Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi, I'm teaching a group of 8-year old students in a private centre. There are only 5 or 6 students in a group (sometimes even fewer), and I've found out that teaching small groups can be as difficult as teaching very big groups of children. At the beginning of the year things were more or less OK, but now problems are arising since they are so well behaved that they are boring (I'd never tought I would say this!). I don't know what else to do with them: they get bored with the book, they get bored with English songs... some of them even get bored with games, and you know, in a class of 6 children if 2 of them don't want to play... there's no game.
Do you have any idea? Anything that can help me to liven up the atmosphere of the class? I'm trying to do my best, but I feel myself a little bit absurd when I am the only one who is singing the songs and doing the actions!!!!
If you have any idea, game, song... whatever, everything will be appreciated. I'm desperate!!! Thank you very much!

What kind of songs are you teaching them? Do you have access to popular English songs with a video? Boys and girls? What games? What book? What country? Lots of resources or none?

I've felt the same with my 8-year-olds (a class with 9 children) and although I can't say I am desperate, I sometimes feel really stupid (or even bored...).
I'd like to add one more question to Sally's. What do the children like? It's not always a matter of finding the right activity or 1.000 resources (BTW, have you checked THE IDEA COOKBOOK, ACTIVITIES & GAMES as well as this forum?). We have to see what works well with a specific group of children. If the book is boring, we can always adapt our material. If they don't feel like singing, you either ignore a straight "let's sing" activity or change it in such a way that in the end, they are "led" into singing without seeing it as sth they have to do. I've found that some of my pupils hate drawing and colouring. It's funny but they prefer to do a written exercise(!) while the others colour. Or they prefer to look at children's books and mags while I ask them questions about colours, clothes etc. If my pupils seem to be interested in a quiet, "serious" way of working, I go with the flow - with a few personal touches here and there. Books and curricula are there just to give us ideas.
Most of "my" children love writing on the board or put pictures in the right order or match words with flashcards (that's all on the board). Or they love miming and acting. So I'm trying to invent little things in order to prevent them from falling asleep during the lesson. The more you think, the more ideas you come across and the more you learn... Mind you, there's nothing in the school where I work (TV, computer, library etc), I always have to take my own stuff to school, the children see me twice a week for a 45-minute lesson and they're usually so tired after maths and language, they feel like doing the most stupid things you can imagine or are simply ... numb.

My kids like to play the Geosafari Jr. games. They're expensive -$100 and you need at least 2 or 3 of them. If you are innovative, artistic or know how to do computer graphics, you can design your own games based on your curriculum to go with the Geo game. So far my students havn't gotten bored with this.

I wonder if that expensive program is related to this free one:

http://www.eduplace.com/geonet/index.html

My adult students have enjoyed playing it. It may be too difficult for your students, however.

It can be difficult when you have only a handful of children to work with and of course when children are bored they don't learn. As with Ms Olsen's questions it's hard to advise without some of the structural details of your lesson format, especially the length of the lesson. But here's some points to think about:

Can you take them outside? A whole lesson can be styled round twenty minutes of outdoor exploraton.

Make something, show them how to make it, let them make it and interleave that process with formal exercises.

Have a routine to the lesson with a rhythmic tempo; quiet/noisy, slow/fast, group/individual - components arranged in sequence.

'Parallel play': Give them something to do which you do as well as if part of the group.

Live animals/strange animals: A few fish in a tank, a hamster in a cage, growing peas, beans, a venus fly trap, giant insects, pictures of extremely dangerous big animals (google images is a good source): All of these things add the dimension of Reality (so often lacking ESL lessons).

Sallam Alaykum

Ps. Lorikeet thanks for the website