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For teachers, parents & students

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Every Child needs a Champion

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Rita Pierson: Rita Pierson: Todo niño necesita un campeón

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Rita Pierson, maestra durante 40 años, una vez escuchó a una colega decir: "No me pagan para querer a los niños". Su respuesta fue: "Los niños no aprenden de la gente que no les gusta". Un llamado conmovedor para instar a los educadores a creer en sus alumnos y para que se conecten verdaderamente con ellos a nivel personal y humano.

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Timer, traffic light, random name, noisy level... and more!

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The importance of rules in the classroom

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The importance of rules in the classroom

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How do we set the rules?

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This is a really good place to start.

I really appreciate how most of the rules are worded in a positive way, as "Discipline with Dignity" was a great resource that suggested how rules should be stated with specific, positive, practical expectations. Sky7, I would strongly recommend reading that book, too. Within it, another thing was the student contract (shown above). My wife teaches hs here in China, & she has a syllabus now with expectations, rules, a semester schedule, consequences for specific rule breaks, grade breakdowns, etc. It has helped her tremendously, as she has followed throught with it as well and the students have gotten the hint.

Almost all of us are in various places teaching different grades, as I teach elementary English in China. Therefore, I have used a different, yet similar, management plan other then the sad/happy faces. Implemented are the class rules, steps of consequences that vary in severity, and a set time where the repercussions are reset. Since I teach a few classes every week with the same classes, I started out keep track (on a clipboard & a physical card system where Ss are involved) of how students did throughout the week. As the year went on, I transitioned the system to a monthly time length. The students were very responsive in a good way. It helped praising the positive with words of affirmation, high-fives, & quality time together outside of class.

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This is a really good place to start. I really appreciate how most of the rules are worded in a positive way, as "Discipline with Dignity" was a great resource that suggested how rules should be stated with specific, positive, practical expectations. Sky7, I would strongly recommend reading that book, too.

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How do we buil rapport?

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Soooo many ideas!

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We all understand the importance of leading in a topic and making sure that students are focused and are ready to learn. That's why most ESL teachers tend to focus their energy on warm-ups and ice breakers. More often than not, end of lesson activities are neglected.

Sometimes, we are too engrossed in teaching that when we look at the time, we realize that there's only so much time left so we just go ahead and summarize the key points of the lesson and tell the students what they have learned for the day. When we do this, we do not only give an abrupt ending, but we also rob students the chance to reflect on what they have gleaned from our lesson.

No matter how brilliant the beginning and middle of the lesson had been, there still needs to be a strong closure otherwise students will leave our class feeling a little confused. Closure is the time when students make connections and better remember what they have learned.

Here are some examples of closure activities that I like to do in my class. These can be used for the remaining three to five minutes of class time:

Sum it up

Ask students to summarize the day's lessons by:

writing a paragraph or two; or

drawing a web or mind map about the lesson's content.

Play BINGO!

Show a list of vocabulary words you discussed today and ask students to choose 5 and write down them down on their notebook. Give the definition of a random word from the list but don't say the word itself. If students think they have the word you defined, they tick it. The first student to tick all 5 words they had chosen shouts BINGO and wins the game.

Download BINGO ready-to-play PPT here!

Gamify Quiz

Make a very short wrap up quiz on Kahoot and watch students review the lesson while having fun! Use the remaining time to let students respond to a survey question.

Speaking of games, you can download my Jeopardy template on TpT!

Challenge the Teacher

Let students make up questions for you to answer about today's lesson. In turn, you can ask them higher order questions to see if they can beat you.

Exit Pass

A good way to end the lesson is to ask students to produce something either written or spoken in order to leave the room. This strategy is well-known as Exit Ticket where student give you something as they exit the door. This can be done in many different ways:

Ask the students to tell you orally one or two new vocabulary words they have learned from your class today.

Ask the student to self-rate their understanding and write down one or two things they would like to know more about in the next lesson.

Write questions or vocabulary words on 10 sticky notes and hide them under random desks. Students who sit where the post-it notes are will answer the questions before leaving the room.

Round Robin

Round Robin is a brainstorming technique that encourages contributions from all participants. Ask students to form a circle and then start by giving a review question (e.g What have you learned today? or Share one vocabulary you have learned today.). Working clockwise, each one will verbally give an answer until a full circle has been completed. Since each student can only give one thing, this gives more students a chance to respond.

Snowball Fight

This really works well with elementary and middle school kids. Ask students to write a question about the day's lesson on a piece of paper. Tell them to crumple up the paper and have a "snowball fight." After a few seconds, ask students to pick up one paper and face a partner.They will read the question and share the answer with each other. Repeat until the bell rings.

Think, Pair, Share!

Think, Pair, Share! is good closure activity to go beyond vocabulary words. Since most lessons in ESL are theme-based (e.g Food, Countries, Family and Friends), you can ask a higher level question about the topic for this activity.

Give students 2 minutes to think about their response to the question.

