TEFL Animas

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas In this blog post, we will look at an actual example of an ESA straight arrow lesson plan. We will include examples of the activities used and their purpose. You can adapt this plan to a variety of other uses and levels. Straight arrow ESA Lesson Plan Class level: Elementary Number of students: 8 Lesson aim: After the lesson the students should be able to look at an animal and make sentences to say what it “can and can’t” do. Sample sentences when looking at the picture of an elephant. It can walk. It can’t fly. Show the students a video of animals and they are going to say what they like about those animals and try to create a list of...  [Read more]

Anna Domiczek TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Preschool curriculum or lesson plan designed for English language learners should incorporate several basic and common themes. Those popular themes created for young learners will introduce students to new, interesting vocabulary words and phrases. Learning about animals, clothing, food, family, shapes, colors, numbers, or daily activities makes students deeply engaged in learning. They are discovering the world around them versus memorizing/repeating abstract words and phrases. Thanks to such theme-based lessons, English language students genuinely engage with the content being taught and make real-life connections while developing new...  [Read more]

  Now an example of a straight arrow ESA lesson for our engage phase. What we're going to do is to show the students a video of animals and they are going to say what they like about those animals and try to create a list of some more. So, remember what we're trying to do here is to get the students talking and thinking in English. We're using a typical engage activity, which is to create a list and we try to make sure that all the students have been involved in some way in creating those lists. Moving on to the study phase, the first part is going to be the board work and the teacher is going to try to elicit from the students what each of those animals can and can't do. Typically, what the students will say is just single words, so "run," "jump," "fly," etc. What we would then...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Games are often used in the classroom to aid in the learning process. They are effective in keeping attention and interest by making learning fun. Flashcards are a useful tool when learning English and can be used in many games and activities. Flashcards can contain anything from pictures of fruits and animals to numbers and vocabulary words. The website eslkidsstuff.com provides many different games involving flashcards. All games could be adapted to any level of a learner, but the following games were chosen for younger children keeping in mind their need to move around and have fun to remain focused and interested. "But a child's attention span - their willingness to stay rooted in one activity- is often fairly...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Flashcards are a proven way to learn new information. Their use however, does not need to be monotonous or boring. Make your own, play a game, show the card, and combine it with art, put them in sequence, or create and fill-in sentences. These ideas will stimulate both sides of the brain by combining thinking and doing. This will also keep the students attentive. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Corby K. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The students will get twice as much exposure to the words if they create the flashcards themselves. They learn while creating and also later when using them. One way to use this idea would be...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Stories provide a natural and relevant context for the exposure to English language and storytelling built on the children’s innate capacity for fantasy and imaginative play, making it an essential aspect to be integrated into language lessons. Beyond just language skills, students are also able to acquire critical thinking skills such as predicting, hypothesizing, categorizing, sequencing, and inferring meaning through various storytelling activities. Stories are also used to enhance children’s concentration skills and develop moral and emotional intelligence by teaching students to empathize with the characters in the story. Storytelling can be extended to include activities for children to retell, act out,...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Alumni Experiences As an aspiring TEFL teacher, I have to be ready to teach students of all ages. While the language and lesson-planning follow frameworks that stay consistent for all students, the topics I utilize depend on who I am teaching; for example, the ESA lesson plan works for all classrooms, but different students require different engage-phase activities - a game of battleships is better suited for young learners than adults. In this report, I explore the similarities and differences between teaching young and adult learners. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kevin Y. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In general, adults seeking to learn...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I have a great fascination and interest to teach English as well as proper study techniques to students of all ages. This next year, I plan on moving to China to teach English to young children. When contemplating these future endeavors, I plan on implementing songs as a method to help young children learn English. Singing songs is a fun, interactive method that engages the attention of children. When teaching children, I argue that singing songs is a great method to cultivate and maintain a strong foundation in their English language level. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Oni M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Young children...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences If someone asks me what I think about teaching kindergarten children as a native English teacher (NET), I would say that it is one of the happiest and most rewarding experiences that I have ever received. But, if someone asked me what I thought about teaching kindergarten children when I first started, I would have responded differently. I would say, “I can’t seem to get my students’ attention,” or “Some of my students still have trouble learning new words.” It was after a few weeks into teaching and some wonderful advice from my coworkers I realized that I had overlooked the fact that the students’ age, perception, and interests play an important part in teaching. When I took those factors into...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Learning English as a foreign language in preschools have become an increasing trend in many different countries across the world. Parents are willing to invest money for the kids to start learning English at a tender age as their ability to grasp the language will be easier. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Diana N. There are various ways of transferring knowledge based on fun EFL activities. Various techniques and numerous tools are the main methods of imparting knowledge the children. It has been scientifically proven that children at the ages of 3-6 have a strong potential to acquire new information, especially when English is made interesting. ...