Teacher Discussion Forums

I'm a teacher of a group of kids about 20 kids aged 6-7 years old. i divided them into 5 teams as i usually organized games in class. Recently i noticed a boy refused to join any games with weird excuses as' i'm sleepy/ i dont wanna....i once tried to encourage him but that didn't work, i know i cannot push him, thus i picked other kids of that team to join the game, then that weird boy showed great interest in it and seemed to be cheered up, but next time i invite him, same thing happened again. i gradually found he is brave enough when he's with the whole team but once be picked out he became a chicken!!

i donno i should respect his' introverted ' character or push him to join the game ???? i know each kid has his own way of learning, but i am really at a loss


Any ideas??

Have you tried any games where the whole class plays together as one big group with lots of movement? Games like the fruit basket game, or magic word game don't really single out any one child and really seem like having fun rather than English class.
And I know this may sound really silly but age 6-7 is either kindergarten, first or possibly second grade. For me, I'm a pretty big guy and I think that that could intimidate a little kid so when I talk to really young children, I crouch down to just slightly below eye-level. I shaved off my beard for the same reason. I also try to play with those shy kids during recess time. The point is to remove fear (fear of being singled out, fear of being laughed at, fear of whatever) from the class and focus on having fun.


Bill