Let them pair up or face their partner.

Give 3 minutes to share their answer with each other!

Journal Entry

You can also make journal writing a routine for closure. Students can write 3-5 vocabulary words and use them in a sentence. They can also answer a reflective question about the topic you discussed. The bottomline is to always give them a chance to reflect about the lessons you teach.

Ball Toss

Students toss a ball from one to another. The student who catches the ball will quickly give one thing he/she learned in the class today. A variation is to pass the ball counterclockwise while a music is playing. Whoever is holding the ball when you pause the music will verbally share something.

Fishbowl

Ask students to write a question on a scratch paper about today's topic. Collect all the papers and put them in a bowl. Ask a volunteer to pick one paper from the container. Let him/her read out and answer the question. Continue until the time is over.

Conclusion

When students understand that the end of lesson activities are an integral part of your overall lesson, they are more likely to think twice before packing up to go to their next class!

Are you on Pinterest? Pin this post!

If you have a favorite closure activity, please let us know in the comments!

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End of Lesson Activities for ESL Classes

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We all understand the importance of leading in a topic and making sure that students are focused and are ready to learn. That's why most ESL teachers tend to focus their energy on warm-ups and ice breakers. More often than not, end of lesson activities are neglected.

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Very important tips about young learners

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Joan Kang Shin - Keys to Success in Teaching English to Young Learners

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Some tips and ideas for your lesson planning

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by Tara Arntsen 994,053 views

Writing a lesson plan will ensure that you are prepared for your class and will make it run more smoothly. It is important to break the material up into several sections and choose activities suitable for each. Knowing approximately how much time an activity will take is important, but after the first lesson you may need to adjust things accordingly. It is best to be flexible seeing as different classes will respond to material differently. If at any point students struggle, you will have to dedicate more time to instruction or drilling before moving on to practice activities. For the purposes of this example let's assume that an English class is forty-five minutes long.

Does your own lesson plan look like this? Image credit: Chris Campbell, Flickr

How To Write a Perfect Lesson Plan

1. Warm up
A warm up activity can be used in a number of ways. It can get your students thinking about material that will be used later on in the class, review material from a previous class, or simply get your students thinking in English, moving around, or awake. This activity should only take up a small portion of your lesson, perhaps five minutes.

2. Introduction
A good introduction will create a need for students to learn the material you are going to present and get them interested in the day's topic. This is the part of the lesson where the teacher does the most talking so try to get students involved and use choral repetition to keep students talking about half the time. Depending on how complex the topic is or how much new vocabulary there is, the introduction could take some time but in most cases, about ten minutes should be sufficient.

3. Practice
The practice activity would normally be about ten minutes and have students working individually or in pairs. Practicing model dialogues, completing worksheets, and doing short activities would be appropriate. This may take about ten minutes including going over the answers or having some demonstrations.

4. Production
In the production activity students should have to produce material on their own. Rather than reading sentences, perhaps they have to answer questions or make their own sentences. Longer activities such as board games, which can be played in groups, or activities for the whole class, where students work in teams, would be best. The remaining class time can be devoted to this activity.

5. It is a good idea to plan another five minute activity that can be done at the end of class as a review or used as the warm up in the following lesson. If the production activity does not take up the remaining portion of the class period, you have a backup plan.

The idea behind a lesson plan is that another teacher could pick it up and successfully teach your class without further instructions.

Important
When writing lesson plans, be sure to include:

* What part of the textbook you are covering in the lesson
* The target structure
* New vocabulary
* Directions for all the activities you intend to use
* The approximate time each section of your lesson will take

The idea behind a lesson plan is that another teacher could pick it up and successfully teach your class without further instructions. If there is an activity where you plan to ask the students questions so that they use the past tense in their responses, write down the questions you plan to ask. It is more difficult to think of appropriate questions on the spot and you are more likely to ask them a question using vocabulary they are unfamiliar with as well. If there is a group activity in the lesson, write down about how many students should be in each group because two to four students is a lot different than five to ten. Writing out your lesson plan can also help you figure out what material you must prepare for a lesson because if your production activity will only take about ten minutes, then you are obviously going to need an additional activity to end the class with.

Not all lessons will be conducted the same. In some instances, the introduction of new material may take an entire lesson or the production activity may be an entire lesson. It is always good to have familiar activities to fall back on in case something doesn't work quite the way you had planned. If students are playing the board game without actually speaking, in other words just moving their pieces around the board, they are not getting the necessary practice so you may have to either join the group having difficulties or change activities altogether.

At any rate, lesson plans are enormously helpful and if the following year you find yourself teaching the same material, preparation will be a breeze.

Do you have any advice on how to write lesson plans? Please share your best practices in the comments below!

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How to Write a Lesson Plan: 5 Secrets of Writing Fantastic Lesson Plans

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Writing a lesson plan will ensure that you are prepared for your class and will make it run more smoothly. It is important to break the material up into several sections and choose activitie