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Halloween is one of the few topics that genuinely motivates reluctant speakers, if the activities stay language-focused rather than becoming an arts-and-crafts lesson. Five ideas below, each under 10 minutes of prep, covering vocabulary, speaking, listening and writing, with one note on handling the cultural sensitivity question for classes where Halloween isn’t widely celebrated.
Halloween sits in an unusual spot for ESL teachers. It’s genuinely exciting for a lot of students, the vocabulary is vivid and memorable, and it gives you a built-in reason to break from the normal lesson rhythm. It’s also easy to turn into forty minutes of colouring pumpkins with no actual English practice happening. The activities below are built to avoid that trap, every one of them has a clear language output, not just a seasonal theme.
1. Costume Description Swap (Speaking, A2–B1)
Give each student a card with a half-described costume (“a glowing creature with three eyes who lives under the stairs”) and have them describe it to a partner, who draws it without seeing the card. Then compare drawings to descriptions. It’s a classic information-gap format, but the Halloween setting pushes students toward more adjectives and spatial language than a neutral topic usually produces.
Prep: five minutes to write eight to ten cards. Language focus: adjectives, prepositions of place, descriptive questions (“does it have…”, “is it wearing…”).
2. The Haunted House Story Chain (Writing/Speaking, B1–B2)
Sit students in a circle. The first student writes one sentence of a haunted-house story on a shared document or paper, then folds it over so only the last sentence is visible, and passes it on. Each student reads only the previous sentence and adds the next one. Read the full story aloud at the end, it’s almost always chaotic and genuinely funny.
Prep: none beyond explaining the rules once. Language focus: past tense narrative, cohesive devices (then, suddenly, meanwhile), sentence-level reading under light pressure.
3. Would You Rather: Halloween Edition (Speaking, all levels)
A reliable warm-up format gets a seasonal refresh: “Would you rather trick-or-treat in complete silence, or sing a song at every door?” “Would you rather fight one vampire-sized spider, or one hundred spider-sized vampires?” Students justify their choice to a partner before switching. This works at every level because the grammar demand (would + base verb) is simple but the discussion range is wide open.
Prep: ten minutes to write ten questions, or reuse a printable set. Language focus: would + rather, giving reasons (because, since, the thing is).
4. Spooky Story Listening with a Twist Ending (Listening, B1+)
Read a short, simple ghost story aloud (two to three minutes), but stop just before the twist ending and have students predict what happens next in pairs before you reveal it. This combines listening comprehension with the same prediction/inference skills worth building year-round, Halloween just makes the prediction genuinely suspenseful instead of academic.
Prep: find or adapt a two-minute story in advance, five minutes. Language focus: past narrative tenses, making and justifying predictions.
5. Trick-or-Treat Dialogue Practice (Speaking, A1–A2)
For lower levels, a simple functional dialogue built around trick-or-treating: greeting, asking for candy, complimenting a costume, saying goodbye. Students practise in pairs, then perform for the class in costume if anyone has one, though it works perfectly well without. This is less about creativity and more about giving true beginners a genuinely usable exchange they could have in real life.
Prep: write or print a short model dialogue, five minutes. Language focus: polite requests, compliments, basic social exchanges.
A note on cultural sensitivity
Halloween isn’t celebrated the same way everywhere, and in some classrooms it carries religious or cultural associations that make it a poor fit as a central theme. None of the five activities above require students to personally celebrate or endorse Halloween, they’re built around the vocabulary and story conventions, which can be framed as “how this particular English-speaking tradition works” rather than an invitation to participate. If you’re ever unsure, a quick “we’re looking at this as a cultural topic, not asking anyone to take part” framing at the start of the lesson covers it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What level is Halloween vocabulary appropriate for?
Basic Halloween vocabulary (costume, candy, pumpkin, scary) works from A1 upward. The more abstract or idiomatic language (haunted, eerie, creeping through the house) is better suited to B1 and above.
How much class time should a Halloween lesson take?
A single 45–60 minute lesson is usually enough. Spreading Halloween content across multiple lessons tends to dilute the novelty that makes it effective in the first place.
Do these activities work for online/one-to-one classes as well as groups?
Yes, with small adjustments. The costume description swap and would-you-rather format both adapt easily to a single student and teacher; the story chain needs at least three participants to work well.
What if some students don’t want to participate in Halloween-themed content?
Offer the same language objective through a neutral alternative, the “spooky story” listening activity works just as well with a mystery or adventure story instead of a ghost story, for instance. The language skill being practised matters more than the costume.
Context clues only work as a strategy if students can name which clue type they used, not just produce a lucky guess. Teach the four types explicitly (definition, synonym, contrast, example), use real texts rather than sentences written to order, make students commit to a guess and point to the evidence before you confirm anything, and treat “recognising a meaning” and “using the word later” as two separate skills with two separate exercises. A free, ready-made B1 worksheet built around this exact method is linked at the bottom.
Every teacher knows the moment: a student hits an unfamiliar word mid-sentence, their hand shoots up, and the reading stops cold. Multiply that by twenty students and a 400-word text, and a reading lesson turns into a vocabulary quiz nobody asked for.
Context clues fix this, but only if you teach them as a strategy rather than a single lesson you tick off once. Here’s how to make it stick, what tends to go wrong, and how to build it into a full scheme of work rather than a one-off worksheet.
Why “just guess from context” doesn’t work as an instruction
Tell a class to “use context clues” and you’ll get three kinds of response: strong readers who already do this instinctively, average readers who freeze because they don’t know what they’re meant to be looking for, and weaker readers who guess at random and get lucky or don’t. That split happens because “guess from context” isn’t a method, it’s the *name* of a skill with no steps attached. Students need the steps.
This matters more at higher levels, not less. A1–A2 learners usually encounter context clues through single, obvious examples. By B1–B2, texts carry three or four unfamiliar words per paragraph with much subtler support, and by C1 the clues are often implicit, spread across a whole sentence rather than sitting next to the word. Teaching the mechanism explicitly, early, pays off for years of reading afterwards.
Start with the four clue types, not a list of words
Give students the four types of clue by name first, with one clean example of each:
Definition – the meaning is explained directly, often after “which means” or “that is.”
Synonym – a similar word appears nearby.
Contrast – an opposite word shows up, usually signalled by “but,” “although,” or “unlike.”
Example – a list of examples makes the meaning obvious (“nocturnal animals, such as owls and bats”).
Once students can name the clue type, guessing stops feeling like luck and starts feeling like a skill they’re applying on purpose. It also gives you a shared vocabulary for feedback: “what type of clue is that?” is a much faster correction than re-explaining the whole strategy from scratch every time someone gets stuck.
A quick diagnostic before you start: put four sentences on the board, each using a different clue type with a nonsense word in place of the real one (“The gorb, or sudden loud noise, made everyone jump”). Ask students to guess the meaning and name the clue type. Whoever struggles with “name the clue type” rather than “guess the meaning” tells you exactly where to spend the lesson.
Pick a text where the clues are real, not planted
The fastest way to undermine this lesson is to use a text where the “clue” is a strained sentence written purely to justify the exercise. Students notice immediately, and the strategy starts to feel like a classroom trick rather than something they’d actually use outside it.
Look for authentic-feeling texts — a magazine-style article, a blog post, a short story — where the unfamiliar word already sits inside a sentence that explains, contrasts, or exemplifies it naturally. If you’re building your own text, write the full piece first and only bold the target words afterwards; it reads far more naturally than writing sentences around pre-chosen vocabulary.
Genre matters too. News and feature articles tend to over-supply definition clues (good for lower levels); opinion pieces and reviews lean on contrast (“the food was excellent, if a little overpriced”); narrative fiction relies heavily on example and situational clues, which are harder to spot and worth saving for B2 and above.
Resist the urge to confirm answers too early
This is the habit that undoes the whole lesson. A student guesses, looks up, and you nod or shake your head within two seconds. Do that enough times and the class stops reasoning and starts watching your face for the answer.
Instead:
Have students underline the clue in the text before they write a guess, not after.
Ask “what in the sentence told you that?” before confirming right or wrong.
Hold off on the full answer key until everyone has committed to a guess, even a wrong one.
A wrong guess with a clear reason behind it is a better sign of progress than a right guess with no reasoning at all. You can correct the first; the second will resurface as soon as the vocabulary changes.
Separate “guess the meaning” from “use the word”
A student can often identify what a word means without being able to produce it in a new sentence a week later. Treat these as two different skills with two different exercises: one matching or multiple-choice task to check recognition, and a separate gap-fill or sentence-writing task, ideally in a later lesson, to check production.
This is also where context clues earns its keep as an exam-prep skill, not just a reading strategy. Most standardised English tests include a vocabulary-in-context question type specifically, and students who’ve practised naming the clue type out loud tend to handle those questions faster and more confidently than students who were only ever told to “guess from context.”
Building it into a scheme of work, not a single lesson
A single context-clues lesson fades within a fortnight unless it’s revisited. Three ways to keep it alive without dedicating extra lesson time to it:
Flag it in every reading text you teach from this point on. Before any new reading task, ask “which word here would you have guessed six weeks ago, and which clue would help you now?”
Keep a running class list of words students successfully worked out from context, with the clue type noted next to each one. It becomes a visible record of a skill actually being used, not just taught.
Revisit at a harder level every term. The same four clue types apply at C1, just with subtler, more spread-out signals. Treat it as a skill with levels, not a topic you finish.
A ready-made starting point
If you want a worksheet built around exactly this approach, Context Clues: Guessing Meaning from Context pairs a short, genuinely engaging B1 text about why your brain loves a mystery with ten real context clues across all four types, a comprehension check, a clue-type identification exercise, and a discussion task to round it off. It’s the first in a short new series on reading skills — Making Inferences and Fact vs. Opinion follow it over the next few weeks.
Free to download, printable, and the answer key tells you exactly which clue type justifies each answer, so you’re never guessing either.
Frequently Asked Questions
What level should I start teaching context clues at?
As early as A2, with definition and example clues only — they’re the most explicit and easiest to spot. Save contrast clues for B1, when students have a firmer grip on linking words like “although” and “however,” and implicit clues (meaning spread across a whole sentence rather than signalled by one word) for B2 and above.
How many unfamiliar words should a context-clues text include?
For a single lesson, eight to twelve is usually enough. Much more than that and weaker students stop engaging with the reading itself and start treating the whole text as a decoding exercise.
What if a word genuinely can’t be guessed from context?
Say so. Not every word has to be guessable, and pretending otherwise teaches students to force a guess rather than recognise when a dictionary is actually the right tool. A text with one or two “you’d need to look this one up” words is more realistic than one engineered so every word is solvable.
Does this work for exam preparation as well as general reading?
Yes, and arguably it matters more there. Vocabulary-in-context questions appear across most major English exams (Cambridge, IELTS, TOEFL among them), and students who can name the clue type they used tend to work faster under time pressure than students relying on instinct alone.
Can I use this with a text the class already knows?
It’s better with a fresh text the first time, so students can’t simply recall the meaning from memory. Once the strategy is established, though, revisiting a familiar text and asking “what clue would have told you that, if you hadn’t already known it?” is a genuinely useful review exercise.
📋 In this article you’ll learn:· Which ESL classroom layout works best for grammar, speaking, and debate· How seating arrangement reduces student anxiety and boosts participation· A simple framework to think in modes — not just in furniture· 3 practical things you can try in your very next lesson
You walk into your classroom five minutes before your B1 group arrives. Desks in rows. Board ready. But today’s lesson is a debate about social media and mental health. You look at the room. Something feels off.
That feeling? Trust it. The physical setup of your ESL classroom is not just a logistical detail — it is a pedagogical choice. It signals what kind of learning is expected, who gets to talk, and how much space students have to take risks in a second language.
The good news: you don’t need a fancy new room. You just need to think intentionally about where the desks go — and match the setup to the task.
Why ESL Classroom Layout Matters More Than You Think
Most teacher training programs spend hours on lesson planning, grammar staging, and error correction. Seating? Maybe a paragraph. Yet research consistently shows that the physical environment shapes learning in significant ways.
Three ideas worth keeping in mind:
🧠 Emotional safety comes firstWhen students feel anxious or exposed, they simply speak less. As Stephen Krashen argued,emotional safety is a precondition for language acquisition. Creating a welcoming classroom starts before the first student walks in
🤝 Language is social — the room should reflect thatStudents acquire language by using it with others, not just by receiving it from the front.Arrangements that enable peer interaction create exactly the kind of output and negotiation of meaningthat drives real acquisition.
📐 Flexible rooms produce measurably better outcomesThe HEAD Project (University of Salford, 2015) found that flexible classroom design — includingmoveable furniture — accounted for up to 16% of the variation in student progress.That’s almost entirely within the teacher’s control.
Bottom line: before your next lesson, ask yourself — does this room support what students will actually do today?
Think in Modes, Not in Furniture
Before diving into the seven arrangements, here’s a quick mental model that will change how you plan classroom management in your ESL classes:
🗂️ The Four Modes🪑 Rows → Input Mode (teacher explaining, students focused forward)👥 Pairs → Practice Mode (controlled, low-stakes production)🟡 Clusters → Production Mode (collaborative tasks, projects, TBL)⭕ Circle → Reflection Mode (discussion, community, Socratic dialogue)
Most well-designed ESL lessons move through at least two of these modes. The seating arrangement is simply the physical expression of which mode you’re in. Switch the mode → shift the room.
The 7 Arrangements — and When to Use Them
There is no universally best ESL seating arrangement. Each one has a purpose. The skill is in matching the setup to the task.
1. Traditional Rows
The classic. All desks face forward, teacher at the front. It is teacher-centred by design — and that is not always a bad thing.
🪑 Traditional Rows
✅ Best for: Grammar presentations, listening exercises, dictations, test conditions, input-heavy phases.⚠️ Watch out for: Minimal student interaction. Back-row students disengage quickly.💡 Pro tip: No rearranging needed for pair work — ‘turn to your neighbour’ transforms rows into instant pairs in seconds.
Think of rows as your Input Mode. When students need to produce language together, it’s time to switch.
2. U-Shape / Horseshoe
Desks form a large U, with the teacher able to step inside the opening or move around the outside. Arguably the most versatile ESL classroom layout there is.
🔵 U-Shape / Horseshoe
✅ Best for: Whole-class discussions, debates, grammar review, presentations, feedback sessions.⚠️ Watch out for: Shy students have nowhere to hide — which can spike anxiety. Also requires more floor space.💡 Pro tip: Before opening to the whole group, give students 90 seconds in pairs first. No one speaks cold, and participation doubles.
In a B2 adult class discussing workplace culture, a U-shape shifts the dynamic immediately. Students address each other — not just the board. The conversation becomes noticeably more authentic.
3. Clusters / Group Tables
Desks pushed together into islands of 3–5 students. Your go-to for task-based learning and collaborative classroom management in ESL contexts.
🟡 Clusters / Group Tables
✅ Best for: Task-based learning, collaborative writing, project work, peer feedback, creative tasks.⚠️ Watch out for: Noise rises fast. One dominant student can take over. Backs to the board complicate whole-class instruction.💡 Pro tip: Assign roles before the task: timekeeper, language monitor, reporter. It distributes responsibility and reduces dominance dynamics immediately.
Clusters mirror real-world communication and support the kind of student autonomy that 21st-century language learning demands. Use them as your Production Mode.
4. Pairs / Buddy Seating
Students work in twos — side by side or face to face. Simple, powerful, and criminally underused as a deliberate seating choice.
👥 Pairs / Buddy Seating
✅ Best for: Information-gap tasks, dialogue practice, peer editing, speaking drills, lower-stakes production.⚠️ Watch out for: Fixed pairs can become a comfort zone — language fossilises around one partner’s level and habits.💡 Pro tip: Rotate pairs regularly. Different partners bring different vocabulary, accents, and interaction styles — exactly what a language learner needs.
The maths alone make the case: in a class of 24, a teacher-led question means one student speaks. In pairs, all 12 pairs speak simultaneously. Pair work multiplies speaking time by a factor of 12.
5. Circle / Roundtable
Everyone sits in one circle — teacher included. No front, no back, no hierarchy. This arrangement sends an unmistakable signal: today, we’re a community of speakers.
⭕ Circle / Roundtable
✅ Best for: Conversation classes, Socratic discussions, community-building, open-ended debate.⚠️ Watch out for: Intimidating for lower-proficiency learners who feel fully visible. Hard to use board or slides. Not practical above 25 students.💡 Pro tip: Use the circle for high-stakes moments — end-of-unit discussions or any lesson where you want students to feel genuinely heard.
