Teacher Discussion Forums

I'm doing some voluntary teaching at an orphanage in South East Asia and am struggling for resources. I have a white board & some pens but not much else.

I teach two groups based on age: 3 to 8 and 9 to 13. Although there is some significant variety in the level of English abvility of the individual children I think they would still all be classified as beginners.

Can anyone can offer me any advice or point me towards any websites in order to help me plan some lessons that are going to keep ther children interested and contributing?

I don't have a great amount of experience teaching either children or beginners. Most of the teaching I have done previously has been with groups of European young adults so even just comments from those with experience of similar situations would be helpful to me.

Cheers.

Check the posts in this forum for eslwithlittleones, mesmark, EH, and Senorita Daniels. You just have to click on the name or type it in at Search - the button is above these posts and then Find All Posts. There is a wealth of information there.

As far as materials you can do a lot with realia - food, plants, household objects, clothes, toys, coins, books with pictures in their own language. You can hide objects in a paper bag for them to feel after they know the names of them. You can have treasure hunts for items they know. You can play Bingo by having them put objects in a Bingo square they put on their desk tops with tape or chalk or something that will rub off.

If you have a digetal camera you can do endless things with the pictures you print, from making flashcards to story books.

The only difference I found with children versus adults is the time spent on instructions versus content. They are also learning to get along in groups and with adults directing them. You need to build in games and practice with these ideas in mind as well as teaching them the colours or the alphabet. It is just the same value to them to learn to take turns or sit down quietly as it is to learn something is called a "car" in English.

You will have different values and expectations from their native language teachers as well so give them lots of positive experiences in doing things "your" way.

ok, this has already been answered but since i have just moved to teaching adults and I am missing my little ones I'll give you a few ideas.

with beginner you don't really need so many resource to teach beginners or little kids, if you have a black board you can use it well, here are a few ideas

fly swatting
this is in the ideas sections

board darts
put pictures or words or even the alphabet up on the board, and give one child a ball or a rolled up piece of paper,all he has to do is throw it at the board, depending what you are teaching the other kids have to put their hand up and try to respond, for example if you had the alphabet on the board and the first kid hit A, the children would have to think of a word beginning with A. the first one to put their hand up and give you the correct answer can come up and take a turn at throwing the paper

board dictation
organise the kids into teams and draw pictures of desk on the board, the same number of deask as there is teams. give one piece of chalk to a child from each team, then say the sentence "there is a book on the desk" the children run to the board and draw the correct picture. then they swap the chalk with another team mate. after they get the hang of this you can call on some of the students to give the sentence

chinese whispers


duck duck goose

yes thatold one but instead of the usual 2 word version, i pick a topic eg. colours, then send one child out of the room, to the others in the circle i give the "hot word" in this case maybe "blue" when the child re-enters the room he plays the game the normal way but eachtime he touches a childs head he says a different colour, when he says the "hot word" that child who he says it to gets up and the normal duck duck goose rules apply

hope some of these help, feel free to send me an e-mail if there is anything you are not clear about

Hi,

I teach a lot of young kids. It is challenging, but really fun and rewarding. Do you have access to a CD player, or do you like to sing? The way I teach is to introduce vocabulary first, for example numbers. If you don't have flashcards, count using your fingers. Count objects in the room, count kids, etc. Next, you can ask the kids how old they are.

I always follow up my lessons with a song. I recently posted a free numbers song for download. If you don't have a cd player, you can download it and learn it and sing it. It is really easy, and the kids will love it. You can check it out here (there is a fun dance too):
http://www.dreameigo.com/numbers

I also put a link to MES English on the webpage, that site is a great resource for free flashcards and worksheets.

Most importanly, have fun, and interact a lot with the kids.

Happy Teaching!