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Teaching Ideas Flashcard is an indispensable tool that every teacher needs during the studying process. Regardless of the age of the students, it can be used effective equal with young learners or adults. Usually, in the ESL classes, the teacher uses flashcards when they need to teach new or review the previous vocabulary. It’s also one of the easiest ways to add some games into your lesson, cause mostly it doesn’t need special preparations. Young learners especially like flashcard games because usually it’s active games and allow them to have fun during the lesson. There are different types of flashcards, for instance, on one side could be a word or picture on another side – it's the English translation. Those types of...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Teaching English online is becoming a more and more lucrative career for many TEFL and TESOL certified teachers out there. You can work from home or go full digital nomad and travel the world while teaching a couple of classes of English a day. To help you create fun and interactive lessons, we have compiled a summary of 5 amazing props with investing in for teaching English online below. Who doesn’t love playing with plush toys? Having a good selection of the most common foods and animals can go a LONG way when teaching English online. Using plush props is a lot of fun and can be used in so many different ways: you can use them to teach numbers and counting, you can use them to talk about different colors and also...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences This blog post was written by recent ITTT graduate Kaitlin F., who shares her 10 years of teaching experience with us talking about the many different jobs in the English education field she was fortunate to work in. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Katilin F. An educator by definition is a person who provides instruction and/or education. In my own personal experience, educators in my life have not always been individuals that have gained their qualifications via professional schooling, but also by training or from their own experiences. This has transcended into what I believe an educator truly is. My first experience with teaching began at the tender age of thirteen at my dance school....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Teaching is a way of imparting knowledge to students. When teaching English imparting in language, it means the teacher will be imparting knowledge about the language to his/her students, according to the level of the student eg starters, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate or upper-intermediate level. There are many teaching methods and these include gramma translation, presentation/practice/production, communicative language teaching, the silent way, suggestopedia, the lexical approach and audio-lingual method (drilling). This paper will focus on analyzing drilling as a teaching method so that one can weigh on whether it is an effective teaching method or not. This post was written by our TEFL...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Every preschool/ kindergarten level teacher will swear by the need for excellent constructive circle time. It sets the tone for what is to follow throughout the day. A good circle time should be welcoming, engaging, and informative. Children should not be forced into participation; instead should be drawn into it. Circle time is the classic example of a good "engage" stage in an ESA teaching style. Therefore, during circle time, you introduce a topic that is to be covered that day or week. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Najia S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I’m a young ESL teacher in China, and I is Chinese. English is a compulsory subject for all Chinese students and reading skills have gained raising importance in the national tests for English subjects. Besides this, reading itself is fun and beneficial. I always try to let my students “learn through English” instead of “learning English”. From my experience, a successful reading class for young learners should consist of the following steps: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Fang W. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. If the book is about animals. I may ask the students some questions like “what animals do you know?”...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Through my experience as an Assistant Language Teacher in Japan, there have been numerous difficulties and challenges my students face in learning the English language. My students are primarily between the ages of 5 and 15. These challenges involve the pronunciation difficulties the students face coming from Japanese pronunciation, as well as the methodology of teaching English in Japan They may not apply to all of Japan but are definitely prominent issues within my area. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate James W. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The most commonly known challenge in learning English for Japanese people is...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The theory of multiple intelligences states that there are eight different intelligences human potential can be expressed through, including linguistic intelligence (word smart), logical-mathematical intelligence (number/reasoning smart), spatial intelligence (picture smart), bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (body smart), musical intelligence (music smart), interpersonal intelligence (people smart), intrapersonal intelligence (self-smart) and naturalist intelligence (nature smart). This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Melanie L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Individuals have strengths in different areas of intelligence and...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Teaching Ideas Throughout this course, my favorite units have been the ones that teach us how to lead an effective lesson and have a fun classroom environment. I love all the suggestions and teaching ideas they give, and it excites me to think about using those for my future lessons. For that reason, I chose the topic of five activities with flashcards. This essay will be a perfect opportunity for me to delve further into my favorite part of this class and plan some fun things to do. When I move abroad I plan on teaching young children, mainly kindergarten-aged, so my five activities will be geared towards young learners. They need way more energy, fun, and excitement in their lessons than teenage or adult learners because their...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Troubleshooting TEFL is the most interesting, culturally challenging, and socially difficult there is. It is as much a cultural and social exercise in communicating with and managing people, as it is an intellectual exercise in simply conveying language skills to academic students enrolled in an institution of learning. Furthermore, it is more complex and varied due to age differences, cultural diversity, and discrepancies in the motivation of students enrolling in TEFL classes. A teacher who teaches her/ his native language to native speakers of the same language, in her/ his native country will have it significantly easier when troubleshooting problem situations because such a teacher will know what’s...