In a C1 conversation class on ethics, moving to a circle changes everything. Students lean in, address each other by name, and the teacher speaks less. The circle doesn’t just change where people sit — it changes who has permission to lead.
6. Fishbowl
A small inner circle (4–6 students) holds a discussion while the rest observes, takes notes, and evaluates. Roles then rotate.
🐟 Fishbowl
✅ Best for: Advanced discussion, debate, academic discourse, and developing critical listening skills.⚠️ Watch out for: Outer circle students drift if their observation task isn’t structured. Inner circle pressure can spike anxiety.💡 Pro tip: Give observers a concrete job: track discourse markers, count hedging language, or evaluate argument strength. Watching becomes active learning.
Particularly powerful for B2+ groups preparing for speaking exams or professional contexts. Authentic audience awareness motivates speakers to use more precise, sophisticated language than in a low-stakes pair.
7. Flexible / Hybrid Seating
Rather than committing to one arrangement, you plan for movement. The room shifts to match the lesson phase — rows for input, pairs for practice, clusters for production, U-shape for feedback.
🔄 Flexible / Hybrid Seating
✅ Best for: Any lesson with varied activity types — which is most well-designed ESL lessons.⚠️ Watch out for: Transition time eats into lesson time if routines aren’t established early.💡 Pro tip: Teach the transitions explicitly in week one. Give signals names: ‘cluster time’, ‘circle up’. Within two lessons, students rearrange in under 60 seconds.
Flexible seating is less a single arrangement and more a mindset: the room serves the lesson, not the other way around.
How to Choose: Three Questions Before Every Lesson
1. What will students actually be doing? Listening to input → rows. Discussing in groups → clusters. Debating as a class → U-shape or circle.
2. Who is in the room? Shy beginners need lower-exposure setups first. Advanced adults thrive in circles. Young learners love the energy of clusters.
3. What are the room constraints? Small rooms and fixed furniture limit your options — but a half-U or staggered clusters still beat default rows.
And remember: you don’t have to choose just one. Moving between two or three arrangements across a 60-minute class is itself a form of language-rich stimulation. Variety of setup equals variety of interaction equals more acquisition opportunities. For more on building structure into your lessons, check out our classroom management plan guide.
Three Things to Try This Week
📌 Match the setup to the task — not to habitBefore your next lesson, look at your plan activity by activity.Ask: what interaction does each phase require? Then set the room accordingly — even mid-lesson.
📌 Rotate your pairings and groupingsIf you have fixed pairs or groups, change them. Regular rotation exposes students to different speechpatterns, vocabulary, and interaction styles. That variety is exactly what a language learner needs. If you’re looking for more ways to do that, these community building activities pair well with a flexible seating approach
📌 Try the same activity in two different setupsRun a discussion task once in rows and once in a U-shape or circle.Notice who speaks more, who engages differently. The contrast will sharpen your instincts fast.
Move the Desks, Change the Learning
Seating arrangement is one of the most immediate and underused tools in ESL classroom management. It costs nothing, requires no technology, and yet shapes who speaks, who listens, who feels safe, and what kind of learning takes place.
There is no perfect arrangement — only the right one for this lesson, with these students, right now. Once you start thinking that way, the furniture stops being a constraint and starts being a resource.
💬 Reflection QuestionWhat message does your classroom layout send about learning?Does it say ‘listen to me’ — or ‘talk to each other’?
🔁 Try This This WeekTeach the same activity twice — once in rows, once in a different arrangement.Notice who speaks more. Notice the energy shift.Then ask yourself: which version felt more like language learning?
Further Reading
Want to go deeper? These four are worth your time:
Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Pergamon — foundational reading on affective filter theory and what emotional safety has to do with acquisition.
Barrett, P. et al. (2015). Clever Classrooms: The HEAD Project. University of Salford — the most rigorous study on physical learning environments and outcomes. Freely available online.
Are you looking for a way to spice up your lessons on conditionals? In this guide, we’ll dive into the world of conditionals: with a comprehensive breakdown of each type of conditional, along with creative ideas and activities to help your students master these tricky sentences.
So, grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and let’s get started on this exciting journey through the land of conditionals!
Zero Conditional
The zero conditional is used to express general facts, scientific truths, or situations that are always true. Both the condition (if-clause) and the result refer to the present time.
Structure: If + present simple, present simple
Examples:
If you heat water to 100 °C, it boils.
If you don’t eat, you feel hungry.
If the sun is out, it’s a sunny day.
Practice activities
Have students write sentences about natural laws or universal truths using the zero conditional.
Give them prompts like “water” or “gravity” and ask them to create zero conditional sentences.
Quiz them by providing the “if” part and having them complete the “result” part, or vice versa.
First Conditional
The first conditional talks about real possibilities and their likely results in the present or future. The condition is in the present tense, and the result is in the future tense.
Structure: If + present simple, will/can/may + infinitive
Examples:
If I study hard, I will pass the exam.
If it rains later, we can stay inside and watch a movie.
If you don’t hurry, you may miss the bus.
Practice activities
Ask students to share their plans or intentions using the first conditional.
Give them hypothetical situations and have them express the possible consequences using first conditionals.
Role-play activities where students have to respond to different scenarios using first conditional sentences.
Second Conditional
The second conditional is used to discuss hypothetical or imaginary situations in the present or future and their potential consequences. The condition is in the past tense, and the result is in the present conditional.
Structure: If + past simple, would/could/might + infinitive
Examples:
If I won the lottery, I would buy a big house.
If she were a famous singer, she could perform in front of thousands of people.
If I had more time, I might take up a new hobby.
Practice activities
Have students share their dreams, wishes, or imaginary scenarios using second conditional sentences.
Give them prompts like “if you were a millionaire” or “if you could have any superpower” and have them respond using the second conditional.
Role-play activities where students have to express hypothetical situations and their consequences.
Third Conditional
The third conditional is used to talk about hypothetical situations in the past and their imaginary results or consequences. Both the condition and the result refer to the past.
Structure: If + past perfect, would/could/might + have + past participle
Examples:
If I had studied harder, I would have passed the exam.
If she hadn’t been late, she could have caught the train.
If you had told me earlier, I might have been able to help.
Practice activities
Ask students to share regrets or missed opportunities using the third conditional.
Give them prompts like “if you had worked harder” or “if you hadn’t forgotten” and have them complete the sentences.
Have them write short stories or narratives using third conditional sentences to express how things could have been different.
Mixed Conditionals
Mixed conditionals combine different types of conditionals in one sentence. There are two common combinations:
3rd/2nd Mixed Conditional
This combination uses the third conditional for the condition and the second conditional for the result. It expresses how a hypothetical situation in the past could have led to a different outcome in the present.
Structure: If + past perfect, would/could/might + infinitive
Examples:
If I had taken that job, I would be living in a different city now.
If you had studied abroad, you could be fluent in another language.
If she hadn’t missed the train, she might be at the meeting right now.
2nd/3rd Mixed Conditional
This combination uses the second conditional for the condition and the third conditional for the result. It expresses how a hypothetical situation in the present could have led to a different outcome in the past.
Structure: If + past simple/were, would/could/might + have + past participle
Examples:
If I were more organized, I would have finished the project on time.
If you had better time management skills, you could have achieved more by now.
If she were braver, she might have taken that opportunity last year.
Practice Activities
Provide examples of mixed conditionals and have students identify the different conditional types used.
Give them prompts or scenarios and ask them to create mixed conditional sentences.
Have them write short stories or narratives using mixed conditionals to express how past situations could have led to different present outcomes, or how present characteristics could have changed past results.
Ask students to share regrets about the past that affect their present (3rd/2nd), or personal characteristics that would have changed past outcomes (2nd/3rd).
Common Mistakes in Using Conditionals and How to Address Them
When teaching conditionals, you may encounter some common mistakes and challenges that your students face. Here are a few to watch out for and some strategies to help overcome them:
Mixing up the verb tenses and structures for different conditional types
To address this, provide plenty of examples and counterexamples to highlight the differences between conditional types. For instance, contrast a first conditional sentence like “If it rains tomorrow, I will stay home” with a second conditional sentence like “If it rained tomorrow, I would stay home” to emphasize the tense differences.
Forming the past perfect tense correctly for third conditionals
Spend extra time practicing this tense and provide examples like “If I had studied harder (had studied), I would have passed the exam.” Encourage students to practice forming past perfect sentences regularly.
Confusing the use of “would” and “will” in conditional sentences
Explain that “would” is used for hypothetical situations (second and third conditionals), while “will” expresses future possibility (first conditional). Give examples like “If I won the lottery, I would buy a house” (hypothetical) versus “If I save enough money, I will buy a house” (future possibility).
Understanding the nuances between real and hypothetical situations
Relate the conditionals to their own lives and experiences. Ask them to provide examples of real, probable situations they might express with first conditionals. Then, have them make those situations hypothetical or imaginary by rephrasing them as second or third conditionals. Connecting the concept to their personal contexts makes the distinction more tangible.
Understanding the nuances between the time frames
Use timelines or visuals to illustrate the time frames associated with each conditional. For instance, show that first conditionals refer to the present or future, while third conditionals refer to the past.
Overusing certain conditional structures and not varying their usage can also be a challenge
Expose students to a variety of contexts and situations where different conditionals are used. For example, use second conditionals for expressing wishes or dreams, and third conditionals for regrets or missed opportunities.
Finally
Provide feedback on their mistakes and provide opportunities for correction and reinforcement. Encourage them to practice using conditionals in their writing and speaking, and offer constructive feedback to help them improve.
Teaching Conditionals Through Real-World Applications
While conditionals may seem like a purely grammatical concept, they are actually deeply rooted in our everyday communication and thought processes. Being able to effectively use conditionals is an invaluable skill that will serve your students well in various real-world situations.
In professional settings, conditionals are commonly used to discuss hypothetical scenarios, contingency plans, or potential outcomes. For example, in a business meeting, one might say, “If we increase our marketing budget, we could potentially reach a wider customer base.” Or in a job interview, a candidate might be asked, “If you were faced with a difficult client, how would you handle the situation?”
In personal relationships and social interactions, conditionals help us express wishes, regrets, and imagined situations. For instance, a friend might say, “If I had studied harder in college, I could have pursued a different career path.” Or a parent might use a conditional to teach a lesson: “If you had cleaned your room like I asked, you wouldn’t have lost your favorite toy.”
Even in casual conversations, conditionals are frequently used to explore possibilities, make suggestions, or offer advice. “If you’re looking for a good restaurant, I would recommend the new Italian place downtown.” Or, “If I were you, I would consider taking a vacation this summer.”
By providing your students with real-world examples and encouraging them to use conditionals in their own conversations and writing, you’ll be equipping them with a valuable communication tool that will serve them well in various aspects of their lives.
Creative Classroom Activities to Practice Conditionals
To help your students truly master conditionals, it’s important to incorporate engaging and interactive activities into your lessons. Here are some creative ideas to try:
Role-playing and Scenario-based Exercises
Have students role-play different scenarios that require the use of conditionals. For example, one student could be a customer at a restaurant, and the other could be the server. They would need to use conditionals to discuss hypothetical situations, such as “If you were to order the steak, how would you like it cooked?”
Create hypothetical scenarios and have students respond using the appropriate conditional. For instance, “You just won a million dollars. What would you do if you had that much money?”
Writing Prompts and Storytelling
Provide writing prompts that encourage students to use conditionals. For example, “If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?”
Have students write short stories or narratives using a specific conditional type. For instance, they could write a story about a regret or missed opportunity using third conditionals.
Games and Interactive Quizzes
Play conditional sentence completion games, where one student starts a conditional sentence, and the next student has to complete it correctly.
Create interactive quizzes or activities using tools like Kahoot or Quizlet, where students have to identify the correct conditional type or complete conditional sentences.
Group Discussions and Debates
Facilitate group discussions or debates around hypothetical situations or controversial topics, encouraging students to use conditionals to express their opinions and perspectives.
Have students research and present on different topics using conditionals. For example, they could discuss how the world might be different if a particular historical event had not occurred.
Mastering conditionals is a crucial step for your ESL students, and with the right approach, you can make this journey engaging and effective. Break down the concepts, address common challenges, and incorporate interactive activities to keep your lessons lively. Encourage real-world applications and provide ample practice opportunities.
With your guidance and a touch of creativity, your students will gain confidence in using conditionals to express hypothetical situations, regrets, and possibilities in English. Wishing you all the best as you navigate the world of conditionals in your classroom!
With the rapid expansion of new technology, today’s schooling may seem easier than ever yet never more challenging.
On one hand, teachers and students can teach and study online anywhere and the progress of digital learning devices is skyrocketing. On the other hand, most teachers would agree that keeping students’ attention has never been harder.
The truth is, there’s no more room to connect with students if you insist on old-fashioned chalkboards and paper-based study materials.
Students nowadays live in a smart, connected world and receive information fast through digital services. Therefore, they expect to receive knowledge at school in the same way. Otherwise, they easily lose interest.
The interactive whiteboard is also known as “smart whiteboard” or “electronic whiteboard”. It is a learning tool in the classroom that displays multimedia content from a computer onto a classroom board, so teachers and students can interact with the content on the screen using tools, digital pens or even fingers.
You simply connect the computer to the internet, and you can access any information and use it while teaching. Interactive whiteboards also enable teachers to store data used in previous lessons and search through it when needed. All in all, these smartboards are a teacher’s treasure case.
Both teachers and students can benefit from the interactive whiteboard in the classroom. The content can be shared and used during lessons, which simplify teachers’ work and motivates students to collaborate and interact.
How Can Teachers Use Interactive Whiteboards In the Classroom
The majority of teachers have reported seeing improvement in their students engagement and a more positive and livelier atmosphere since using this digital learning too. Nevertheless, many educators of different ages and levels of tech-savviness may find switching or frequently using the interactive smart whiteboard a bit tricky.
Although we’ve been using technology for over two decades, its exponential growth in the past several years might seem like a big leap when one needs to implement it daily in the classroom. According to my experience, the sooner, the better.
When they first brought me an interactive whiteboard in my classroom, I felt a bit unready to do a full switch. I instantly changed my mind when I saw the smiles on my students’ faces and when I saw just how simple and fun this tool was for me too.
There are so many ESL activities you can do using an interactive whiteboard. Games, quizzes, charades, karaoke shows, drawing…
Top 5 Activities for the Interactive Whiteboard in the Classroom
These are my favorite activities:
Disappearing Text
Write a sentence on the board, then instruct the students to say the whole sentence together out loud.
Then, erase a couple of words at the beginning and tell them to say the full sentence again.
Keep on erasing words until the sentence is gone, but encourage students to say the complete sentence correctly.
Walking/Running dictation
Divide the class into 2 teams.
Next, one student from each team approaches the teacher, who tells them a word or sentence from the lesson. Then, the students go back to the team and tell the word or sentence, and they have to write it on the board as quickly as possible.
The first team who writes the correct word or sentence wins and gets a point.
Divide students into two teams. Choose a grammar tense you want to practice.
Draw a 4 x 4 grid on the interactive boards. Write a sentence in every square and leave a blank space for the verb. On the side write 13 verbs (one of them is extra).
Instruct students to complete the sentence with the correct form of the verb. The first team who answers correctly gets a Tic Tac Toe.
Pictionary
Divide students into small teams.
Make a list of vocabulary words you want to practice, and that are familiar to students. List the words separately on cards turned upside down and present the on the board.
Invite a student to “draw” one word and show it to his team that has only 5 seconds to guess the word.
Continue with the next teams, then pick a winner according to the number of points that each team has won. (1 correct guess = 1 point)
Mixed-Up Sentences
Divide students into two teams or more small teams.
Make two separate columns on the board. Write jumbled sentences in the first column and leave the second column empty. Instruct students to race to make a correct sentence in a limited timeframe.
Each team gets a point for each correct and fast answer. You can also do this activity as a test review to practice syntax.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Interactive Whiteboards for the Students
Student involvement in the classroom would surely progress when students realize that teachers speak their language, i.e., fast and interactive information input. Therefore, interactive whiteboards contribute to building positive student experience in the classroom, however, just like any learning tool they have certain disadvantages when it comes to student learning.
Let’s take a look at both the advantages and disadvantages of interactive whiteboards for the students:
Advantages
Students learn in different learning styles
With the interactive whiteboard, teachers can support and encourage different styles of learning, i.e., visual, kinesthetic, and auditory.
