In a time when many people are delighted to be working from home, others choose to leave their comfort zone behind and explore new horizons teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) abroad. If you are one of those who have recently obtained your TEFL certificate, congratulations! It is a huge achievement that will certainly help you take the first steps in your teaching career. In time, you might decide to focus on one area of TEFL, like teaching exam preparation classes, business or academic English, or specific age groups.
You probably already know whether you have an interest in teaching young learners or not, and you might be aware of the fact that teaching children is very different from teaching adults. More specifically, it requires strong classroom management skills. If this is your first experience teaching young learners, however, it might feel daunting and intimidating. Let’s see how you can set yourself up for success.
Establish classroom rules
Setting up rules for young pupils from the beginning of the course is necessary for children to know what is expected of them. If you are worried about giving them the impression of being too bossy, set up a group activity that will allow them to come up with their own rules for themselves and the teacher. Get each group to present their ideas and discuss them together.
Establishing their own rules as a class makes it more likely that children will stick to them. Adding a few rules for the teacher too would make them appreciate you even more. Try to keep the rules positive and remember to review them regularly, especially when a new student joins the class. Some students’ rules could be:
- Raise your hand when you want to speak
- Wait for your turn to speak
- Listen when others are talking
- Give back what you borrow
For the teacher, here are some ideas:
- Give a small amount of homework
- Mark and give back homework quickly
- Let students choose the lesson topic once a week
Key words: variety and flexibility
Although most children like to have a classroom routine, nobody likes repetitive lessons. To keep your students engaged and involved, mix things up with games and songs. Try to include different types of activities, changing from quiet and individual tasks, like listening or drawing, to activities that allow children to move around and be loud. In this way, there shouldn’t be any unexpected outbursts of energy, and their excitement will be concentrated in specific parts of the lesson.
Country-specific teaching tips
Your teaching style, lesson plans and materials are heavily affected by the country in which you work. Cultural differences and the local education system can have a huge impact on how you deliver your lessons and on how your learners experience the classroom environment.
Let’s take teaching in South Korea as an example. There, young learners are considered to be between the age of 5 and 12, when they finish primary school. Although South Korean children don’t start learning English at school until they are 8 years old, many parents enrol their children in English language learning programmes in private schools – hagwons – from the age of 5.
Many private schools across the globe rely heavily on coursebooks. For young learners, these books are mainly story/picture books. Although they are extremely helpful for teachers and students, their images often exclusively represent western culture. This could cause confusion among young learners who are in the process of making sense of their own culture. It is therefore advised that teachers implement some adaptations during their lessons using additional pictures showing South Korean individuals and culture.
Lessons for young learners should be fun
One way of having more fun in the classroom is to turn the lesson into a song. From vocabulary to grammar, anything could fit in a song, as long as it is connected to the learning objectives of your lessons. When choosing a song, you should always keep in mind the age and the language level of your learners, as well as their culture and traditions. Remember to include the song in your lesson by introducing the topic first, and present the target language you want your students to focus on. Last but not least, don’t forget the technical aspect of playing the song in the classroom – do you have access to YouTube?
As well as using pictures, another way to keep your young learners engaged is to use realia – real objects – particularly useful to teach vocabulary. This can work very well especially when new words are smoothly integrated into everyday dialogues.
Games are always a winner with children, but be careful – it is easy to fall into the trap of using games just to fill up the last five minutes of your lesson. Instead, choose what game would work best and include it in your lesson at the planning stage. In this way, not only will the game be fun, but it will promote learning. You might find that your students prefer one game to another. If that’s the case, don’t feel that you have to use a different game every time: find ways of adapting their favourite game to suit your lessons.
Mindless repetition can bore even the most enthusiastic of learners. However, repetition is one of the best ways to memorise new language items. Rehearsing role-plays are a clever way to get students to repeat the target language multiple times while they pretend to be actors! Get their creativity going by making up costumes for their role-plays using scarves and build glasses and crowns using cardboard boxes.
Ready to teach young learners?
Teaching young learners can be an exciting experience that needs to be carefully planned. From songs to games, from role-plays to arts and crafts, you can let your creativity go wild when teaching young learners wherever you are in the world. If you are in the process of choosing your first (or next!) teaching destination, take a look at this article about teaching English in South Korea salary information.