‘my first experience as a teacher was not something to boast about’

Teaching young lao kids was a dream come true! Those little lao faces staring at you were so irresistibly adorable and cute… for a couple of weeks. Then things became more complicated, keeping them focused as they were in dire need of moving around was a real challenge. I was overwhelmed with rambunctious kids that I had expected to be polite, calm, and respectful as I had in mind this stereotype of Asian children. I really needed to hone my teaching skills.
After a few years of teaching, I learned some tips that have helped me greatly in the way I manage my class. They may seem to be little things but one after the other, it makes a big difference. I learnt that along the way, and thanks to the support and advice of friends, teachers, and managers.

Make sure all students feel they belong

The first pillar is to create a safe environment where the students can feel good among their peers and feel they belong in the class. This is why I am truly wary of the students’ emotional state and their inclusion in the class. It is not uncommon to see students that are singled out because they are a little different from the others. I have come across students who have been made fun of or looked down upon because they were a little fat, or their skin color was dark or they couldn’t speak Lao nor English or because boys had feminine manners…These issues are not always easy to address. It is important to not let these attitudes go unnoticed. One way I found effective was to invent a credible story to make the students aware of the effect of their behaviors on others.

Set up rules and be consistent

While creating a safe and welcoming environment, you need a structure that is conducive to learning. Set up clear rules in the classroom and be consistent in applying them. Make sure everyone understands the rules and agrees with them, this will come in handy as you can remind them of the rules if they have strayed from them.

Don’t raise your voice

Sometimes, you need to calm your classroom down to get their attention.
– Lower your voice: I have a naturally loud and powerful voice, but I learned not to raise my voice if I need to get students attention. On the contrary, I actually lower my voice just to differentiate my tone and wait until the students are quiet.
– Play soothing music and dim the lights. Ask the students to close their eyes, put their hand on the table and focus on the music. Classical music or slow jazz are good options.
– Count down: This magical trick works well with young kids. Raise you hand, widespread, and count down from 5 to 1, folding your fingers one by one and saying ‘5-4-3-2…’. Very surpisingly, this works like magic!
Those two last tips are good for young students up to 12 years old.

Reward participation

Speaking the language is paramount in the learning process. This is why I have always strived to encourage participation in my classes.
Set up a participation & behavior board with the students’ names. Every time a student answers a question, or tries to answer a question, you write a little mark on the side of the white board in front of their name to remind both the teacher and students that they have tried to participate. At the end of the day, you add up the marks and keep a record of them on a ‘participation & behavior chart’. At the end of the month, you give a ‘student of the month’ certificate to the student who got the most points, certificate that they surprisingly all covet.

Don’t forget that repetition is key

Every time you teach a new word or expression, make a word card (or picture card as well if suited). Thus, you will build a collection of new words in a stack of cards that get bigger as you go on. Every morning you can use these cards to review the vocabulary that has been learned. You can ask a student to pick a card and explain the word to her classmates for them to guess, or you as a teacher can do it. This enables repetition in a fun way.
See the article ‘how to use flashcards’.

Do fun and memorable activities

– Introduce games to keep the students engaged. The ingredients for a good game are competition and randomness. Competition makes the activity more challenging and randomness spices it up. Using card games is one way to to use the target language in a guided practice that is fun and interactive. See my chapter ‘card games’.

– Try to make the activities memorable by using resources from non academic material/ authentic documents that can strike the students’ imagination. Using famous characters that they know, funny videos, or striking cultural events, are ways to surprise the students and help the learning process.

– Make things personal, if the students take part in the building of the game or the activity by adding their own personal touches, they will love it.

Keep the students active

Do not hesitate to set up active games in your class to break the pace of the lesson, avoiding boredom especially from 5 to 13 years old and to cater to kinaesthetic learners. I learned this very useful ‘freeze and stir’ class management key concept from a PGCE colleague teacher.

• Have students go around the class to interview their peers in a ‘find someone who…’ activity.
• Organise board races in teams to write as fast as possible some target language on the board, do speaking races with 2 teams forming 2 lines, each student having to use the words in a guided way as quickly as they can.
• Have the students tap a word or a picture hung somewhere in the classroom.
• Organise ambulatory reading activities in the classroom. Instead of having your students read a text and answer the questions at their table, break down the text into pieces (speech bubbles for example) that you print and hang on the wall of your classroom. Thus, your students have to stroll around the classroom to be able to answer the questions you have prepared.
• Organise exhibitions in the classroom, hang pictures on the walls and ask the students to describe them using the adjectives learned or to make a comment with any other grammar form/ target language you have just studied.
• Give your students small individual whiteboards they will use to practice memory and spelling. Make them guess a word by giving a definition or showing them a picture card and they have to write the correct spelling on the whiteboard. Young students usually feel very excited about using the boards.
• See the article ‘active games to spice up your class’

Why is it important to teach with active games?