Students who are keen on visual learning would be able to draw, manipulate and present on the board, while the auditory learners will enjoy videos, songs and sound effects. The kinesthetic students can have physical interaction with the board that allows them to touch and move objects on the display.
Enhances language learning
The interactive smart board is especially effective for language classes. Language teachers usually combine the digital format of their teaching materials with the textbooks, so students can get multiple interaction with the language they are learning.
Students can work with new vocabulary or grammar content by clicking, highlighting, watching dialogue videos, listening to pronunciation of words related to images and much more.
Direct-from-source information remains available
Another important benefit of interactive whiteboards in the classroom is that presentations during lessons can be recorded, saved, shared and used at any time when needed.
Students can thus plan when to revise study material and be sure that they rely on correct information. This way, students feel more self-confident, motivated and focused.
Storytelling
According to research of educators, ESL students exposed to digital storytelling develop their English skills and progress fast. For young learners, for example, teachers can use comics and cartoons to introduce new vocabulary and grammar structures.
Another practical and fun way to use storytelling in the classroom is with predictable storybooks or picture books with no text that you can change, adapt or upgrade together with your students’ ideas.
More experienced students can write words or sentences and add to a story to finish it, or create a new one from scratch together with their classmates.
Enhanced interaction in the classroom
Smart interactive boards have a touchscreen that can be used by many students simultaneously. Teachers would be happy to see that their students turn into active participants in the lessons, communicating and enjoying the hands-on experience of learning.
Disadvantages
Negative impact on eye health
No need to go any deeper, as it is clear that staring at any screen for a long time may have a negative impact on the eyesight. One of the best ways to avoid this is to limit the time of use of the interactive board and combine it parallelly with other activities that do not involve screen time.
Risky when remote access by students is permitted
To increase students’ engagement, many teachers allow their students to interact on the board through their personal computers. In one way, this can have a positive outcome, as students can share relevant data related to the curriculum.
However, students often use their access to share inappropriate and irrelevant information on screen that may disrupt learning time.
Technical problems
Both teachers and students can use these boards only when the lighting in the classroom is appropriate. Inadequate lighting can make students’ reading experience unpleasant.
Also, if the power goes out, or the computer collapses, the lesson material might disappear and it is likely that this will interrupt students focus and break the learning atmosphere.
The Best Whiteboards for the Classroom?
Teachers can enhance their lessons by using the interactive whiteboards in various ways, incorporating a wide range of audiovisual material to have more motivated and engaged students. However, choosing an interactive whiteboard can be a bit challenging if you don’t know where to start from.
With its digital flip chart and screen size of 65 inches (1.65 m), this interactive whiteboard makes any room turn into a classroom.
Samsung Flip 65 Inch includes a built-in Wi-Fi module and a built-in speaker that will enhance your presentations of various audiovisual teaching materials within your lessons.
It has a rather large display, a temperature sensor and time and date memory which are practical for steady control of this learning tool and the data you want to save and classify.
This interactive smartboard comes with two passive digital pens, a power cable and a touch out USB cable that you can use to connect to your computer or smartphone.
Plus, you get a 3-year warranty with on-site pickup service during the warranty period.
This exceptional interactive board is designed to make teaching and learning experience a breeze. One of its main pros is the pen that you can use on the touchscreen, which looks natural and feels familiar like a marker on a regular whiteboard.
Next, you can edit and share information with many people at the same time, either face-to-face in the classroom or while working remotely (ping, offline-online teachers!).
The size of the screen of the VIBE smart board is 55 inches (1.4 m). You can use various apps for teaching, as the board works with almost any of the teaching tools.
Plus, you can store all of your necessary data in the VIBE Cloud in real time. So, you don’t have to worry about the whereabouts of your notes – they will all be stored and ready to use back and forth during lessons. Then, you can export the content to your cloud drive like Dropbox, Google Drive etc.
The VIBE Smart Digital Whiteboard can be easily installed and has a thin and compact size that makes it convenient for any classroom.
Using an interactive whiteboard in the classroom is beneficial for both teachers and students. This learning digital tool is rapidly taking over, so the sooner you catch up with the multiple ways to use it, the better the attention and motivation of your students.
Our classrooms have more English as a Second Language (ESL) students than ever. ESL students come from all over the world, leaving countries they know and love behind, often with little choice.
Imagine being a child adjusting to new surroundings, new friends, a completely different culture, and, to top it off, a new language!
Since communication is the foundation for all learning and an essential life skill, it’s imperative as educators we support ESL children with sensitivity and care during this challenging transition in their lives by making them feel as welcomed as possible.
In this article, you will read about ways to create a welcoming classroom for ESL students; to help them academically and emotionally, whether you’re a teacher, administrator, or support staff.
Focussing on the Academic Side of ESL Teaching Isn’t Enough
As educators, we intend to best help every child, no matter their unique learning challenges. But working with ESL students new to the country may be something we have never dealt with before. Or maybe, you need some helpful tips to serve your ESL population in your school better.
You may have heard about the acquisition of English as a second language in an academic sense, but what about the emotional and psychological support required for ESL students to be successful?
For many of our international ESL students, it can be downright scary. But, let’s face it, the only way a student can be successful is to have the support they need.
It is challenging to meet the emotional needs of each child. Still, there are many things you could do to facilitate the transition international ESL students face, alleviating the stress caused by this traumatic change in their lives.
Here are some helpful tips to ensure you can be the guiding light ESL students need to not only survive but to thrive in the new world that awaits them.
Make Culture a Classroom Priority
A unique activity that I always did with new ESL students was to create a flag from their native country. I gave the students construction paper, scissors, glue, and markers to use at their desks to make the flag. Students may need to use the computer to look up a picture, which I always encouraged.
After the student finished, I would hang the flag next to other flags students had made for all to see. I could tell that it gave students a sense of pride and was a great way to first welcome students to your class by showing support for their culture and homeland.
Become a Cultural Expert, Not a Multi-Linguistic Expert
I remember my second year of teaching when I taught international students from five different countries in one classroom. My students came from Germany, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Bangladesh, Ecuador, and Mexico. Can you imagine all those varying languages and dialects in one room?
The common misconception among teachers is that they need to be an expert in a language to teach ESL students. Not true. It would be best if you were an expert in English to teach ESL students, and most importantly, provide emotional support by demonstrating a genuine interest in their native culture.
A simple project where ESL students can showcase pictures from their country can help students feel welcomed and valued. Hang the projects up in the room for all to see! Also, consider the customs of students’ cultures.
I can remember a time when I was having difficulty with a student, and I could not figure out how to get his behavior under control. Finally, my paraprofessional approached me and suspiciously asked, “What do you know about Latin machismo?” As ashamed as I was to admit, the answer was, well, nothing.
I was thankful when she explained the traditional gender roles in my student’s household based on his native countries culture. The insight I needed to change my approach with my student resulted in a much more harmonious exchange from then on.
Later, he became so successful academically that he was given an award from the principal for receiving the highest gains in literacy of any ESL student in the school.
I attribute his success to having the cultural support he needed to feel comfortable and confident. If my paraprofessional did not explain his cultural uniqueness or if I was not open to learning about it, my students’ performance could have gone in an entirely different direction.
Encourage Students to Speak in their Native Language
Classrooms are not just for reading and writing; they are for speaking and listening too. Research suggests the more children become proficient in their native language, the more efficiently they will acquire academic language in English (Collier & Thomas, 1989). With that said, support your ESL student to practice their native language, not just English.
And never, ever stifle a student’s confidence by telling them, “Speak in English!” while conversing in their native language. It is good practice for them to speak their language, and we want always to show respect for their culture at all times.
Pair Students to Other Native Speakers
As educators of ESL students, we should not only allow time for collaboration, but we should also actively encourage peer interaction by creating opportunities for group work – and the way you arrange your classroom can make or break that dynamic.
A lesson idea that works phenomenally well is replicating real-life social seniors such as a restaurant, movie theater, or sports event. So, I transformed my classroom into a real-life restaurant complete with menus, welcome signs, decor, and table settings that I helped the students create.
The plan ultimately was to collaborate with my colleague’s Spanish class to allow both groups the opportunity to teach and learn varying language skills. Each student would play the role of patron and server, practicing their “lines” for weeks. The Spanish class did the same. Finally, we invited the Spanish class to our “restaurant.”
The lesson provided an excellent opportunity for ESL students to showcase their native language skills by helping the Spanish class with their second language acquisition, empowering confidence boost. In addition, the English speakers allowed my ESL students to practice their skills outside the typical confines of their usual class environment. Plus, the students had a blast!
Students need to know they are part of a community with people of the same culture. I don’t know about you, but we had limited access to individuals who speak German, Bengali, or Urdu when I taught my ESL students.
Luckily for my Spanish-speaking students, the ESL paraprofessional was a fluent speaker who would stop in to visit with the students weekly. She also allowed students to see her in her office every morning while waiting for the first bell. What a fantastic way to provide much-needed support and love to students who may otherwise feel entirely alone. But what about the other students?!
To ensure the other ESL students had the same camaraderie, I looked to the community for help. I reached out to a local Islamic temple and Jewish synagogue. I was lucky to find two community members willing to volunteer their time to join our class and visit with our students who spoke the same language! All felt the fellowship, and it was a great way to show support for ESL students.
Celebrate Student’s Unique Cultures
American holidays are a great time to showcase our international ESL student’s cultural holidays by facilitating a molding of the two. For example, one year, we celebrated an international thanksgiving where students were encouraged to bring in traditional food items from their native culture.
During our “multicultural thanksgiving,” we invited administrators and support staff with creatively designed invitations that featured symbols of all the fall holidays celebrated by students. For example, the Muslim festival Eid, the Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and the Catholic advent were all featured on the cover of our special invite.
Students brought in their cultural food items; we pushed all the desks together and had a family feast to ring in our multicultural thanksgiving. In addition, each student had a turn to play cultural music of their choice during class for all to hear. It was a heartwarming, enlightened, and highly educational experience for all.
Did you know that including health-related activities in your classroom makes teaching and learning easier and more effective? And that your student’s emotional health has an impact on their academic performance?
Addressing your student’s mental health is essential to helping them live a healthy life, connect with their peers, and improve their grades. Emotionally healthy students can control their emotions, thoughts, feelings, and behavior, even as they progress through life stages.
In this post, you’ll find tips how you as the teacher can recognize mental health issues of your students, as well as what mental health activities you can incorporate in your lessons.
What is Mental Health?
Mental health refers to the psychological and social well-being of a person. Mental health affects how we cope with life, manage stress, relate with others, concentrate and make decisions.
Life experiences like childhood abuse, sickness, and discrimination
Cultural beliefs
Family history
Lifestyle such as hanging out with the wrong crowd
Substance abuse
Can Poor Mental Health Lead to Mental Illness?
The most prevalent mental health issue that students struggle with is stress because of pressures from their education, relationships, socializing, and finances.
Positive stress, also known as eustress, is not bad for your students since it motivates them to work hard and perform better. Negative pressure, also referred to as distress, can lead to energy loss, interest, and poor performance.
When negative stress is long term, it can be harmful and, if not addressed early, can lead to the following mental disorders:
Depression
Anxiety
Eating disorders
Self-harm or suicidal thoughts
Addiction
How a Teacher can Recognize a Student is Struggling with Mental Health
Here are a few ways you can identify the change of behavior in your student.
Sleeping often during class lessons
Anxiety
Frequent crying.
Lack of concentration in class
Reduced activity
Not socializing (withdrawn or isolated)
A drop in performance
Change in their attitude
Skipping school
Hyperactivity
Weight loss/gain
Mental Health Activities for Students in a Classroom
Teachers can help their students deal with and eliminate mental health issues by including healthy activities in their lessons. Here are some ways of reducing poor mental health in your students:
1. Playing fun games together
Playing entertaining games with your students can help them relax and socialize, while also reducing stress. Playing with them will strengthen your bond with them and help you understand them better.
When you play any game (even if it’s just a simple puzzle), your brain releases chemicals like dopamine. Dopamine is in charge of how we feel pleasure, such as when we win a game.
You can start by setting aside a few minutes and having a small meeting. Because many things happen on weekends, you can choose to have the meetings on Mondays. There is no need for the conversation to be serious or formal.
Simply ask a few questions, like how do you feel today? How was your weekend? What is your goal for the week? And so on. Encourage your learners to speak openly about matters that concern them, and reassure them that your doors are always open if they need to chat with you. Simple conversations can help you identify early signs of mental health disorders.
3. Integrate technology into your lessons
Children today are growing up surrounded by technology. So, why not integrate this technology into your lessons? Try using Digital SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) to promote self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, social awareness, and responsible decision-making.
Your teaching style and age of the students will determine which SEL program is appropriate for the learners.
4. Show kindness to others, as well as to your students
One of the best ways to a better mood is to be nice to others. Try motivating your students to participate in random acts of kindness. It will improve their self-esteem and change their attitudes.
You can opt to visit the homeless, orphans, or elderly. You can also assist a student whose parents or siblings suffer from a chronic illness by visiting them or contributing funds for their treatment.
5. Taking short walks and going on class trips
Research shows that walking helps us relax our minds and improve our spirits. When you walk, your brain releases endorphins, a chemical that helps to reduce pain and tension.
You can add walking activities in your lessons, even if it’s only for 20 minutes. It can help in the improvement of self-esteem, self-perception, socialization, and depression reduction.
6. Create opportunities to learn how to prevent stigma associated with mental Illnesses
Encourage your students to discuss mental health. Assist them in understanding what mental health is, and that mental health issues may affect anyone.
To raise awareness among students, you can hold a Mental Health Awareness Week or Day with your students. Ensure that all kids are aware of the effects of mental illness and the associated stigma. Make clear that discrimination against persons with mental health issues might hinder their recovery.
You might also try out different activities and see which ones work best for your students.
Green screening was one of the movie industry’s best kept secrets for years. With current technology, anyone can easily set up a green screen and take advantage of the benefits of using them in the online classroom.
There are so many ways you can use a green screen to take your lessons to the next level.
In this extensive post, we talk about everything you need to know for using a green screen for online teaching: how it works, the equipment and software you need, and tips for setting up your teaching environment.
And an add-on, we’ve compiled some nice classroom background you can download and use for free.
What is a Green Screen?
A green screen is a backdrop made up of a single color (usually green, but sometimes blue). It is usually made of fabric, such as muslin cloth. You can also make it from cardboard, canvas, and even use a green painted wall.
The green screen is used together with a technique called chroma-keying. We don’t go into the technical details here; instead, we’ll give you this to-the-point explanation from MentalFloss author Nick Keppler:
Chroma-keying is the process of isolating a single color or brightness value in an electronic image and then making that value transparent in post-production, allowing another image or footage to be placed “beneath” the color that’s been blanked out.
Although green is used so often that “green screen” and “chroma key” have become almost interchangeable, any color will work. Green is the go-to because it doesn’t match any natural skin tone or hair color, meaning no part of an actor will be edited out through chroma key.
Green screens are used in a variety of photo and video shooting scenarios; one of the more well-known uses of the green screen is the weather report on television.
The example below shows how chroma-keying with a green screen works. The green color behind the person is isolated, then replaced with another image layer:
Why Should You Use a Green Screen in Your Online Classroom?
Obviously, using different backgrounds during an online lesson will help you to deliver more effective and fun lessons, and compensate for the disadvantages of not being physically in the same room:
You can use backgrounds related to the lesson topic to create an immersive learning environment.
Instead of using props, you can show specific objects or situations in the background to explain concepts, elicit discussion and check comprehension; for topics such as geography, landmarks, landscapes, nature, food, and more.
You can make your lessons easier to follow and show videos, presentations, or exercises, while your students can still see you on the screen.
Besides, using a green screen has some practical, not-so-obvious advantages:
Your students can’t see your furniture, clothes, or personal items (or mess) in your home.
Your family members or roommates can walk around the home without having to duck and crawl behind you while you teach online
You can work from almost any location without your students knowing where you are.
You can change up your virtual background without redecorating your actual work space.
Overall, a green screen will let you look more professional, create better results, help you get better ratings and thus, earn more classes.
Although a green screen setting is neither complicated nor expensive, you’ll need to invest in some equipment:
A Computer with Fast CPU and Sufficient RAM
It’s important to realize that software to use for chroma-keying your green screen background during a live online ESL lesson can be incredibly demanding on your computer’s processor and memory. You need to make sure you have a capable computer to handle the chroma-keying processes.