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Language is a uniquely human cognitive skill. Undeniably animals communicate in a variety of ways: bee dance for honeybees, bird song for aviary species, pheromones for ants, etc. However human language remains unique in its complexity and variety. Human language has the unique characteristic of being able to describe abstract concepts such as love and belief and temporal displacements such as past events or future plans. Even our closest evolutionary relatives are not able to acquire such complex language structures. Scientists have attempted to teach different ape species human language, and despite years of conditioning and training, the members of these species have a vocabulary store of no more than 1,000...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The idea of flashcards is essentially very simple. They are meant to introduce vocabulary and review existing vocabulary already learned in the classroom. Other than this, flashcards can be placed around the classroom for students' reference when performing activities. They may be used in drilling activities as well but this may also get boring for the students, and should be mainly used for sparking creativity and classroom games. Some of the possible flashcard ideas include, and are not limited to the following; This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Hussein D. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Name cards are made for the students...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Storytelling in the classroom can seemingly be one of the most diverse and engaging ways to help students learn English as a second language. Storytelling for the purposes of this essay is a broad term that I am using to refer not only to students telling stories about what they did on the weekend for example but also using existing stories that are well known and loved, for example, Harry Potter or the Lion King. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jamie S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Firstly, classroom activities using storytelling when centered around the students are a great way for students to get to know one another....  [Read more]

Simon ITTT TEFL Information It’s great to move somewhere new with your TEFL skills and to discover new places but, although traveling is exciting, there are times when you may want to do something without having to move too far from your new base. There are plenty of pastimes or hobbies that can be taken up when moving around from place to place, some of which might help you add variety to your English lessons for your students. For example, you can use your students to teach you about local cuisine to develop their vocabulary associated with food, language patterns for describing how to cook things, or how to give recommendations. They learn, you learn! Here are some other ideas for you to think about. When living abroad in a new culture,...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Storytelling in the classroom can seemingly be one of the most diverse and engaging ways to help students learn English as a second language. Storytelling for the purposes of this essay is a broad term that I am using to refer not only to students telling stories about what they did on the weekend for example but also using existing stories that are well known and loved, for example, Harry Potter or the Lion King. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jamie S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. With appropriate facilitation, a student can turn a basic conversation about how many people they have in their family, into a story...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences I started my teaching career in 2016. I was an international student in London, doing a part-time job as a private Mandarin tutor for covering my living cost. In London, I was teaching Mandarin for young learners, age between 3-15-year-old from 2016-2018. After I came back to my country in 2019, I have started to teach English for Kindergarten students age between 3-8-year-old in a private English School. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Nina S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. When I started to be a private Mandarin tutor, I did not have any teaching experience. The reason that made me decide to teach young learners was...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Legendary musician Paul McCartney once said, or rather sang, “When you’ve got a job to do you’ve got to do it well. You’ve got to give the other fellow hell.” I don’t believe anybody wants to be the middle of the road teacher, who just gets through each day, though I have seen many teachers who are. Before I started, I asked myself what makes the best kind of teacher and who were the best teachers in my life? There are many styles of teacher, but the answer I came to is the inspiring style of teacher – the teachers who made me WANT to learn and to go out and read and study on my own. The way they did that was by using their skills to make learning interesting and irresistible. As a teacher you need...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Teaching Ideas What are ice breakers and when and where do we use them? In this blog post, we will cover these issues and give actual examples of activities you can use with your classes. Icebreakers are games or activities that are designed to ‘break the ice’. Typically you would use these kinds of games or activities at the beginning of a new school year, when you have a new set of students, or a new class that you don't know and they don't know you. You also can use icebreakers to get your students going at the start of the lesson speaking in English and that's really important as you don't want to come into the classroom and say, “Open your books to page five” and then start studying....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In recent years, technology has become an integral part of our daily life. Businesses, hospitals, pharmacies, banks, shopping habits, and even our social life, all rely heavily on the use of technology. The education system is certainly no exception. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Ayman H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. One of the most obvious advantages of using technology in education is easy to access to information. With online resources being just a click away, students and teachers alike can now have instant access to unlimited learning and teaching resources such as websites, podcasts, electronic books (e-books),...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Education is essential for each of us. The English language is now a worldwide language, and we can hear this language almost everywhere we go, whether it is an ordinary holiday or some working seminar. , we hear the English language all over the world. Some people start to study it sooner. Some people learn later. But it is essential to begin teaching the English language and not even the English language but another language at the beginning of our lives, so that is the main reason it is important to teach English in kindergarten. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Gabriel K. Please note that this blog post might not...  [Read more]