It is a way to keep the students engaged and avoid boredom by changing the pace of the lesson. As the students are physically active, it can also help them reduce anxiety or shyness and help build their fluency. 

Here are 7 of the active game I  like to use in my classroom .

1-Find Someone Who…

Purpose : practice question forming , getting to know each other.
The teacher prepares a chart with : « Find someone who… » using the vocabulary you want to practice
The students prepare the questions to ask.
They go around the class and Interview their classmates.
They write the answers in each box.

2- Board Race

Purpose : An active way of reviewing a grammar structure or verb tense.
2 teams stand in 2 lines.
The teacher writes the target language on the board
Example: adjectives that have to be put in a comparative form.

Students one by one should write the correct word as fast as possible

Example :               

3-Speaking Race

Purpose : an active and competitive way of practicing speaking skills.

2 teams standing in 2 lines.

The teacher has cards to use with the target language.

Each student in each team should make a correct sentence with the word on the card using the target language.

• Example : target language : just + Present perfect
• Card1 : ‘see’
•  The student says : ‘I have just seen a dog/ a ghost…’

One point is given to the team whose student could utter a correct sentence the fastest.

4- Charade

Purpose : An active way of practicing a target language
In teams or individually
Teacher has cards using the target language.

One student picks a card and makes her team or class guess what it is by miming the action on the card.

• Example of target language : present continuous.
•  Card1 : « you are washing a blue cat »

5- Mingle

Purpose : An active way of practicing a target language

The students are in 2 lines facing each other

Each student gets a card and ask a question with the target language. Their counterpart answers with the target language.

After that they mingle to make new pairs and exchange their cards and do it again.

• Example :  Target language : present perfect in questions . 
• Answer : Yes I have/ No I have never xxxx 
• Card1 : « drive a car »
• Student 1 says :Have you ever driven a car?
• Students 2 says : Yes I have / or No I have never driven a car.

6- Tap the Word

Purpose : An active way of reviewing vocabulary.
2 to 4 teams.
The teacher calls on a student to write on the board 3 words that have been learnt . She does so with other students so as to get 20 words on the board.
Then the teachers calls on 1 student per team to come to the board.
The teacher gives a definition and the students have to tap the correct word as fast as they can.

7- Chinese Whisper

Purpose : an active listening, review of structured sentence
2 teams
They stand in 2 separate lines

The teacher says a sentence to the two first students of each team.

Each student passes on the sentence to the next student, whispering.

The last student writes the sentence on the board.
The team whose sentence is the closest to the initial sentence wins.

1-Flashcard Chain

To practice simple interaction patterns: 

IN A CIRCLE:  ask the students to stand in a circle with you. Have the flashcards ready for the activity. Pass the first one to the student on your left ans ask the question you want using the target language. Example: Do you like elephants? . The student responds ‘yes I do’ or ‘No I don’t’ and passes the flashcard to their classmate next to them, asking the question in the same way. When the flash card you first introduced is about 3 students away from you, then introduce the nextflashcard using questions in the same way. 

IN TEAMS: this can be done as a team challenge. Each student of each team has to pass on a question to his classmate who answers and asks the same question to his other classmate…The team that finishes first wins.

2- Categorizing

Choose a language area the students have seen before. You need at least one flashcard per student (of 16 students, you need 16 flashcards or more).  Decide which categories you want the students to categorize the words into. Example: daily life objects???? useful – not useful. / drinks ???? hot drinks –  cold soft drinks – alcoholic drinks… Draw large circles on the board accordingly and write the categories under the circles. 

Teacher models: Hold up a flashcard and ask the students which word it is. ‘it is a wallet’. Ask them if they think it is useful or not useful.They should say why and give arguments to decide. Example: ‘because it is where you keep your money’. Then stick the card in the chosen circle.

Place the flashcard facedown  in a pile at the front of the class, ask the students to come up one at a time and pick up the top flashcard. The class should say the name of the card, then the class should decide which category is the best and explain why. The student at the front then places it in the correct circle.

3-Related Actions 

Material: a set of picture cards.

In teams: Each team draws 1 picture card. Then each team has 1 minute to find as many actions (verbs) as they can related to the pictures they have. They write them on a piece of paper.

Example:  A CAMERA

• Take pictures
• Be on holiday
• Travel around the world
• Remember my family and friends
• Celebrate a birthday
• Smile
• Perform on stage

At the end of the minute, you collect the lists and give points according to the number of actions found. If some are dubious then you can ask the team to explain their choice and have the other teams vote to decide if they get the point or not.

The next rounds will be made by switching the same cards to the other teams to make it fair or, as you wish, pick new cards for every team.

4-Draw-Mime-Describe

Print out 3 action cards : Draw/ Mime / Describe.

