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Teach English in Dingshan Zhen - Bazhong Shi

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Work with small children is full of both joyful and stressful moments, especially for a young teacher, who doesn’t have work experience. A year ago, I started teaching English in a kindergarten is Asia, and I had to understand many things from my own mistakes. What difficulties may arise for a young teacher, what are the specifics of working in kindergarten and how not to go crazy after 12 months of work with children? What mistakes have I noted in my own work and what advice can I give to inexperienced teachers, who really care about their students’ progress? Mistake #1: You don’t keep your composure. Children often do things without thinking about whether it is good or bad. They can be naughty and sometimes even ungovernable. But in any case, don’t show your anger to kids, don’t take their antics personally and don’t try to revenge by punishing the child. As a teacher you can be silly sometimes, but not childish – otherwise this work won’t bring pleasure either to you or to the kids. Teacher should understand that children do these things not because they are evil. Most likely, you did not set boundaries in relations with children and did not explain them the rules of behavior in the classroom. Do not expect the children themselves to guess what they can do and what not. If you, in response to their antics, raise your voice or apply punishments for the slightest offense, you will lose the trust of the children and possibly destroy their motivation to learn. Keep calm always – it’s a sure way to maintain authority and establish discipline in the classroom. Mistake #2: You expect too much. Your kindergarten students are kids from 3 to 6 years old. Don’t expect them to be able to sit on the chairs for 30-40 minutes without moving, silently and enthusiastically listening to the teacher’s words. No matter, how charismatic you are, children will inevitably lose concentration if the pace of your lesson is too slow or the activity is too long. This is one of the main features of working with preschoolers – their motivation to study is directly related to the degree of the them feeling fun at the moment. If they are attracted – they will learn. Therefore, if students are distracted during the lesson, then the lesson plan needs to be adjusted. Mistake #3: Same games, same tools. In order to keep the attention of children and their involvement in the process, diversity is necessary. Do not forget to affect the various senses. For vision we use colorful flash cards, cartoons, toys and books. For hearing we sing songs, learn chants and read books aloud. Tactile sensations and fine motor skills – here you can use different craft on the topic studied. For example, for studying the alphabet, teacher can: - Draw the letters and some pictures that will help the children create in their minds a connection between a certain letter and a word that begins with this letter (A is for “apple”, B is for “ball”). - Let the children listen the sounds, words or sentences and offer them to be recreated. Also, the ABC songs and phonics songs are quite useful. - Ask kids to make the letter shape using the colorful sticks, paper stripes, toy blocks etc. The magnetic alphabet is also good for kids to guess the letters by touch. Mistake #4: Chaotic drilling. If the teacher doesn’t understand what he wants to teach the children, this leads to chaos in the lesson. The activities are scattered and the children don’t remember anything after that. In my lessons, I usually use the scheme “from the general to the particular”. If we learn a few new words or phrases, then at first the games to consolidate the studied will cover the whole group so that the children respond or react all together. Then we can go to the games in small groups, 5-6 people. And finally, we can go to the games where 1 or 2 kids participate. For the babies groups the middle step can be skipped. When learning a new word, the child must first be able to find it among others. The next step is to recognize the word and name it. And finally, the child must be able to name the word himself, preferably in the sentence. Much of the writing above seems obvious, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, I constantly observe these mistakes in my colleagues’ lessons, and I myself am not always able to follow the right way 100%. Work with preschoolers is a wonderful job, though not an easy one. Seeing how your students are making progress in learning a language, how enthusiastic and joyful they are is a great reward.


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