each student) - copy of the curr...

On the first day of an ESL class (or any class ;) ), the kids may be pretty nervous and shy, since it is a new setting with new people they may not know. So I always take things easy during the first lesson and put more emphasis on getting to know each other rather than teaching any vocabulary consciously - this will come naturally by imitating you etc anyways. Sitting in a circle is always a good idea. There are different ways that I use to start a lesson. One of them is that I have a box in which I hide a hand puppet (I have a zebra called Marty, like the one from the movie Madagascar). I put the box in the middle of the circle and ask the kids what they think is inside. Then I have Marty appear and have a little dialogue with him. I'm asking him what his name is and he asks me about my name and who I am. Then Marty asks the children what their names are. Another method I use is the microphone. I used an empty kitchen paper role an formed a ball with aluminium foil ...