Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Jianzhang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Changzhi Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
During my senior year of college, I taught 21 kindergarteners in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Before the semester started, I expected that teaching this age group would be extremely challenging. This was also my first experience teaching such a large class size of such a young age and I was concerned that it would be too much to handle on my own. Along with this, the average American kindergartener cannot read or write, which could limit potential activities and force me to alter my teaching style. Once the semester started, I found out that my kindergarten students already knew how to act like students; they sat quietly in their seats and actively engaged. However, the main challenge I ran into was holding the attention of my kindergarteners. Because kindergarteners are usually four or five years old, they have shorter attention spans than their older counterparts. Over the course of teaching this class, I learned how to organize activities that would keep the students involved for the duration of the lesson. One thing that I changed was the intonation of my voice; I used a more exaggerated and inquisitive tone and asked my questions at a higher pitch than my normal voice. I quickly realized that I had to limit my talking time because writing on the board was difficult as many students could not read yet and I could not lecture for very long without engaging students or it would lead to an attention decrease. Therefore, I changed all of my board work to be question and answer work and I used a lot of drawing. At the beginning of each class, I would introduce a topic using a brief video or a fun game on the floor where students had the opportunity to be physically active. At the time I called this a hook. However, I now realize that what I was doing was very similar to the Engage phase of the Engage, Study, Activate lesson plan. For example, if I was teaching students animal vocabulary we would all sit in a circle and I would ask each student his/her favorite animal and what sound that animal makes. These simple questions helped me gain the students’ attention. I also planned a lot of handouts and individual drawing assignments for my students. I found that in order to keep students with shorter attention spans interested in the lesson I had to organize activities that were hands on. I spoke a little during the activities but did most of my teaching between activities. By interspersing activities throughout the lesson, I could discuss each activity intermittently and ask the students follow-up questions about it to ensure they were grasping the concepts. For example, if the object of a lesson was to be able to identify the four layers of the Earth, I had students draw a picture of their idea of what the Earth looked like at the beginning of the lesson and then at the end of the lesson they made their own model of the Earth showing the four layers by using playdough. Following this activity, I verbally asked them, “How many layers of the earth are there?”, “What are the layers of the Earth?”, and “What layer do we live on?” These short hands-on activities help students stay on track with the lesson plan and actively engage with and absorb the lesson material. Modeling a lesson plan in this way also allowed for a lot of repetition, which is extremely beneficial for teaching children.