Place them face down in a hat or a basket. 

Print out picture cards (objects), as many cards as  you want to review.

One player draws an action card and an picture card and has to make her team guess the word by drawing or describing or miming the object accordingly to the Action card.

This should be done in a time limit, the student or the team that can guess in the time limit wins a point. The team or the player that got the most points is the winner;

5-Time’s up

Time’s Up’ is one of my favorite game as an adult. I love playing it with my family or my friends. This is freely inspired by this game. It works really well with my students.

1. Use between 20 to 30 cards (picture cards or word cards) that your students should already know. (a previous step could be to review their knowledge).
2. Objective: in each team a student should make their teammates guess what the object or the word on her card is as fast as she can in a time limit. 

Round 1: Explain. There is a stack of cards face down. The timer starts set at 30 seconds. The student picks a card and she has to explain what it is, describe it, say how we use it… without saying the word. If no one in his team can guess, she can skip the card and move on to another one…. And so on until the timer rings. The team keeps the cards they have guessed.Then the stack of cards left over goes to the next team who does the same to win cards. When all the cards have been guessed. You move on to the next round.

 Round 2: one word:  Now the teams know the picture cards (or word cards) better. They proceed to the next round by having their teammates guess the objects by uttering only one word (related to the way they explained the word before). They can skip the cards their teammates can’t guess.

Round 3: act it out: Now the teams have to make their teammates guess the objects by acting out, describing or using the object (they can not show the object if it is in the class, or draw it). The students are not allowed to utter a word, they can only act.

6-Week-end Story

In teams. Each team picks 5 picture-cards from the stack.

These 5 objects are the only objects they have (but as many as they want) to spend the most extraordinary week-end.

They have to create a story and describe their week-end using these objects. They should write their story in the past, in the present, or in the future, depending on what you are currently studying.

Give them 10 minutes to do that.

Collect their papers, read them outloud and the teams vote for the most awesome week-end!

Fostering speaking interactions is paramount in the language learning process. As a means to achieve this, I find using flashcards especially at elementary level a great learning tool.  It is the upside of this level as intermediate students deal with words that are more abstract concepts and are more difficult to represent in one picture.

Thus flashcards can be used to present new vocabulary, and /or can be used to review or revise vocabulary that has already been studied along the lessons.

They offer multiple opportunities to play with the language.

I present herafter a few activities that I have used and liked.

1-Flashcardsgroup

Audience : children.

Divide the class into groups of 3 to 5 students. Assign each group one flashcard. Example: Group 1= Elephant, G2=tigers, …Give the group instructions in the following way:  ‘touch your nose, tigers’.’wave your hands, lions’. Dont forget to say the instruction first and the flashcard 2nd to keep the children’s attention until they know if the instruction applies to their group or not. You can increase or decrease the level of challenge depending if you do the action yourself or not.

2- Hide & Seek

Audience: children.

Play this in teams. Spread the cards around the classroom face down when the students aren’t in the room.  Start playing by naming a card or writing the name on the board.  Then 1 student from each team should find it as fast as possible and bring it back to you or stick it on the board next to its name.

3-Flash the card

FAST: Show the students the flashcard very fast. They should be able to identify what is on the flashcard.

SLOWLY: Do the same thing, but this time cover the flashcard with a piece of paper and gradually reveal the picture, the students should identify the picture as soon as they can recognize it.

4-Guess the word

Can be played in teams. 

Version A) The most basic version: the teacher describes the picture or explains the word, the class should guess what it is.

Version B) One student picks a card card and needs to explain to the rest of the class what the word is. The team that guessed most words wins.

Version C) Each team asks one question at a time to one student at the front who can only answers yes or no.

5-What is missing ?

Stick the flashcards on the board and get the students to repeat the words. Ask the students to close their eyes and cover their eyes with their hands. Remove one of the flashcard from the board and hide it. Ask the children to  open their eyes and say what is missing. This can be done with realia.

 6-Magic Eyes

Stick the flashcards  in a row on the board (6 is a good number to use). Get the students to repeat the words with you in a rhytmic way. Do this a few times. Then remove the first card and continue in the same way. (a couple times).  Remove the next card the same way and repeat again….until you have removed all the cards.

Very good for training the students’ memory.

7- Memory Game

Print out pairs of cards, they can be 2 cards of the same ‘family’ (see Happy Family card games) or ‘a picture card’ and its ‘word card’ (See Flashcards) or 2 same picture cards.
Shuffle the pairs, you should have minimum 10 cards (or 5 pairs) and place them face down next to each others, they shoudln’t overlap.
Each player should return 2 cards , if they form a pair the student should name it, then she can keep the pair ans score a point, in this case she can play again.
If they don’t match, she places them back where they were and the next player returns 2 cards until they find a pair.
The player with the most pairs is the winner.