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When teaching a language its good to be creative to keep the class interesting and fun. Using the textbooks can become predictable and boring. You shouldn’t disregard the book entirely but mix up the lesson to create a variety in the lesson plan. The students will be more awake and intrigued if the teacher keeps them on their toes not knowing what activity may be next. From the perspective of a student, the last thing a student wants is to sit in a boring class for half an hour or so. When creating materials for your students there are many factors that need to be considered before you put it out for your students. When using songs and music there are some things to consider. First you must make sure that the songs/music are relevant to the lesson and school appropriate. Relevancy and appropriateness is a must you do not want to introduce random songs to the students for that will confuse the students and possibly upset your employers for not being efficient. Once you aware of the topic for your lesson you must take into consideration the age group you are addressing. For example younger learners would prefer rhymes rather than pop songs and it’s perfectly fine to make up your own rhymes using the new learned vocabulary. As for older learners they would prefer more pop songs that are popular with them. If using new words be sure to help the students understand. Younger learners enjoy moving and dancing around but that is not the case with older learners they may feel embarrassed. Activities more appropriate for the older age groups involve more writing and analyzing lyrics but do not over do it. Using games for learning purposes are so much fun! You can literally use any board game you played growing up its just a matter of making applicable for the lesson. Be sure that the game is appropriate for the age group you are addressing if not any game can be adjusted with some creativity and effort. Once you figure out what is the objective is for the lesson it should be easier manipulating the game to fit the lesson. Some fun games to use are Hangman, Monopoly, Pictionary, and Battleship and even make your own trivia games. Stories are good for building vocabulary and are beneficial for any level. Using the right stories you can really motivate the students to learn. Choosing level appropriate books will help the students in all four learning skills, reading, writing, speaking and listening. Some activities can be assigning the students characters from the story and act out the story; the students may also read out loud. Depending on the language level the students can write their own stories either individually or in groups. The younger the age group the more they like to move so acting out activities may be more appropriate where as for the older learners would be too embarrassed. To conclude when creating material it is important to keep in mind different factors. Relevancy and appropriateness of the activity is very important for any activity. That means taking into consideration the age groups and the learning levels. Another important factor is to remember to make the activities fun and effective.