Our recommendation is to have a computer with at least the previous-to-current generation Intel i5 CPU running at 3GHz with no less than 4 cores, and at least 8 GB of RAM.
Important: With tablet computers and smartphones, you won’t be able to use a green screen.
Green screens range from very cheap, to costly. You don’t need an expensive pro-grade kit. Indeed, many online ESL teachers make do with fabric they buy from the local fabric store. You can mount them on a stand or frame, or hang them on the wall or the ceiling.
Buy a green screen large enough to cover the area behind you adequately: It should be both wide and high enough to cover the entire area picked up by your webcam. Dimension requirements will vary for each person based on their height, work area, and whether you stand or sit while you teach online.
Here are a couple of affordable, recommended options available on Amazon:
Green Screen Studio Kits
The majority of online ESL teachers will be working from home. For those who have a spare room or home office where they set up their online classrooms, green screen kits are a quick, all-in-one solution.
JEBUTU Green Screen Backdrop Stand Kit, 5 x 6.5 feet (ca. 1.5 x 2 m)
Portable Green Screen Stand (durable steel), washable polyester fiber screen, with carrying bag and five spring clamps
Although the studio kits portable, they’re not really convenient when you change your teaching location frequently.
Collapsible Backdrops for Ultra-Fast Setup
If you teach online in your home with limited space, then your best option is to get a collapsible green screen backdrop. They can be quickly opened and closed, don’t require assembling or fudging around with separate stands, and can be stored away in a closet or in the basement when you’re not using it.
Elgato Green Screen – Collapsible Chroma Key Backdrop, 58.3 x 70.9 inches (ca. 1.50 x 1.80 m)
ShowMaven Green Screen Collapsible Chromakey Panel, 58.3 x 80.7 inches (ca. 1.5 x 2 m)
Auto-Locking Frame, Chroma Key Screen with Wrinkle-Resistant Fabric, Aluminum Hard Case
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Portable Backdrops
Portable green screen backdrops are different from collapsible green screen backdrops in that they can fit in a suitcase, making them the ideal option for online ESL teachers on the road. You can hang them on a stand or wall behind you, or mount them on the back of your chair.
One major downside of portable green screens is that due to their compact size, you have to position them more precisely to fully cover your background. If you like to teach while standing, or even move around a bit, then this type of green screen backdrop is probably not the right item for you.
Neewer Chromakey Backdrops, Double-Sided Green and Blue Screen, 5 x 6.6 inches (ca. 1.5 x 2 m)
Write a one-line descripDurable steel frame sewn into the fabric. The steel spring frame pops open the backdrop in seconds and helps maintain its shapetion here
Though not for everyone, some online ESL teachers prefer not to mess about with positioning the green screen backdrop. If you have enough space and a wall you can paint, green screen paint is an excellent option. Even if you would rather not paint your wall green, you can get a wooden board, drywall or a thick sheet of cardboard to paint over.
The great thing about green screen paint is that you don’t have to worry about creases and folds, kicking or tripping over the green screen stand, or messing about positioning it. You just paint the wall, or lean the board against the wall, and you’re good to go.
Of course, painting a color across a wall or board means you will need to know how to paint, and to make sure the paint is consistently applied. You may also need to apply a few coats to the wall or board.
ChromaKey Green Paint 1 gallon (3.79 l) Green Screen Equivalent
Water-Based Latex Paint with Low reflectivity, Made in the USA, Dries in 60 mins
Many people who use green screens will tell you that your lighting setup is more important than the green screen. When using a green screen for online teaching, lights serve two purposes: Illuminating the teacher and the green screen.
As you will discover when you set up your green screen in your work space, these two aspects will often conflict with each other.
You might find that your face and body in the webcam view are well-lit, but there is some fuzziness around your head. On the other hand, you might find that your face and body in the webcam view are well-lit with no fuzziness around your head, but there is some fuzziness around the ends of the green screen.
This fuzziness (often referred to as bleeding) is usually due to too much light on the green screen, causing the color to spill.
Both the amount of lighting as well as the color tones you use will play a role in striking the right balance. Different chroma-keying apps also handle the chroma-keying process differently. Ultimately, you will need to play around with your lighting setup until you get it just right.
You will need an app that will chroma-key your green screen background. There are several free and paid apps available to accomplish this. What app you use will depend on your computer OS, as well as your specific needs. Some go beyond chroma-keying capabilities, like ManyCam Studio, which has an extensive set of features that enable you to show clip art, YouTube videos, add lower third text on your screen, wear a virtual mask, and much more.
The popular videoconferencing app Zoom, includes a virtual background feature that lets you skin your background with an image or video using a green screen, and if your computer’s CPU is powerful enough, you can skin it without a green screen. Zoom is an excellent app, but it’s only useful you’re using Zoom specifically for online teaching. If you use another platform, or if the online ESL company you work with has its own proprietary platform, you will need to use an app like ManyCam Studio, which creates a virtual webcam device on your computer that you can use with a green screen and more. Some teachers even use ManyCam and Zoom to access the additional features ManyCam offers while using Zoom.
Here is a list of apps that let you take advantage of your green screen:
Price: starting from $39 per year or $79 lifetime for one device
Available for Windows and macOS
ManyCam Studio is designed to give you a suite of screen effects while live-streaming. Although ManyCam has a free version, to unlock the chroma-key feature, you will need to purchase the paid version. ManyCam has an impressive feature set that can transform how you teach online and interact with your students.
OBS is a free, open-source software you can use to record and live stream your screen with a green screen background. Besides being free, OBS packs some really cool features, such as being able to set up multiple scenes, which means you can display images, videos, text, browser windows, and more, alongside yourself via your webcam.
Free is hard to beat, but you’ll need to rely on the community and a public knowledge base to get support if you need help. It’s recommended for more advanced users.
Video Meeting Software
Nowadays, most software for video conferencing has already built-in background-removal functions. They work even without a green screen – of course, with one, they produce much better results.
These software programs include the most popular ones:
You can use all the video meeting solutions for free; however, for regular teaching, we recommend using the paid versions which offer more functionality and stable connection. Prices range from $10 to $20 per month.
Here’s how easily it works in Google Meet:
In a meeting, click on the menu item with the three dots in the bottom bar, then choose “Apply visual effects“ from the pop-up menu.
In the sidebar opening on the right, simply choose one of the default backgrounds images, or upload an image.
Use background images and effects in Google Meet
Google even offers animated backgrounds with birds flying around or with different weather outside – which looks simply wow!
You see the effect isn’t perfect in my example; I made the screenshot without using a green screen and proper lighting. (Still impressive how good it works nevertheless!)
In MS Teams or Zoom, you’ll find the background-removal functions analogously in the settings; it’s not complicated.
However, these video meeting tools don’t offer advanced configuration settings, so the results may not be as perfect as you expect. And you can’t use them when you need to teach with another software or with a teaching platform of your teaching company.
That’s why buying a software like ManyCam seems like a good investment; you won’t get broke from a $79 one-time fee. You can use it with any video conferencing tool or teaching platform, and tailor it exactly to your needs.
Setting Up Your Green Screen for Online Classes
Video Tutorial
In this short video, online ESL teacher Michael Wasserstein guides you through the important aspects of setting up a green screen for your online classroom.
Install and Run Your Chroma-Key App
The first step we recommend you take is to install and run your chroma-key app. Get familiar with the features of the app, so you can set up your green screen and lighting according to the functionality and recommended settings of the app.
Set Up Your Green Screen
Measure the area behind you that your webcam captures. An easy way to determine the green screen size you need is to use a spare bedsheet in place of the green screen. Use some measuring tape to measure the dimensions of the bedsheet that come into the webcam view so that you can figure out the length and width of green screen fabric you will need to buy.
You might need some help from a family member or friend to hold the bedsheet while you measure the area. A 6 x 9 feet (ca. 1.8 x 2.7 m) muslin cloth green screen should be sufficient for most online ESL teachers.
You also need to decide if you will be attaching or hanging the green screen to the wall, or using a frame to hold your green screen in place. We recommend using a frame, as this will make it easier to move around the green screen as needed, and won’t damage your wall.
After you have purchased your green screen, make sure it is free of creases or wrinkles by ironing them out with an iron on low temperature. Once you’ve done that, you can attach it to the frame.
Some green screens are set in a retractable frame, and if you are using one of these, then you can simply pull it open and lock into place.
Make sure your green screen is correctly positioned to fill up the area behind where you will be sitting or standing while teaching online. You will need to do this with your chroma-key app open on your computer so that you can view the area your webcam displays.
Set Up Lighting and Adjust Brightness and Positioning
Now that you have your green screen in place, you need to determine how bright your online teaching workspace is, and how many lights you need. If possible, choose LED lights with different color temperature settings, so you can increase or decrease brightness in different spots of your work space.
You will need to position and adjust your lighting with you standing or sitting in front of your computer with the chroma-key app open to preview yourself and your webcam.
You’re not done with lighting just yet. Next, we need to find and insert an image layer to replace the green screen behind you to test your green screen and lighting set up with your app.
Choosing an Image to Chroma-key
Although you can use any image to replace the green color in your green screen, we want to start with the most basic image that will enable us to test and tweak our green screen and lighting set up. For this, we can use a plain white image because a white image is void of any color, and will reveal any issues with light spill/bleeding.
If you see any fuzziness or bleeding around your head or on the green screen itself, you will need to check for and iron out any creases or wrinkles in your green screen, and reposition your lighting. Using the white background will also help you figure out if you need to get add lights to your setup.
This image illustrates how the white background will replace the green screen. Notice the slight green spill around the hair, body, and hands:
Note: If you have long hair, we recommend tying it back to reduce the green spill around your head.
Now, you are ready to use your teaching studio. Everything you need to do now is finding great images or other media to use to “decorate” your classroom background.
Classroom Backgrounds: Find Media to Use with Your Green Screen
As an online ESL teacher, you will constantly be on the hunt for media to use in your online classroom. A few excellent sites where royalty-free images can be found for free are:
These sites have a broad range of photos, illustrations, vectors, and videos to choose from, so you should have little difficulty spicing up your green screen images.
If you need some inspiration, look at these 10 great classroom images from Pexels we’ve selected for you as a starter:
Now that you have a good idea how to use a green screen in an online classroom, get started! It’s really not as difficult as you think, it’s very affordable, and the difference using a green screen will make to your online lessons will be dramatic.
It might take you a bit of time to adjust your green screen and lighting to get the ideal setup. It will take you a couple of days to get comfortable using the chroma-key software. But within a month (or less), you will find green screening a cinch, and you’ll begin to wonder how you ever taught online lessons without one.
Repeat after me: “You can’t use props too much in the classroom.“
Do you agree?
Props – or visual teaching aids – make the learning process fun and effective for the students as well as the teacher. That’s why successful ESL teachers build their stock of props over time and use them in every lesson.
If you are looking for inspiration, what to try out next, here is our list of the best ESL teaching props, together with tips on how and when to use them.
Why Using Props in the ESL Classroom is Important
When young learners begin acquiring their first language, they are essentially like sponges, absorbing everything they see, hear, smell, touch, and taste.
Toys, books, games, and activities can help to make the experience more fun, particularly if they are used in a manner that enables young learners to be physically involved in the learning process. Of course, there’s also the show and tell aspect of using these child-centered resources as part of the learning experience.
For ESL students, especially young learners, acquiring a non-native language poses different challenges. As an ESL teacher, you will likely be using props and other teaching aids, not only to make the learning experience more fun and engaging, but also to elicit responses from students to develop their English fluency.
For online teaching, props can even more help to focus the student’s attention. In an online lesson, you have less control of the learning environment and potential distractions.
But you can make use of the fact that the students are used to watching videos or playing online games at home with lots of action happening on the screen. With many props (and high teacher activity), you can deliver an experience close to watching a cartoon movie and draw full attention.
In truth, anything can be used as a prop for teaching any subject, if it is used purposefully. As ESL teachers – whether in the classroom or online – we want to get down to business quickly using ready-to-go teaching props and aids.
We teach many students and classes throughout the day, so having a core set of props and aids can be a major time and lifesaver.
Good props for teaching ESL are those which can be used across a broad spectrum of classes, students, and contexts. There simply isn’t enough room to fill your home or office with props for every single context.
That’s why you want to build up an inventory of props that can cover a wide range of ESL age groups, topics, themes, and proficiency levels.
A prop is evidently a meaningful prop, when you can you it to:
That said, not all props need to be multi-textual to serve a purpose. Very young learners may be more challenging to keep on point, as they have short attention spans. For these situations, noisemakers and clappers will come in handy.
So, let’s get you set up with the right props for ESL teachers and how you can use them in the classroom.
Recommended Props for ESL Teachers
Let’s look into various categories of teaching props, most of them suitable for in-classroom teaching and online teaching as well.
Hand and Finger Puppets
Hand or finger puppets make excellent props for ESL classroom instruction. Use them to captivate your students through conversation, role-play, and other forms of engagement.
Because they slip onto your hand or fingers, puppets can magically transform into make-believe characters your students will connect with and grow to love.
In this video, Karen Frazier, co-author of the Let’s Go series, gives us an excellent model of how to use puppets in the ESL classroom to introduce conversation:
As you can see, puppets are great props for ESL instruction. For young ESL learners, you can breathe some life into your puppets – and your lesson – and completely transform the learning experience for your students.
Buy hand and finger puppets on Amazon:
Melissa & Doug Hand Puppets: Safari Buddies
Set of 6: Elephant, Tiger, Parrot, Giraffe, Monkey, ZebraStuffed Animals
Stuffed animals are a favorite with young ESL learners, and like puppets, they can be used in various learning contexts. Indeed, you can use puppets and stuffed toys interchangeably.
The main difference between them is that stuffed toys are a little more challenging to bring to life, as you can’t move their parts with your hand like you would with a puppet. Still, there are many types of stuffed toys, that you’re more than likely to find a specific toy you’re looking for.
You can set them on a table or shelf, or hold them in your hands while teaching. Most of all, stuffed animals are soft, cute, and cuddly, and kids love them.
Use stuffed toys during warm-up activities, storytelling, or even creating an imaginary zoo, farm, or aquarium.
Food is a popular topic with ESL students, and play food is a great way to get students talking about food.
Use play food to describe food groups, colors, shapes, and tastes. You can also use play food to talk about more complex topics like healthy vs unhealthy food, popular food around the world, or meals of the day.
So, go ahead and use play food to engage your students in fun, interactive activities. Make a picnic. Have lunch. Cook dinner. Order a meal. Dig in!
Including a toy grocery basket, 2 cutting boards, 2 kitchen knives, and 4 dinner plates. Foods are put together with Velcro and can be repeatedly “cut and sliced“
Which child doesn’t love to hit, kick, throw, or catch a ball? We can’t think of one.
If you’ve never used balls for props in the ESL classroom, you’ll soon realize how much fun they can inject. Use a ball to assign student turns during any activity. There are no limits to the kind of activities you can do in the ESL classroom with a ball.
Here’s an example of Jenny White using a ball to effectively engage her students in a vocabulary game:
What’s remarkable about using a ball while teaching is that you can get your students on their feet and physically active during the activity. And if you’re already rethinking how students move in your classroom, it’s worth considering how the layout itself affects participation — here’s how seating arrangement shapes ESL learning.That not only improves their concentration and participation, but also adds elements of competitiveness, teamwork, and coordination between thoughts and actions.
If you teach ESL online, you can use a ball for talking about sports, colors, and shapes.
Your ESL students will have a ball learning English – seriously!
Every ESL teacher should be equipped with flash cards for all occasions. Whether teaching in the classroom or online, flash cards are nifty because you can use them in so many contexts to enhance the learning experience.
Use them for activities and games, drilling vocabulary, pronunciation, conversation, and role-plays. Though most stock flash cards are geared towards young learners, you’ll find a wide variety of flash cards that cover more complex concepts such as nouns and prepositions, and themes such as emotions.
Flash cards are also easy to pack and carry, they make an excellent teaching aid for traveling ESL teachers. So, if you’re planning a family vacation but plan to teach ESL online during your travels, flash cards will fit neatly into your suitcase.
Here are some ideas for using flash cards for teaching primary children, by Carol Read of Macmillan Spain:
These flashcards are available on Amazon:
Star Right Numbers & Sight Words Flash Cards Set of 4
144 Sight Words Flash Cards: Numbers, First Words, Colors, Shapes, and Alphabet; with binder rings
There isn’t much we could say about dry-erase boards that ESL teachers don’t already know. Dry-erase boards are an English teacher’s biggest asset in the classroom.
