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After obtaining my TEFL certificate, I plan to teach children ages 4-8 years English in my home. My target audience for English lessons will be local Chinese children, most of which have some exposure to English language, either in a local Chinese school or from their parents. I will keep the class size small- maximum 10 students- as I plan to teach largely by experiential learning. Since children in this age group have relatively short attention spans, I will need to prepare many activities, with enough variety to be interesting, but within a theme of the lesson plan. In taking the online course, I learned that the lesson plan does not need to be so strict and that I should be flexible, depending on the students’ needs and comprehension of the lesson. Therefore, I will prepare more activities than time allows, to be on the safe side to keep the students engaged. I decided to use experiential learning for a significant portion of my teaching curriculum for a few reasons. 1. I will be teaching in my home, where I have some pets, a kitchen and large living room suitable for playing games. 2. I believe that kids between ages 4-8 enjoy learning via experiential activities and prefer this methodology compared to more traditional teaching activities. 3. The activities that I plan to use will reinforce vocabulary that will be very useful for the children in their daily lives, so more likely to be retained and understood. Some of the activities that I plan to use for experiential learning are cooking & baking, walking dog, feeding pets, collecting chicken eggs, housekeeping, and gardening. In using cooking and baking as an experiential task, the students will learn more than just vocabulary. It will also be a way to teach them about nutrition and provides for sensory and tactile learning experiences. In addition, it will allow for them to learn about sequencing and sharpen their math skills. By having to follow directions and knowing that they will have to carry out the tasks in sequence, the students listening skills will also be challenged. And, they can enjoy the results at the end of class! Most of the other activities that I plan to use for experiential learning will involve being outdoors. I think this will help to keep their attention, as it will vary the learning environment. I will prepare prior to class by putting labels on a lot of things outdoors and making flashcards for review when we go back inside into the classroom. Items that I will label will include things used to care for animals and different types of plants, flowers and vegetation. For the engage part of the session about pet care, I will ask them about their own pets and have them identify responsibilities of pet ownership, writing the list on the whiteboard. I will then apply the boomerang technique by immediately taking them outdoors to tend to the chicken and dog, (= activate), then return inside to do some worksheets with pet-related questions and possibly play a game of hangman, (= study). For the final activate stage, I will ask them to make a list of all the things they will need to prepare to have a new pet and then share with the class. If I have 8 or more students, I will let them do this in pairs. In summary, by using experiential learning techniques, I hope to effectively manage short attention spans of young students and enhance their English learning experience by giving them a hands-on experience in everyday life activities.
