M@tt
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 473
Location: here and there
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 Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2004 8:17 pm Post subject: tutoring children |
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i used to tutor korean children, survived on tutoring alone for 6 months in the US. at one point i felt like i was tutoring every korean middle school student in my city but there were dozens more interested in lessons.
i had the same problem finding material. i normally teach adults and really don't have much interest in teaching children or delving into material about teaching children. i ended up making up some games to play with them, and that worked well. once you have an arsenal of those handy, you can always supplement whatever work you're doing in a book with one of the games. if you rotate 6 or 7 of them the child is less likely to get bored, and of course you can always just give them the choice of their favorite game if you've got a free day or they've completed something difficult.
what worked best for me were hangman (i hate it but they loved it), 20 questions, a game i made up for prepositions, and writing stories together.
the preposition game is essentially 20 questions about a hidden object. one person would leave the room and the other would hide it. then you ask location questions until you or he/she guesses the location. it's somewhat physical so it keeps the attention of antsy kids. i ended up also making little cards that illustrate each preposition (with a picture on the front and the preposition on the back). sometimes i would give the child all the cards and tell them they had to "play" the cards, using each card only once until they had gone through all of them, and then they could start over. it produced some awkward but funny sentences when they got down to less common prepositions. useful in teaching them the finer distinctions in meaning.
stories--we basically took turns writing one line at a time of a story that i started them on with a prompt. a couple times we illustrated the story first and wrote text/dialogue after. depends on their interests (my ss loved drawing, as most kids do). when you get a handle on it kids are pretty fun to teach, and i'm only sorry i can't offer you a decent resource. searched on amazon once or twice and didn't find anything on ESL tutoring either, though there's bound to be tons of L1 children's material. i also had mostly 10-16 year olds, and that makes a difference.
good luck,
matt
p.s. i'd like to hear more about in-company tutoring in mexico city. pm me if you don't mind sharing some info. |
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) I've recently started teaching young learners in extra private classes. This is something of a challenge as not only do I have minimal experience of teaching six year olds and teenagers *but* they're one to one classes as well!
AnnaBelinda