But what many ESL teachers may not realize is that smaller dry-erase boards (primarily designed for children) are compact enough to hold in your hands. This makes them useful teaching aids for demonstrating grammar, vocabulary, assessments, or keeping scores during a class activity.
Get a magnetic dry-erase board and use it with magnetic letters and numbers!
These are great options on Amazon:
U Brands Contempo Magnetic 11″ x 14″ Dry Erase Board
Magnet, marker, and double-sided Velcro mounting strips included
Magnetic letters and numbers are extremely useful for teaching ESL to young learners, and go well with a magnetic dry-erase board. They can be used in numerous ways, especially for learning the alphabet, counting numbers, spelling, practice phonics, and do math.
You can also use scrabble letters in place of magnetic ones, though scrabble letters would be better suited for the classroom than online instruction.
This set has all you need:
253 pieces Magnetic Foam Letters and Numbers Kit, with Double-Sided Magnetic Board and Storage Box
52 uppercase letters,156 lowercase letters, 20 numbers, 14 math symbols, 5 cartoon refrigerator magnets, 1 double-sided magnetic writing board, 3 marker, 1 eraser and 1 sturdy storage box
Though hand clappers are not so useful for instruction, they can be useful teaching aids during activities, or simply to keep young learners attentive and focused. You can even use them to celebrate student birthdays during class.
If you teach online, you probably just need one hand clapper; since they usually come in inexpensive packs, you may as well have an assortment of hand clappers on hand, and use them to practice language skills such as identifying colors.
Other options to hand clappers are maracas and squeaky rubber chickens.
Let’s make some noooooise with these hand clappers:
Our focus in this post was to reach both teachers who teach in the classroom as well those who teach online. We’ve given you some pretty awesome examples of props you can use in the ESL classroom.
There are undoubtedly more teaching aids than we could possibly cover here. You can use everyday items and almost anything as a prop or teaching aid, as long as you use it in ways that are meaningful to learning and the learning experience.
Conducting successful online English lessons and engaging young students can be challenging.
Which factors make or break an online ESL lesson?
Many teaching strategies you’ve learned won’t work outside a physical classroom when you teach English online to kids. Online language lessons aren’t just about cracking open a textbook and lecturing for 25 minutes.
It’s your job as a teacher to make sure that each lesson finishes as a hit instead of a hit on your approval rating.
But worry not! Follow the 7 pro-tips below when you teach kids online — and your students and their parents will certainly book you again and again.
What’s So Challenging About Teaching English to Kids Online?
The first thing you have to do when considering an online teaching job is to understand the differences between having classes in a traditional educational environment and having them online.
They are two completely separate experiences.
Your TEFL course might have touched on online teaching a little, but it probably mostly focused on practical classroom skills. Those skills, however, don’t always translate from a physical classroom to an online one with the type of fluidity you might expect.
In an online setting, incorporating outside media, using physical objects, and involving kinesthetic learning methods will largely be unavailable to you as an educator.
You won’t be able to look over a student’s shoulder as they read or write. You also won’t be able to jump through the computer screen and have as many physical interactions with your students. And, of course, it will also be harder to discipline them.
It will be necessary to adapt and to improvise by coming up with new teaching methods, introducing different ways of checking for understanding, and developing innovative ways to keep your students entertained and engaged throughout class.
Furthermore, the way you plan your lessons will change depending on whether you only have one student or a group of eight students online.
Remember, the structure and audience of an online lesson will always influence the approach you should take.
For a successful online career, it’s so important to learn the most effective methods to teach kids English online.
The Key to Online Lessons is Student Engagement
In the online TEFL industry, you will most commonly teach students ranging from about 5 to 11 years old.
Most bookings tend to be 25- to 45-minute one-on-one English sessions.
That gives you just enough time to make an impression, teach a few key concepts, and make the kid’s parents want to book you again.
The most important thing to remember about teaching English online, especially to young learners in a one-to-one setting, is that it’s imperative to make them feel happy and welcome in your classroom.
That means you must give them your full attention, always be pleasant and smile, and deliver quality work. By being kind and friendly, you make students feel comfortable engaging with you.
Student engagement is the most important part of the lesson. When students are active participants in your lessons, they won’t just learn more – they’ll also be more likely to book your classes again.
Let’s explore some methods you can use to get your little students to be more engaged in the classroom.
1. Show Up a Professional
Showing up to class hungover wearing last night’s outfit will quickly get you fired from a professional online teaching position.
Remember, your clients are children and their parents!
That means you have to be a role model at all times. There is an expectation that you will show up promptly to each class, smile, be well-groomed, and maintain a professional decorum at all times.
Keep in mind that each class that you teach is recorded and monitored.
Not only does the student retain a video copy of every class on their student dashboard, usually there is also a company employee reviewing each lesson for quality control purposes.
If a lesson starts steering into inappropriate territory or a teacher dresses unprofessionally, they will soon hear about it.
So do yourself a favor and make sure that a video or image of you doesn’t end up in your company’s employee training manual as an example of the things you shouldn’t do while on the job. (Yes, this happens).
Choose your wardrobe selectively. I would recommend dressing business casual at all times – or check on your company’s specific dress code.
Even though you’re teaching online, it is important to remember that this job is no less “real” than any other. Certain standards must be upheld, and every company has an image to maintain.
A smart, preppy blouse, a button-up shirt, a collared shirt, or a nice, clean polo work best.
2. Prepare Your Classroom
Keeping your background tidy yet visually interesting is key to creating a fun, professional environment for your students.
You don’t want your dirty laundry making an appearance in the background of your video. However, you don’t want your background to look totally boring, either.
Place maps, alphabet posters, or other fun, simple visuals behind you to create a classroom feel that adds some interest without distracting your students or looking messy.
Proper lighting and good acoustics are also essential to creating the right atmosphere for your classroom. Dim, flickering lighting or an echoey room can ruin even the best-planned class by ruining the atmosphere and creating distractions.
If necessary, buy a small, portable lamp to make sure the student can see you clearly on the screen. Sometimes, only using room lighting isn’t enough to illuminate your face on the screen.
Make sure your camera is positioned properly and centered in the middle of your screen.
In my opinion, students should be able to see you from the elbows up. That way, they can see your facial expressions and mannerisms. It also gives students a more comfortable feeling because it is more personal, almost like talking face-to-face.
Before each class, you should always make sure you know who your student is, how old they are, what their language level is, and what you’ll be teaching.
While most online TEFL companies do provide curriculum and online books to help steer each class in the right direction, you can supplement the materials given with little effort to take your classes over the top.
Incorporating props, knowing a student’s level before class, having an idea of a student’s interests, and brainstorming additional games or topics of discussion can really help enhance a class.
If you really want to have a great online class experience, show a student you went the extra mile by including props regarding the subject they chose or doing research on the things that they like to discuss: things like these can mean the difference between getting booked again or being forgotten forever.
4. Use Activities and Props
For a young learner learning about fruits, being sure to have flashcards of different types of fruit would be a great idea. If you have some of those fruits in your fridge, take them out and show the student.
Ask the student to describe the fruit and ask them questions such as “What do you think this fruit will taste like?”, “Do you like this fruit?”, “Do you eat this type of fruit often?”
There are so many games that you can play by incorporating flashcards or physical props while teaching English online to kids.
Just a few weeks ago, I had a class with a young learner about pets.
She really wanted a dog, but her parents weren’t convinced of the idea. During the lesson, I brought my puppy on screen, and we described what it looked like together, what tricks dogs can do, and where dogs like to go.
She was so delighted to see the puppy in class and left a wonderful post-class evaluation. I will be seeing the same student next week for another online lesson.
Many young learners are just starting to learn their numbers, colors, and ABCs. There is so much you can do to make those lessons more entertaining than simply reading from a book.
One of my favorite games to play when students are learning colors is “Find the Color”. It is basically a scavenger hunt where I tell the student to find something around them in the color that I ask for. They love to laugh and run around looking for the perfect item.
When teaching numbers, I always use stuffed animals to teach students how to count. My favorite game is “How Many Bears Do I Have?” The students count each bear, learn to describe them, create stories about each one, and solve math equations using them.
In terms of ABCs, most online providers offer tracing exercises and repetition exercises in each book. To make those lessons more fun, use the power of sound. If a student is learning the letter “A”, try to teach them how to say A softly, then at a medium sound, and then loudly.
When you turn tasks that can often be mundane into a game, students have the best time.
When I was younger, I always watched a cartoon about a group of superheroines who would fight evil with magic wands. At the time, those types of cartoons were relatively new. Now, similar shows are everywhere.
I try to take advantage of that by bringing my light up, magical toy wand that plays music. When a student answers a question very well or solves a difficult question, I turn on the magic wand and reward the student with a song and some horribly hilarious flailing. They love it!
If you’re looking for printable props for your classroom, we’ve got you covered. Download our free beautifully illustrated flashcards and worksheets to teach vocabulary:
Remember the importance of your body language. Smiling and maintaining a pleasant demeanor throughout class will make your students feel comfortable and welcome in your class.
Keeping your voice at an appropriate volume and pitch and speaking and slowly and clearly will also improve the quality of your class.
You can also indicate that you’re engaged in class by nodding to indicate that you hear what your student is saying and refraining from eating, drinking, or scrolling online during class. Use body language and gestures with your hands to help establish your points. Total physical response will help you engage students better and will aid in their understanding of the ideas you’re illustrating.
6. Always Have a Backup
When teaching English online, sometimes accidents happen.
Whether there’s a family emergency, a power outage, an internet issue, or an online textbook not loading, it’s smart to always have a backup plan.
Document everything. If there is a glitch on a website that you need for your lesson, take a screenshot of it. If a student is late for class or a no-show, be sure to record that in case that information is needed later.
If concerned whether or not a textbook will load, download it in advance.
7. Leave Actionable Feedback
As soon as you begin teaching your class, start taking notes about things you observe throughout the class.
If a student keeps mispronouncing a word or has trouble with a certain grammar concept, make a note so that you can remind them to work on it when you leave them feedback after class.
You should also correct mistakes students make during class so that they don’t get into bad habits.
However, it’s important to do this in a kind, positive way. Rather than telling them they’re wrong, simply demonstrate the correct way to say a word or sentence once they’ve finished speaking.
Pay attention to any notes left prior to the class about the student’s preferred correction style and help cater to their needs.
Once you have finished teaching your first class, you might think you’ve done all there is to do. Not so fast, though!
Your job is not over when the lesson ends. After each lesson, you usually have the opportunity to leave feedback for the student or their parents.
This feedback might seem like an unimportant, throwaway step, but you should put as much care into it as you put into your lesson.
Not only can the feedback help your students keep working on their English outside of class, it’s also a way to sell yourself and further set yourself apart from other teachers.
To be an effective online English teacher, it is important to list the positive aspects of the lesson and the student’s abilities. It is equally essential to reference all of the things that a student might have missed in the lesson, or the things that they must work on to improve their overall English abilities.
Be sure to use the sandwiching technique when giving feedback to the students. You want to be honest about your feedback but also delicate in your approach.
Always incorporate ways to improve in between positive sentences, offering the student praise. Always end each lesson memo with a positive sentence, thanking the student for coming to your lesson and stating that you hope to see them again.
Remember, when you teach English online to kids, you only have one shot to make a lasting, positive impression. What you do in your online lessons count.
It doesn’t take too much time to do, and the young learners and their parents always notice it – and often reward teachers for it by booking them again in the future.
One of the best parts of being an online English teacher is having the satisfaction of seeing your students improve throughout their time with you.
You may also realize you have grown as a teacher, too. So, teach, teach, teach – and remember, there is no perfect teacher.
What matters is getting the online English teaching experience you need and putting your best effort forward to grow in your skills.
Not so long ago, the internet and the use of technology in education were discussed as things of the future. Education professionals would often question the possibility and accessibility of incorporating technology in the classroom.
Today, it is evident that technology classrooms are rather the rule than the exclusion, so the question is not whether to integrate technology in our learning environments but how to do this in ways that would be productive and enjoyable for both you and your students.
There’s a popular belief that technology in the classroom means distraction and too much information. In contrast, research made in the last two decades has come to the conclusion that the effective integration of technology can significantly change and improve the classroom and increase student engagement in learning.
Read on and discover how to take the first steps toward successful technology integration in your classroom.
How Students Benefit from Using Technology in the Classroom
Introducing technology in the lessons of your curriculum can be beneficial for students in many ways. Most of them spend a lot of time with digital technology at home but that doesn’t mean that they know how to use the same technology for learning.
This is where you step in and offer a helping hand by providing guidance and collaboration through the digital tools for learning. Understandably, the access to technology and the age group of students might require different approaches.
So how do students benefit from the tech classroom?
Learning in an Engaging Environment
When you integrate technology in your classroom, regardless of whether by using a mobile device, a laptop, or an interactive whiteboard, you abandon the dull, traditional pattern of presenting new content and replace it with fun, interactive activities that encourage participation and communication among students and the teacher in the classroom.
Learning Through Different Learning Styles
One of the important advantages of the tech classroom is that teachers are allowed to adapt and modify their lessons to fit students’ individual needs and preferences as each of them is learning differently. Most digital learning tools allow each student to learn new content on their terms but also to communicate and exchange knowledge with peers and the teacher.
Improved Collaboration
Many of the tasks and activities in the technology classroom require students to interact with their classmates or ask questions – excellent ways for students to collaborate while learning new content. If students work in small groups, this process might be even more effective. The teacher could encourage more advanced students to help less experienced students in the group.
Prepared Digital Citizens
In the tech classroom, you will surely teach a lot of practical digital skills to students, like Word or PowerPoint, however, it is equally important for them to learn about the most challenging aspects of the digital era, such as proper conduct online, cyber safety, cyberbullying, plagiarism, digital footprint, etc. One practical way to teach these amid lessons is by setting rules for safe usage of online information and expected online conduct.
Improved Teacher-Student Relationships
Regardless of what your subject matter might be, the wide array of digital activities and tools will make it more fun and attractive to students and this will automatically create a positive atmosphere in the learning environment.
Make sure you always check the current context of what you’re teaching and try to keep up with the tech advancements, so you can easily approach students and encourage critical thinking and idea exchange.
Types of Technology Integration in the Classroom
When it comes to implementing technology in the classroom, one of the most relevant things to consider is that teachers don’t teach technology as a separate subject work on integrating it when presenting content and that students can later also use it to demonstrate what they’ve learned.
This approach can really help teachers who are less tech-savvy or skeptical about the benefits of digital education tools. The term “technology integration”, however, is quite broad, but here are some of the most applicable types of technology integration today:
Online Learning & Hybrid Classrooms
Hybrid learning had been a hot topic among educators in the last two decades before it became almost a necessity right with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers and education professionals are exploring and practicing various ways of blending online and face-to-face education, which makes learning quite challenging and yet more accessible than ever before.
Though the so-called project-based learning (PBL) is familiar to most educators, blended learning is yet to be discovered. Blended learning refers to teaching practices that combine traditional methods with online learning, so we can say that it’s a hybrid learning experience.
This type provides learning content in a highly adaptive and personalized way, allowing students to follow their own pace while engaging in the online content and then apply what they’ve learned in the common project, i.e. the hands-on part of the learning process.
Gamified Learning, Web-Based Projects & Research
Even the simplest of games can turn learning from a passive activity into a fun and motivating process. When you use technology for gamified learning, for example through quizzes or virtual information hunts, you really change the atmosphere in your classroom – playing digital games is one of the students’ most favored activities in their free time.
Another simple and practical way to encourage students to use technology for learning is through digital field trips, using web resources, and helping students to do online research on a specific topic.
These types of technology integration will practically merge your objective with their focus and interests and this creates a seamless learning experience.
Learning through Mobile Devices & Social Media
Integrating handheld devices and social media as learning tools are among the innovative ways to use technology in the classroom. Instead of observing these as attention takers, try to find a convenient way to make them work for your benefit.
Mobile phones and tablets can be quite practical for connecting students to classroom resources and sharing materials. As for social media, it allows teachers to create groups or pages for discussions, poles, and debates for their students.
Learning through Interactive Whiteboards & Classroom Response Systems
More and more schools abandon the green chalkboards and replace them with interactive whiteboards to make lessons more fun and appealing. The “smart boards” allow you to design your lesson using their tools, use the internet at any time to browse information together with your students, etc. In addition, most of the teacher resources nowadays contain a “smart board” extension of the textbooks with extra activities.
