For ESL teachers with large, multilevel classrooms, trying to make sure everyone’s needs are met can be a challenge. Utilising multilevel ESL games and activities can lighten the load, as can grouping students of different levels together or pairing up more the proficient students with the beginners. This method benefits everyone, as the advanced students can learn as much by helping to teach as they can by simply completing assignments, and the teacher can concentrate on individual help for those most in need.
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Classroom Ideas |
Classroom IdeasA selection of practical ideas for teachers from classroom games and activities to discipline and teacher improvement. Feel free to submit your own ideas. You can browse ideas by topic on the left. Latest ideas are shown below. 14 August 2010 by Shelley Vernon | Filed under Activities | 1 Comment »
6 August 2010 by Alex Case | Filed under Vocabulary | 1 Comment »
Most courses for young and very young learners have at least one unit on body parts vocabulary like “hand” and “foot” in them, and the few that don’t certainly should. Not only is this topic great for classes of all ability levels (just add “right little finger” or “thigh” if they seem to know it all), but it is also vital for giving classroom instructions in English during the rest of the course, e.g. while explaining 1 July 2010 by phrazzleme | Filed under Vocabulary | 3 Comments »
An easy way to remember which preposition to use with hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, ages. 7 June 2010 by Alex Case | Filed under Young Learners | Leave a Comment »
Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is a song which is popular with kids (especially if you whirl round very quickly!) and a great way of teaching daily routines language like “brush my teeth”. It can also be easily adapted to introduce and practice other verb and noun collocations. There are also several books based on the song. 1 June 2010 by Guest Writer | Filed under Teaching | 1 Comment »
Checking answers (to homework, as well as exercises done during the lesson) is a part of class often described by teachers and students as boring, slow and not all that engaging for anyone. Naturally, we check these answers for a variety of reasons, such as for marking, for noting student progress, and in order to check if the students have understood the language point in question. However, in my experience both as a teacher and as an observer, the time spent checking answers in class is often the part of the lesson where a lot of time is spent that is of no benefit to any of the learners. In short, the teacher is checking answers just because it is 24 May 2010 by Alex Case | Filed under Games | 3 Comments »
This article is part of an occasional series on minimal preparation games using objects that are already in every classroom, in this case being ordinary ballpoint pens, HB pencils, board pens, felt tip pens etc. See the bottom of this page for links to the previous articles in the series. The number of TEFL games you can play with pencil and paper are almost limitless, and include drawing games, hangman and battleships. As there are so many of those, I am concentrating here on games that can be played with just pens or pencils (i.e. no paper), and with little or no preparation by the teacher before class. Ideas which break those rules are nearer the bottom of the article. 6 May 2010 by Alex Case | Filed under Games | Leave a Comment »
This article is part of a series on using common classroom objects to practise all kinds of language. Although there is nothing like the interest prompted by bringing something into class that they don’t expect to be there (e.g. a puppy), using the things that are already in the school cuts down on preparation, saves money and organisation, gives you the chance to revise the names of those common objects when giving instructions, and could even remind them of the language they were practising every time they see the object again. 28 April 2010 by Alex Case | Filed under Games | 4 Comments »
The games described here use a resource that is easy to get your hands on and would otherwise be rubbish, and are therefore easy to add to your class with minimal or zero preparation. Many of these can be played with paper that has already been used on both sides. 26 April 2010 by Alex Case | Filed under Games | 1 Comment »
One thing that has really developed in my teaching over the years is my ability to react flexibly to things that happen in class, such as students knowing more or less about the language point than I expected, having wrong information about the class, students arriving late, or energy levels not being what I expected. One vital part of developing that ability to respond rather than just stick to the lesson plan has been to find and develop games that can be can be added to almost any class as and 14 April 2010 by Alex Case | Filed under Young Learners | 2 Comments »
A previous article of mine on use of punishments caused an unusual flurry of controversy on the TEFL.net article pages, one I have been meaning to respond to ever since with an article or two on techniques that sound less nasty and hopefully stop you from getting to the point of needing punishments at all. One way of thinking about this is to brainstorm all the things you can do before there are behavioural problems- things that will stop that misbehaviour happening, make naughtiness easier to stop, or reduce the negative effects of children playing up. As these things are planned and sometimes carried out before the bad behaviour occurs, I have classified all of them as proactive classroom management techniques. |