The classroom response systems (CRS), on the other hand, aims to transform abstract learning into a hands-on experience by using remote devices which allow students to individually engage in the content projected on the screen through a receiving device and software.
Levels of Technology Integration
According to Mary Beth Hertz, a director of Education Technology and an expert in the field, there are four levels of classroom technology integration. Here is how she defines these on her blog:
Sparse: Technology is rarely used or available, so students rarely use it for their projects or assignments.
Basic: Technology is more often used in the lab, but not in the classroom which makes students’ access to it limited. Students use only one or two digital tools when creating projects.
Comfortable: Technology is used on a fairly regular basis in the classroom and students know and can use many tools for creating projects and presenting knowledge.
Seamless: Students use technology daily in the classroom and can use different tools to create projects and assignments and demonstrate understanding of content.
The levels of integration can vary and depend on a number of factors, especially the availability of digital resources, equipment, and support as well as the access to technology in a specific school or classroom.
Tips on How to Use Technology in the Classroom
Now that we’ve presented some of the integral ways of incorporating technology in the classroom, let’s look at a few tips on how to do it practically:
Types of integration
Tips
Online learning and hybrid classrooms
I recommend creating class recordings that prove to be invaluable to students’ individual needs (online and offline). Don’t forget to hit that record button!
Project-based blended learning
Focus on providing real-world context to the learning units. If your primary objective is teaching climate change, for example, present it through contrast, i.e. climate change in Greenland vs. Europe. Include digital maps, field trips, and videos.
Gamified learning, web-based projects, research
Make sure you create interesting yet not overly ambitious game mechanics so you can manage your time and monitor the progress of students. The same goes for web-based projects – link every action to an outcome that is clear to the learner.
Learning through mobile devices and social media
Create authentic hashtags that you and your students will use. Make photo albums or note sections where you can upload relevant materials. Turn cell phones into learning instruments by using tools like Celly or Study Boost for creating polls and quizzes that engage students in a group or individually.
Learning through interactive whiteboards and classroom response systems
The interactive whiteboard will help you to encourage all students to participate and perform interactively. For example, you can use a name generator, enter students’ names before class, and then engage each student as names pop out. If you use response systems in the classroom, focus on creating a variety of questions that will address content, student perspective, misconceptions, and student questions (prepared in advance).
Great Tools to Use in the Classroom
Regardless of whether you’re a beginner or a veteran in integrating technology in the classroom, it’s always practical to have a list of apps and tools that are practical and easy to use in your tech classroom.
A simple app that many find to be super convenient as it is connected to Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, Google Meet, and Google Calendar. It encourages collaboration between students and teachers. Teachers can add students and form a class while students get a clear overview of their assignments and can enroll in discussion forums.
A free education app that offers exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard. The app can also help you find resources for subjects like science, math, reading, writing, etc. One of the most convenient things is that you can download the videos and watch them at any time.
Edmodo (not available anymore)
This is a social learning app that provides communication, polling, and sharing assignments between students, teachers, and schools. It contains millions of resources that are created and shared by teachers worldwide. Also, parents get access and can keep track of their children’s school calendar, grades and assignments.
Teachers can use this tool to conduct quizzes, surveys, and discussions. It is a classroom response system, so the whole class can participate simultaneously. The activities involve multiple-choice questions that are projected on the screen and students can answer through a tablet, smartphone, or computer.
This app is specially designed for young students with learning difficulties. It contains a rich add-free library of educational videos and games that promote the cognitive and socio-emotional skills of the students. There are 8 games available for practicing different skills like Matching, Memory Building, Coloring, Tracing etc.
This app caught my attention as it provides simple creation and management of student and teacher blogs but it can also be used for creating videos, photos and podcasts with the support of a growing lesson library included.
To Conclude
Integrating technology in the classroom is a challenging, yet exciting process that takes patience and willingness for continuous learning. Results won’t come overnight but strong diligence and an open mind can surely help you go a long way in this pursuit that would improve the learning experience for both you and your students.
The challenging development of the COVID-19 events from 2020 onwards has drastically changed most of the important aspects of our lives, including jobs and professional lifestyles.
Teaching and studying have instantly and directly felt the price of social distancing as lockdowns around the world have caused a massive migration of both students and educators from the regular physical classroom to online teaching and studying.
Currently, institutions and individuals are implementing innovative ways of learning and teaching intending to adapt to the new circumstances. One of these learning models is the hybrid classroom, which combines the virtual and the physical classroom.
Read on and find out more about how the hybrid classroom works, what are its pros and cons, and how to run it successfully.
What Is A Hybrid Classroom?
The term ‘hybrid classroom’ can be simply explained as a classroom that combines two different elements, i.e. hybrid. The distinctive elements in this learning model are the traditional, in-person classroom and the online, virtual classroom.
In other words, teachers and students who engage in this type of classroom will participate in a combined learning environment where there will be students present in the physical class and remote students.
The hybrid classroom is also known as a “hyflex classroom” as it is a flexible and creative way of studying that seeks to provide flexibility and safety while maintaining good quality education.
For remote students, the lectures and seminars in the hyflex environment can be attended from any location through the popular video-conferencing software platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.
As a learning model, the hybrid classroom can vary depending on the institution and the educators that would implement it. Some schools choose this model to offer their study programs to foreign students who find it practical to attend lectures they’re interested in without their physical presence.
Another popular way is the so-called 50-50 hyflex classroom where the curriculum is taught in a certain number of days appointed for in-person participation in the classroom while other students are learning online – this approach was especially effective in schools that insisted on remaining open during a lockdown but still wanted to keep a safe environment for students and staff.
Many teachers choose this model to let their students be flexible and keep their enthusiasm and engagement in the in-person classroom. According to most teachers’ experiences, students show better results when they can choose their time and place for studying.
Benefits and Downsides of the Hybrid Classroom
In the perfect scenario, a hybrid classroom sounds almost like an edutopia. Students choose their time for studying, they commit to their choice, engage their efforts while teachers have the best technical support at hand, and never fail to complete classes successfully.
The reality, however, is quite different, since the hyflex classroom has both its benefits and downsides.
Benefits
The top benefit of this learning model is flexibility – a trait much required in today’s dynamic digital world. Students appreciate when they have the chance to study from the comfort of their location.
Other benefits are accessibility and inclusion, aspects that are crucial when it comes to equality in education. Online students from all around the world can enroll in courses without physical presence, which can be conditioned by health or financial circumstances that could prevent studying in the traditional way.
Nevertheless, learning environments thrive on interaction and communication between teachers and peers, and this is one of the top challenging aspects of the hyflex model.
Another, yet equally important downside of hybrid classrooms is the hybrid classroom technology, i.e. the technical requirements and issues that can appear.
If the technical support is not good enough, remote students will have difficulties in following the classes and teachers will become frustrated while trying to maintain the dialogue between the physical and the online classrooms.
Finally, this type of classroom requires teachers to follow the latest technology advancements and invest in their knowledge and practice and support their schools regarding the tech infrastructure. Unfortunately, this is more often regarded as a privilege than a necessity.
Tips On How To Introduce A Hybrid Classroom
Introducing a functional hybrid classroom is not an easy task, as you need to use top tech and think of new creative ways to bridge online and offline students.
However, there are ways to make great lessons with a bit of effort and use this challenging way of teaching to your advantage.
Turn Lesson Exercises Into Games
If you feel exhausted by jumping from the remote student group to the students around you and vice versa, try combining different approaches of communication while performing exercises.
For example, you can mute online students while giving a task to in-person students and then gather them together to guess, add or swap information or send the online students’ lesson materials that the physical students cannot see.
Use Interactive Online Tools
Online lessons depend on the multitude of online quiz tools and games, and these can be as effectively used in the hybrid classroom. Useful tools for both teaching and revising of the study material are Mentimeter Quiz, GimKit, Kahoot!, Quizizz, Quizlet Live etc. Moreover, you can use real-time cloud-based apps like Google Docs or Google Jamboard for collaborative writing activities.
Use An Online Whiteboard
Using an online whiteboard will ensure that all students can follow the lesson. One of the benefits of using a cloud-based notebook as a whiteboard, like Microsoft OneNote, for example, is that you can keep all your files in one place and not be bothered with sharing them later.
Most of the course books nowadays come with an online version, i.e. an e-book that contains the content of lessons plus extra materials like worksheets, additional exercises, and audio files that support the lessons. Share the e-book on your screen and engage all students in the virtual materials.
Leave Room and Time for Repeating and Revising
The hybrid classroom requires a clear and straight-to-the-point approach when it comes to presenting and explaining lesson materials so that all students can simultaneously follow and understand the information addressed to them.
However, the uncertainty of the technical support can easily impede the dynamic in a classroom, so it is important to always be ready to repeat and revise what you have said to be sure that all students’ have received the message successfully.
Create a Backup for the Low-Tech Environment
Many teachers have only a laptop and a speaker in their virtual learning environment, so most of them come up with alternative ways to keep the flow and the quality of their teaching despite the poor technical conditions.
One such way is to organize research activities for students in advance and then just revise and give feedback during the lesson – this will keep students more engaged and introduced to the lesson materials before you give them a deeper insight into a topic.
Create Quality Time Sessions With Students
Hybrid classrooms can seriously affect the level and quality of social interaction between students, as well as their attention span in class. Therefore, you must contribute to creating a comfortable and welcoming classroom environment.
One way to do this in the challenging hyflex conditions is by appointing a monthly session of 20-30 minutes in which in-person and online students would meet and share their latest experiences, discuss popular topics or engage in group activities related to their interests outside the school curriculum.
To Conclude
Undoubtedly, the hybrid classroom model was a life savior in the ever-changing situation caused by COVID-19, although it has been present and under extensive development in the last two decades. We live in a digitalized world that’s continuously growing and changing, therefore, the traditional models of education are no longer applicable.
Embracing hybrid learning is a smart way to move forward. It not only removes the expired ways of teaching and thus changes the way we think of education, but it also makes education more accessible and gives students the freedom to choose their way of learning.
In the so-called “new normal” we’re all living now, where physical distance has become a sheer necessity, the popular application Zoom is rapidly gaining popularity. It is very practical for meetings and conference calls, and nonetheless effective for online teaching and distance learning.
The change from physical to online has been challenging for even the most tech-savvy teachers, so it’s very important to share information on digital teaching tools to improve both teachers’ and students’ experiences in the virtual classroom.
Read on and learn more about our Zoom guide for teachers that includes essential tips and tools that will make your life easier and faster.
Zoom Guide & Instruction for Teachers
You can use Zoom in many different ways, so you can choose to stick to the app’s basics and adapt it to your and your students’ needs and skills, or you can always explore its new extensions and learn new ways to use it.
Here are some of the essential functions of how teachers can use Zoom most effectively.
Schedule a Meeting
After you’ve signed up for Zoom, you can schedule a meeting. There are two ways to do it.
First, use your personal meeting link that never changes in a personal meeting room for staff or office hours. Also, you can use this link to host sessions with your colleague teachers. This is a great option for one class section and in case anyone enters your Zoom room when you’re unavailable, their access will be denied.
Second, if you have multiple classes, I recommend you to schedule a unique meeting to prevent students from dropping in during classes. You can do that by using the dashboard.
Friendly reminder: Make sure you send your invitations on time, and that the subject line is easy to understand. Always double-check the date.
Teach Live Lessons
If your class doesn’t encounter any technology or internet connectivity issues, you can easily have live lessons and perform remote activities together with your students at a scheduled time.
Record and Share Lessons
Use the recording feature and create video lessons that you can share with your students who weren’t present in class or have unreliable internet at home.
Mute Microphone and Video
Sometimes it can be even harder to control the atmosphere in the virtual classroom. In order to make sure that while one person is speaking, the rest of the students are listening, as a host, you can mute the microphone of all students, or turn off the video when needed.
Go to the ‘Manage Participants’ option.
Select ‘Mute All.’
The shortcut to mute the microphone is Alt + A or Cmd+Shift+A.
The shortcut to turn off the video is Alt + V or Cmd+Shift+V.
Chat (Personal and Public)
In the Zoom chat, students can send a message to the entire class and the teacher. There is also a private chat which you can’t view (something like when they’re passing notes to other students in class when you’re not looking :) You can also disable this feature for students.
Share Screen
When a person shares their screen, the entire class can view it and even leave annotations. As a teacher, you can restrict these functions by disabling the annotation and allow screen sharing only for you.
Waiting Rooms
Students can be held in a virtual lobby and you can admit them one by one to make sure no intruders enter class. You can manage this option in the settings.
Zoom Tools and Tips for Teachers
As the current standard for video streaming for remote teaching and learning, Zoom offers many tools and features that focus on improving the teacher’s experience of Zoom.
Here are some additional great Zoom tools for teachers:
Breakout Rooms
The Breakout rooms allow you to split your Zoom meeting or online class into many separate sessions (up to 50). So for certain activities, you can split students into smaller groups or meet them individually and then meet the class together again, after the group work is finished.
This is how to do it:
Enable breakout rooms in Zoom.
Before class, pre-assign the students of the small groups.
Assign them during class or use the option to have Zoom randomly break the class into groups.
Whiteboarding
This is an excellent feature for group projects or just to launch your warm-up with brainstorming at the beginning of class. Students can draw or write on the whiteboard. This is a great way to make classes more interactive.
The “Flipped Classroom” Model
Teachers that opt for this online teaching model, assign the new material to students to learn it individually and then clarify information and practice it during class. Prepare activities that will engage students to apply new knowledge and encourage brief Q & A sessions on the new material.
Show-and-tell Time for the Younger Students
Young elementary students can’t pay long attention to video online classes, however, it is important to make them feel the communal spirit of the classroom. Schedule days when they can see their classmates, enjoy reading time, share stories, show toys or drawings etc.
Virtual background
Yeah, messiness has become a new normal within the new normal of many of us teachers. Luckily, Zoom got us covered! Use the feature for changing your background and avoid the stress about the way your bedroom or office looks.
Just make sure you use something that will not distract students and always test before class to prevent any unexpected fails. Also, you can change the background to a theme that matches the day’s topic of your class. For example, melting icebergs for a lesson on climate change.
Turn off File Transfer
Young students especially use the chat to get distracted in online classes. If you disable the file transfer, students won’t be able to share GIFs, memes or any other files during class. This will help them to stay focused and is a great way to set rules in online classes.
Reactions & Nonverbal Feedback
Just like in regular classes, students can express reactions and engage directly in class. They can use the icons of this feature and raise a hand when they have a question, clap, disagree or ask the teacher to speak slower or faster. Use these functions to engage your students to participate in class.
Wikipedia Search
This is a chat app that is very practical for classes that include research on the spot. You and your students can search for Wikipedia articles directly from the Zoom chat channels and share them with each other.
Link Your Google Calendar to Your Zoom Account
One of the best ways to stay organized and to keep track of all your appointments and your schedule is to connect your Google Calendar with your Zoom account.
Log into your Google Calendar, go to “Settings” and choose “Gett adds”.
In the pop-up tab look for Zoom for GSuite and confirm the installation of the app.
Create an event in your calendar and select Zoom as the option for the call.
An ID and a password will be automatically generated for your call that you can easily copy.
Connect Zoom to Slack
This is another great way to improve your organization while multitasking as usual. Considering that Zoom and Slack are apps used by most professionals worldwide, it is very practical to connect them and have your task schedule and appointments always at hand.
Log in to both Zoom and Slack via the same email.
Enter Zoom, then find the Slack app in the Zoom Marketplace and install it.
Search for more useful options in Settings.
To be continued…
The popularity of Zoom inspires regular updates and extensions of the app. Some of its tools are features of the platform itself but there are also external apps that can be connected to Zoom.
Online teaching requires exploring alternate approaches in teaching and learning, therefore, it is very important that teachers stay up to date with the new technologies to make their lessons fun and appealing.
Don’t forget to check this post again in months and see what’s new!
Is chaos in the classroom your worst nightmare? As a teacher, you, of course, know that rules are the key to a productive classroom environment and that both students and teachers must follow them to feel happy and fulfilled while in class.
But how do you make rules work practically and yet remain on friendly terms with your students?
Read this entry to find out about ESL classroom rules that may vary according to teacher’s goals and students’ age.
Importance of Classroom Rules
Learning Atmosphere
Both research and teachers’ experiences have proven that it is far more effective to build positive behaviors than to control students’ negative, defiant behavior. This illustrates that setting rules and sticking to them is the key to a pleasant learning atmosphere. Motivating students by giving rewards is one of the most effective ways to do so.
Academic Performance and Social Behavior
As a result, students’ academic performance and social behavior improve while the professional progress of teachers grows. But to set and react to a rule, it is necessary to build it on a routine that will support it.
Routines and rules go hand in hand, and consistent routine patterns are the pillars of rules respected. For example, if one of your rules in class is “No mobile phones in class!” you have to make sure that you have introduced an understandable and easy-to-follow procedure that supports this rule.
In other words, you explain to students that the use of mobile phones distracts their attention in class, so they are asked to leave it upon arrival in their pocket on the hanging chart. This way, students will feel respected and more willing to cooperate in the classroom environment.
The same goes for online classes. Rules like “Always turn your camera on” should be supported by a solid explanation and routine that students could easily rely on, like reporting attendance at the beginning of each class.
Routines and rules rely on two imperatives: consistency and predictability.
The classroom is a complex, challenging environment. So as a teacher, you should try to make it simple by informing your students about what they should expect, what is expected from them, and what behavior is acceptable.
By introducing routines in class, students and teachers learn how to manage their daily tasks and smoothly transit between activities, which will strengthen their coping skills when unexpected changes or disruptions occur. It will also reduce stress for you, since you don’t have to manage too many things at once.
Faster Learning Process
Once properly taught and regularly practiced for a certain time, following routines and respecting rules in the classroom comes naturally and needs only occasional assistance.
This brings benefits to both students and teachers. On the one hand, students get more opportunities to learn, and, on the other hand, teachers have more time to give effective instructions and follow up on students’ progress in the learning process.
Classroom Example
Meet Ron, an ESL teacher of different grade levels.
Today, Ron and his students were greeting and preparing for class. Ron was sitting on his desk, browsing through his materials for the day’s lesson, and just shortly said “Hello!”, when a student would enter the classroom. Just before the class began, some students were chatting, others were texting and almost everyone’s desks were empty.
When Ron started the class, he had to waste extra time making students quiet and taking their mobile phones away. On the wall of the classroom, a Rules Chart was hung, which included rules like, “Prepare books before class starts!” and “No mobile phones in class!”.
Now meet Robin, an ESL teacher of multiple grade levels, whose classroom is located opposite Robin’s.
That same day, Robin went to his classroom before his classes had started, prepared his teaching materials, then waited outside by the door to greet his students upon arrival. As each student approached, they first did a “high-five” with Robin and said “Hello. How are you today?”, Robin replied, “Hello. I’m fine, thank you.”, then enter the classroom and place their mobile phones in the pocket on the hanging chart marked with their name.
Next, they’d take their seat and lay their books and stationery on the desk. “We’re ready to start.” said Robin, and so a new ESL class began.
What’s the difference between these two scenarios?
Robin’s story speaks of positive rules management in the classroom while Ron’s scenario shows what happens in the classroom when there are no rules, i.e. when rules are just nominal but not implied.
Rules are the imperative of a productive classroom environment, and it is equally important for students and teachers to follow them to feel happy and fulfilled while in class. Understandably, ESL classroom rules may vary according to teacher’s goals and students’ age.
What To Do When Rules Are Broken?
Even the best students and teachers break rules from time to time, and that’s fine. Teaching is an organic process full of unpredictable events and behavior, so instead of striving toward flawlessness, consider upgrading your communication strategies and mechanisms. Rules are conditioned by appropriate consequences and rewards that you ought to design in parallel to the rules.
As a teacher, you’ll often encounter situations with obviously defiant behavior and in that case, a warning or consequence must follow. Nevertheless, you may also see students who fail to demonstrate the expected behavior due to exceptional events or misunderstandings.
In these situations, it’s essential to stick to the rules for the sake of the classroom community, but also show a rational understanding of the situation.
Exceptions to the Rules
The truth is, if you never bend the rules, your class atmosphere will become boring. Make sure you don’t let things go out of control, but show trust and respect to your students in certain situations and let them have fun from time to time.
For example, inform students that the rule “Never shout in class!” can be broken when playing games or that the only time when they’re allowed to change seats without asking are during group activities. Make sure you give out this information before you begin with activities to prevent misunderstandings.
Examples of Classroom Rules and Tips on Implementation
In the ESL classroom, the age and the level of language proficiency will determine the way routines and rules will be constructed and assessed.
Your main objective as a teacher is, however, to make sure everyone acquires the same high-quality English language learning.
Here are some examples of rules that you can add to improve the language
skills of your students and boost their confidence while learning a foreign language.
Communicate in English While in Class
Encourage your students to communicate in English before using their native language. Tell them that they have to use English for daily questions and statements like:
What date is it today?
Sorry, I’m late. May I come in?
May I go to the restroom?
May I ask you a question?
Can you spell that, please?
Can I borrow your pencil?
Always give classroom instructions in English and monitor students’ responses. For example:
The learning environment in the ESL classroom must be positive, so students can progress and don’t feel uncomfortable when making mistakes while misspelling words in writing or mispronouncing while reading. Explain to students that mistakes are a normal part of the learning process and that ridiculing others will not be tolerated as it shows unkindness.
Raise Your Hand to Speak! Don’t Interrupt!
Tell students that when they are kind and respect their teacher and their classmates, that means that they respect themselves too. Explain that it is vital that every person in the class has a chance to speak without being interrupted and have the others listening carefully.
Take at Least One Turn in Activities in Class
This rule will activate and encourage students who are timider or feel insecure to speak in front of the class during solo or group activities. Inform students that their activity is very important for their learning and their grades.
You Mustn’t Use Phones in Class
We’ve already discussed this rule and explained it above. However, it still deserves to be pointed out as one of the top rules, as you do want to retain students’ attention. Also, you can use this rule to explain and practice the grammar form of the verbs “must” and “mustn’t”.
Examples of Rules for Distance Learning
When it comes to rules in the digital classroom, we can conclude that effectively built routines have an equally positive effect as those in physical learning environments. Although online learning may seem harder to control as there is no physical contact, however, you can try to make a simple order of rules for students to follow to make sure the class runs smoothly.
Create a list of rules and email it to your students at the beginning of the school year, or send them a link to this video.
Be On Time
Tell students that they should sign in to the teaching platform at least 10 minutes before class starts, so they can all start the lesson together.
Turn Your Camera On
Another rule that we mentioned above but equally important to be stressed again. Explain to students that they must have their camera on so that you can confirm their presence in class, and you can all see each other.
Do Not Eat or Drink
Need to say more? Just explain that, just like when in school, eating and drinking is something that they should do before class or during recess but never during online sessions.
Dress Appropriately
Explain to students that online classes are just like any other tête-à-tête classes, and that their PJs or a sports bra is not something they’d wear in school. Tell them to choose comfortable but representable clothes.
Mute Your Mic
Tell students to keep their microphones on mute unless they need to speak. Explain that this will prevent crowded sounds and unwanted (often embarrassing) moments while in class.
Bonus: ESL Classroom Rules for Younger Students
The aforementioned rules apply to students of all ages. However, when it comes to younger students, you must be extra careful when designing rules and expectations in the ESL classroom.
Younger students still haven’t developed consistent social behavior and are not mature enough to fully understand the implications that follow when a rule is respected or broken.
Therefore, you should avoid applying consequences when students of this age group break rules, but rather develop an approach with positive reinforcement that will illustrate what is “right” or “wrong” to do.
For example, you have to be flexible when it comes to “Communicate in English while in class” and encourage only simple use of language in the classroom.
Also, try saying things like, “We did an outstanding job for raising our hands to speak today. We are a class of kind and good friends.”
Wrap up
It is very easy to talk about rules, but it’s a different story to apply them effectively and make them work. Every class is different, and every teacher knows their class best, so it takes time, trust, and understanding finding the approach that is best for you.
Lastly, regardless of the strategy, remember to keep consistency between your expectations, the responses from your students, and your feedback.
If you’re a classroom teacher or tutor, then you know how important it is to create lessons that interest and excite your students.
And you also know that the best students are the ones who feel welcome in the classroom and are empowered to share their thoughts and feelings with the class.
The hard thing can be figuring out how to create a learning environment that accomplishes these things.
Culturally responsive teaching helps you create classes that excite and motivate students, and that make them feel like their classes are for them instead of just somewhere they need to be.
What is Culturally Responsive Teaching?
In the traditional classroom setup, the teacher is positioned as an expert who passes down knowledge to the students.
We’re all familiar with this setup, and there are times when it is useful.
The truth is, though, that positioning the classroom as a strict hierarchy where the teacher is the sole keeper of knowledge can be hurtful to students and keep them from getting the most out of class.
Each student brings a fount of knowledge and lived experience to the classroom.
It helps everyone when the teacher can build on that knowledge and draw on it to create classes that are meaningful and relevant to students, and that honor what everyone has to bring to class – not just the teacher.
Culturally responsive classrooms address the problems with traditional classroom setups by using strategies and techniques that draw on students’ cultural contexts and experiences.
A culturally responsive teacher creates classes that feel relevant and immediate to students and that are connected to their backgrounds and knowledge bases.
Why Is Culturally Responsive Teaching Important?
If you think back to your time in school, you might remember a specific type of classroom experience: books written by white men that take place in Europe or America, pictures featuring smiling white children, and examples in your math textbook involving children named Alice and John dividing up pieces of pizza or apple pie.
While there are of course some great books written by white men (and we all love pizza), classroom institutions like these can create an environment that caters to a specific kind of student and speaks to a specific kind of lived experience.
Culturally responsive teaching seeks to broaden that scope, acknowledging the various identities of the students in a given classroom and creating lessons that speak to the full range of backgrounds and ethnicities in a classroom.
This makes each student feel more included in class and makes the lesson content feel more relevant to them, which in turn leads to greater participation and more learning.
More than that, it helps students feel seen and accepted for who they are.
Culturally responsive education turns the classroom into a place that affirms and celebrates students’ backgrounds and identities instead of furthering a narrative that certain cultures, backgrounds, or references are more valid or normative than others.
Culturally responsive curriculum is important in any learning environment, but it can be especially important in ESL classrooms.
That’s because in ESL classrooms, students often have extremely diverse sets of backgrounds and cultural references from their teachers and thus may struggle to connect with the types of lessons the teacher provides.
5 Strategies and Techniques for Culturally Responsive Teaching
There are a number of easy ways to incorporate culturally responsive teaching into your classroom.
Most of these strategies are fairly easy to implement, but they’ll make a huge difference in terms of what your lessons look like and how your class feels.
Learn About Your Students
The first step toward creating a more inclusive classroom is to figure out who your students are and what they care about.
There are a number of ways to do this – and you don’t need to limit yourself to just one method.
One of the easiest ways to learn about students is to distribute a survey or questionnaire at the beginning of the semester asking students about their hobbies, interests, backgrounds, and more.
You can also facilitate open-ended discussions throughout the year that center on your students’ favorite activities, areas of interest, and more.
Once you have an idea of what your students like and what’s important to them, it becomes easier to incorporate those things into the classroom – whether that means playing the newest Billie Eilish song at the beginning of class or facilitating a unit on oceanography.
Make Your Classroom Setup More Inclusive
Simply evaluating the way your classroom looks can go a long way in terms of creating a learning environment that feels more relevant and inclusive to students.
For example, if you have posters on the wall, do they feature modern families or only traditional nuclear families? Do your bookshelves feature works by diverse authors or only canonical white authors?
If you teach younger students, do you have dolls, toys, and costumes that speak to a number of identities or are they limited in their scope?
Expand the array of decorations, tools, and objects in your classroom to be more inclusive. This can be as simple as putting up a poster of a celebrity or public figure your students look up to or including playthings that represent a number of different backgrounds, living situations, and professions.
As was discussed above, changing the norm wherein the teacher is the sole expert in the classroom is a huge part of culturally responsive teaching.
Creating classroom experiences where your students get to be the experts validates the importance of the knowledge they bring to the table, and it also helps them practice compiling knowledge and teaching.
There are ways to let students be the experts in all sorts of classroom settings. For example, in an ESL class you can have a unit where students teach the class about foods, holidays, or other topics that they grew up with.
Or in a history class, you could teach about historical events that are relevant to your students and have them interview parents or relatives about said events and then report back to the class on their findings. If they did a great job, you can motivate them by giving rewards.
Bring in Guest Speakers
An easy way to make students feel represented in and excited by the classroom experience is to bring in guest speakers.
You can bring in speakers who share a cultural background, gender, or nationality with your students – and in fact, a 2015 study shows that students are often motivated to perform better in the classroom when they have educators who share a background or racial identity with them.
You can also bring in speakers who share interests with your students. So, if your class is ga-ga over soccer or guitar or TikTok, you can try to find a speaker who’s an expert in one of those fields.
Or you can feature guest speakers who can speak to your lesson material. So for example, if you’re teaching a certain book, you could try to contact the author to come speak (or Zoom into your class for 10-15 minutes).
Or if you’re teaching about a geographical region, you could invite someone who’s spent time there to come speak.
Your students will love getting to hear from someone with a background that speaks to them or the content, and they’ll also be excited about a special lesson that’s a change from the norm.
Make Room for Each Student
It’s important to make each student feel that their voice is important and that there is room in the classroom for their unique perspective.
You can foster this kind of environment by calling on each student and giving them a chance to speak.
You can also make room for each student by having everyone submit anonymous feedback or answer questions on index cards that you then redistribute randomly to be read back to the class.
Another way to include every student is to invite students to teach back material after you’ve introduced it, making sure to cycle among every student eventually.
These methods create a more inclusive environment and make each student feel that they have a stake in the classroom experience.
Culturally Responsive Education is What You Make It
At the end of the day, there’s no specific rubric for culturally responsive teaching – and that’s a good thing because it gives you room to connect with your students and really see what they need.
The most important thing you can do in terms of creating a culturally responsive classroom is to listen to your students, create genuine connections with them, and make them feel valued and welcomed in the classroom.
Hopefully, these strategies will help you accomplish that, but no matter what techniques you use you’ll be successful as long as you show up as your most authentic self and create an environment that makes students feel celebrated and secure.
If you have other methods you use for creating a culturally responsive learning environment, please let us know in the comments below!
We love hearing your ideas for how to make any classroom a more inclusive, learning-friendly place.
You have a PowerPoint that you put a ton of work into, and you’re teaching your favorite class, but when you look out into the sea of students, or at the tutee on your screen…
People look bored.
Too often even the most dynamic, interesting classes turn into this kind of scene, but it doesn’t need to be this way.
Interactive learning can help you create a class structure that’s more engaging and fun, so your students show up actually wanting to learn.
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What is Interactive Learning?
Interactive learning is a hands-on, immersive method of teaching and learning where students take an active role in their education.
It’s a departure from the normal classroom structure where teachers lecture and students take notes, which can also be thought of as passive learning.
Interactive learning can encompass traditional classroom tools like role-playing activities and group projects as well as online modalities that encourage self-directed learning.
The most important aspect of interactive learning is that it encourages critical thinking and a spirit of discovery in students.
Strategies and Methods for Interactive Teaching
If you’ve spent much time teaching in the classroom or online, you’re probably already starting to get a sense for what kind of strategies and activities interactive learning might encompass…
And you may even use some of these in your classroom already!
Either way, you can implement this list of activities and tools in your interactive classroom or use it as a jumping off point to come up with your own strategies for creating a more dynamic, responsive classroom environment.
Concept Mapping
Concept mapping is a wonderful tool because it’s endlessly adaptable for different class sizes and age groups, and it’s applicable for pretty much any kind of content.
You can use this technique when introducing a new concept to get students’ wheels turning or once you’ve taught it to help them recap and summarize what they’ve learned.
Concept mapping entails drawing a circle on your physical or virtual whiteboard and writing the main concept you’re discussing inside it. Then, you can create lines to other bubbles that talk about related ideas or subconcepts.
Eventually, you’ll have a branching diagram encompassing a number of interrelated ideas. This encourages students to think more deeply about the topic at hand, deepen their association and synthesization skills, and participate more fully in class.
Short Story Writing
This easy-to-implement exercise will challenge your students’ powers of imagination as well as their English language capabilities.
Once you’ve introduced some new vocabulary or grammar concepts, have your students take 15-20 minutes to write a short story encompassing the new concepts they’ve learned.
You can give them a prompt to help them, like write a scary story or write about a real event that happened to you, or you can leave it more open-ended and have your students decide for themselves what to write about.
Once your students have finished writing, you can ask them to read their stories aloud to the class. For more advanced students, you can have pairs or groups pass their stories between themselves. Each student will edit another’s story and provide feedback on it.
Q&A Sessions
For this exercise, all you need are some index cards or an online tool like Slido, which allows students to post questions anonymously and then upvote the questions they like.
After you’ve introduced a new concept, have each student come up with 3-5 questions and write them down on their notecard or enter them online.
Then, read some of the questions out loud and answer them.
The anonymity of this exercise may help quieter students feel more confident and encourage people to ask questions they would be embarrassed to ask otherwise. It also forces students to think critically about the ideas being presented.
Peer Teaching
For this exercise, place students in pairs and have one act as the student and one as the teacher. The teacher will explain a grammar concept or other theme or idea to the student while the student takes notes.
The student may ask the teacher questions, and once the lesson is over the student can point out information the teacher may have missed and evaluate the teacher’s teaching.
If you’re tutoring online or in person, you can simply have your student act as the teacher and you will act as the student.
This method is great because explaining a concept to someone else requires a deep understanding of it, and students will work through their working knowledge of the concept more as they prepare to teach.
Interactive Whiteboard
Whether your school provides you with a Smartboard or you use a virtual interactive whiteboard like Ziteboard, you can use this tool to make your classes more collaborative and fun.
Interactive whiteboards have a number of applications, like letting multiple people write on the board and annotate content. They also let you easily download and share what’s been written on the board.
There are tons of ways to use interactive whiteboards in person and virtually, from games to brainstorming to doodling to group problem-solving, that allow your students to participate more in the classroom experience.
Interactive learning has been proven to increase student performance and help students develop more autonomy. It also improves students’ retention of material and promotes self-directed learning.
Beyond that, it provides students with a number of other benefits, such as the following…
Improved Classroom Collaboration
Interactive learning promotes classroom collaboration because it makes students active players in the class. They learn the skills to take control of their own learning process and work well with others.
These skills will serve your students well both in the classroom and beyond.
Interactive learning encourages students to hone their critical thinking skills and information synthesis capabilities because it puts students in the position of developing their own opinions instead of simply receiving and regurgitating the teacher’s words.
Activities that include free association, student teaching, and idea generation help students learn to synthesize information, think critically, and develop an understanding of the class material that they can articulate in their own words.
More Immersion
In an interactive classroom, your students are constantly doing activities or preparing to do something active with the information you’re learning.
Because of this, students in interactive learning environments stay more engaged than their peers in more traditional situations. This keeps them more interested and engaged, helps them learn the information better, and also makes class more fun.
Challenges of Interactive Teaching and Learning
Although interactive classrooms overwhelmingly benefit students and teachers alike by creating a more cohesive, collaborative environment that empowers students, there are some challenges that come with this learning model.
Here are some of the challenges that come with transition:
Technical Difficulties
A number of interactive teaching techniques utilize technologies like interactive whiteboards, social media back channels, and other virtual solutions.
While these solutions can be vastly helpful in increasing the possibilities for students in the classroom, they may have a steep learning curve if you’re new to this type of technology.
However, technical difficulties don’t need to be an impediment to your interactive classroom. Many virtual tools have video tutorials, virtual assistants, and other aids that can help you overcome bumps in the road.
Or you can go a lower tech route and still create a perfectly successful interactive learning model in your classroom!
Increased Workload
When you first make the switch to an interactive classroom, you may find yourself with an increased workload as you figure out which methods make most sense to implement in the classroom and how to best use them to the advantage of your students.
Designing a new syllabus and curriculum, getting acquainted with new technologies, and getting students accustomed to interactive learning while keeping up the pace of their current education all take time.
However, you can alleviate the stress of transitioning to interactive learning by gradually introducing new learning strategies instead of attempting to overhaul your classroom all in one day.
Resistance to Change
Some students may not want to switch over to an interactive learning model and may mock or resist new techniques or technologies rather than embracing them.
This can be compounded when they are expected to participate more in interactive learning methods and students are used to being more passive classroom participants.
You can help students adjust to an interactive learning model by giving them agency in choosing the activities they do and making the activities more fun. Introducing new technologies may also excite students and make them more enthusiastic about proposed classroom changes.
Interactive Teaching Aids, Apps, and Tools
There are a number of online resources and apps that can help you incorporate interactive learning into your classroom and expand the possibilities for your classroom. A tablet helps you to use many apps and still be mobile.
You can find a few great resources below, but these are just a small sampling of the range of interactive learning tools available online.
This innovative application combines the functionality of interactive whiteboards with a number of other useful capabilities.
It has a collage function that allows students to draw individually or collaboratively as well as voting polls that can expedite class decisions and give students a greater voice.
This neat tool allows students to create collaborative comics!
This is a great way for students to integrate the new vocabulary and grammar they’ve learned in class and practice their English skills while having fun.
They’ll love creating funny, kooky comics with their friends – and best of all, they’ll be learning while they’re at it.
This innovative teaching tool lets you import existing content like YouTube videos, presentations, and more and make your whole lesson interactive.
You can add quizzes, polls, virtual reality simulations, and other fun interactive pieces into your lessons seamlessly, giving your students more opportunity to engage with the lesson – and yourself more opportunity to check in on your students’ progress.
This classroom app has a number of functionalities. It lets you ask students quick questions for instant feedback, create quick quizzes and exit tickets, split students into virtual rooms, and more.
You can use this app as a resource for virtual learning or as a backchannel in a physical classroom.
This tool is particularly good for ESL learning environments because it allows teachers and students to send voice messages.
You can send voice messages to students that they need to listen to in order to practice listening comprehension, and they can send messages to you to work on their pronunciation and speaking skills.
You can incorporate this as homework or in a number of other ways to supplement students’ learning.
And More…
Interactive learning may look different to every teacher – and every student. Especially, when you are teaching in front of multicultural students. Then you might have to adapt some strategies to teach culturally responsive.
Use these tools in your ESL class to create more opportunities for students to learn, practice, and engage.
And don’t sweat the small stuff too much. As long as students are active participants in class, they’re getting what they need to out of it.
You don’t need to use 100 different apps and strategies to create a successful interactive classroom.
Just find the techniques you love and run with them – your students will thank you for it.
Have you ever been in a classroom full of young learners?
When 20 or so preschoolers are in a room together, things can get hectic. Crying, running around, you name it.
How do you stop the madness — or prevent it from happening in the first place?
Classroom procedures are a lifesaver when it comes to class management! These systems streamline your class and keep everyone calm and organized: the students and yourself.
Read on to find out four classroom procedures you can use in your class, and discover four hassle-free tools that will help you implement them!
How Classroom Procedures and Routines Help Your Students Learn
Classroom procedures and routines, simply put, are systems you implement to help organize and direct the students in your class.
The students should know what your classroom procedures are and what different signals and instructions mean so that they can follow directions more easily, and so they know what’s going on in the classroom.
Having a routine allows students to be more self-directed, and it also gives them the opportunity to learn important leadership skills.
Classroom procedures also teach students how to recognize and follow patterns.
For example, they’ll learn that when you ring the bell at 11:15, that means to get ready for lunch and that every single day they need to follow the same pattern of tasks when they enter the classroom.
The routines that emerge from clear classroom procedures teach students about time management!
They’ll learn to mark the morning by a series of activities that take the same amount of time every single day and to use the time they have for an allotted task wisely.
Easy Classroom Procedures You Can Put Into Place Now
Here are some simple classroom procedures you can use to streamline your classroom — and tips for how to most effectively introduce them into your class! Try these tips out: you’ll be pleased to see how much more smoothly they make your class go.
1. Procedures for the Start and End of the Day
It’s important to develop standard, clear procedures for the start and end of the day. These will help the time in between go smoothly by anchoring students when they enter and leave your class.
Here are sample classroom procedures for the beginning and end of the day:
Morning Procedure:
Greet the teachers
Place shoes, coats, and backpacks in cubbies
Turn in homework to the homework box
Drink water and go to the bathroom
Grab a book
Go to circle time and read quietly while you wait for class to start
30 small kids running toward a door with no order or reason is, in a word, chaotic. It’s important to create a clear procedure for lining up so that your whole class doesn’t go haywire, and so that you can preserve some peace in your class.
When it’s time to line up, you can play a song alerting students to get ready. Have them clean up their desks, push in their chairs, and stand at their seats. Then, you can call students table by table (or girls, then boys, etc.) to come to the door and line up quietly.
Patience is key to this procedure. In order to facilitate orderly, quiet lining up, you should send students who are unruly or who try to cut to the back even if it makes things take longer. This will set a norm for classroom etiquette.
3. Restroom Procedures
How your restroom procedures will work really depends on the age of your students — if they’re super young, you’ll probably need a member of your teaching staff to go to the bathroom with them.
You can have students raise their hands or make a special hand signal for someone to come accompany them to the restroom.
If your students are a little older, though, you can have them raise their hands and ask to go to the restroom or take a bathroom pass when they want to use the restroom — the pass ensures that only one or two students can go to the bathroom at a time.
Make sure that students replace the bathroom pass and return quietly to their seats without disrupting others after they’re done going to the bathroom.
You can make restroom procedures (and other classroom procedures) more interesting by spicing them up and making them exciting for students. This list of 8 ideas for bathroom passes has some hilarious alternatives to your average boring bathroom pass!
4. Lunchtime Procedures
When your children break for lunch they might get rowdy and overactive, making lunchtime procedures particularly important. You want to ease students into lunchtime in a way that’s orderly and calm to avoid major headaches.
Maybe your class’s lunchtime procedure will look something like this:
Clean up and push the chairs in
Go to the bathroom and wash hands (not all at once!) Call students who’ve been behaving well first, or call them section by section.
Get lunchboxes and water return to the seat
Eat quietly without disturbing others
When finished eating, clean up section and push in the chair
Students who’ve finished lunch can go to the circle and quietly play with a designated toy while they wait for everyone to finish eating
5. More Procedures for Your Classroom
You can create procedures for every part of your day: cleaning up, getting ready for naptime, playing outside, doing group activities, and more.
Procedures don’t need to be complicated or fancy — just a routine that your students can easily learn the steps of and enact!
4 Tools to Implement Classroom Procedures Effectively
No matter what classroom procedure you’re enacting, it’s important to use clear signals and patterns to let students know what they’re supposed to be doing.
These four tips will help you enact any and every procedure easily and effectively!
1. Use Signal Songs or Bells to Transition Between Activities
Signal songs are a really fantastic way to signal to students that it’s time to pay attention and follow directions.
If you have a computer connected to speakers in your classroom, you can create a file with your signal songs in it so you have them on hand throughout the day.
Here are some suggestions for songs you can use for different classroom procedures:
Cleaning up: The Clean Up Song from Barney
Nap time: The Yo Gabba Gabba Nap Time Song
Circle time: Make a Circle from Super Simple Songs
Lining up: The Ants Go Marching from Super Simple Songs
Be creative with the songs you use and the activities you use them for! You can even use silly songs that don’t have anything to do with the activity as long as you use them consistently.
And if you can’t easily play music in your class, don’t worry! You can use bells, instruments, or even clapping patterns to signal activity changes. Look at this list of fun call and response patterns for ideas you can use as procedure signals.
The important thing is to make sure that you’re not just you yelling at your students when it’s time to pay attention — you want a sound that engages them and grabs their attention without being harsh for you or them.
2. Give Warnings Between Activities
It’s important to give students warnings between activities so that they have time to finish what they’re doing, clean up, and get ready for the next activity.
Giving students 5- and 2-minute warnings lets them finish up at their own pace and make sure that they wrap up their work in a way that satisfies them before moving on.
3. Use Teaching Tools to Help Students Remember and Follow Procedures
Visuals help students remember what they’re supposed to be doing so they don’t have to ask you or feel embarrassed if they forget a part of the classroom procedure.
They also enforce the routine so that students can’t veer from it and pretend they didn’t know what was going on.
Here are a couple of teaching tools you can use to enforce your classroom routines and procedures:
Illustrate Starting and Ending Procedures On the Wall
An example morning procedure
If every day students are supposed to enter the classroom and then immediately take their shoes off, put their coats away, drink water, and then come to circle time, you could create a chart with a picture of a pair of shoes, a picture of a coat rack, a picture of a glass of water … you get it.
Make it easy for children to look around the room and know what they’re supposed to be doing!
Appoint Student Leaders to Guide Procedures
Having class monitors or other students who assist in enforcing procedures will do wonders for your class’s behavior — and it reduces your workload as a teacher.
You can elect two new class monitor every week, following a pattern that ensures every student is a monitor at least once, or you can let the two students who got the most points the day before be the student leaders each day.
Whatever system you choose, make sure it’s consistent and clear.
Student leaders can guide and help peers who are having trouble or misbehaving, and they’ll learn about leadership in the process!
Create a necklace or vest for class monitors to wear so everyone knows who they are. Your kids will be clamoring to be appointed student leaders!
4. Introduce Clear, Simple Procedures and Routines — Over and Over and Over Again
Make a clear (classroom management) plan for what your routines and procedures will be, and practice them with students over and over and over at the beginning of the year and even after breaks and weekends so that students learn what’s expected of them.
It’s easy to forget the details of procedures — even for grown-ups. Make practicing routines fun and easy so that your classroom procedures don’t become scary or intimidating for students.
I’ve come across countless students who have a decent understanding of English grammar, writing, and vocabulary.
However, many of these same students continue to struggle with speaking and have difficulty being understood by native English speakers.
What is the reason?
They have not taken the time to tackle word stress. What exactly is the concept of word stress in English language, and why is it so important to master?
Brief: What does word stress mean?
Word stress is crucial to properly pronounce words in the English language. It means, that in multisyllabic words, some syllables are spoken with greater emphasis than others.
If you get word stress wrong, it might be difficult to understand you, as there are several words which sound similar and can only be distinguished by word stress (in spoken language).
What Is Word Stress?
English is not a flat language, but one of stresses and varying intonations. And here’s how it works:
Each word in English is broken into a number of syllables.
Short words like dog, car, box and so on are one syllable words. Meaning each of these words only has one sound.
Words such as pretty [pret-ty], quiet [qui-et] and export [ex-port] are broken up into two syllables.
Then there are words with three, four and even five or more syllables. Think of the words important [im-por-tant], realistic [real-is-tic] and communication [com-mun-i-ca-tion].
Each syllable needs to be pronounced, but some syllables are stressedor emphasized on more than others, depending on the word.
Examples:
In the word ‘important’, the second syllable is stressed, so it is pronounced stronger and should read imPORtant.
The syllables which are not stressed are called the weak or quiet ones.
This is not only a difficult concept to grasp for Asian speakers studying English, but generally for all English as a second language students.
Even if one understands that importance of word stress, knowing exactly where to emphasize stress is no easy task.
General Rules and Patterns for Word Stress
This video lesson provides an introduction into syllable and word stress rules:
English is a very inconsistent language when it comes to rules. Since it is littered with exceptions, you should always keep in mind that there are no definite rules to English, but general rules and patterns that can be followed.
First, only one syllable can be stressed in an English word regardless if it has two, three, or even four or more syllables.
Two-Syllable Words
In most two-syllable nouns and adjectives, the stress comes in the firs syllable of the word.
Rule: stress on first syllable
Example
Nouns
PRESent, TABle, DOCtor
Adjectives
GIant, UGly, WASTEful
For most two-syllable verbs, the stress is in the second syllable.
Rule: stress on second syllable
Example
Verbs
exPORT, reGRET, proNOUNCE
Adjectives
GIant, UGly, WASTEful
Three- or More-Syllable Words
For words that have three or more syllables, understanding where to place the stress becomes a little more tricky, but there are some general patterns that can be followed.
The stress comes in the second to last syllable in any word that ends in -ic, -sion or -tion.
Rule: stress on second to last syllable
Example
Words ending in -ic
GRAPHic, geoGRAPHic, geoLOGic
Words ending in -sion and -tion
teleVIsion, reveLAtion
For any word ending in the suffixes -cy, -gy, -phy, -ty or -al, the stress comes in the THIRD syllable from the LAST.
Rule: stress on third to last syllable
Example
Words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy and -gy
deMOcracy, dependaBIlity, phoTOgraphy, geOLogy
Words ending in -al
CRItical, geoLOGical, histORical
Example: Here’s a tricky one!
Photograph – PHOtograph (3 syllables, first one is stressed)
Photography – phoTOgraphy (4 syllables, third to last one is stressed)
Photographic – photoGRAPHic (4 syllables, second to last one is stressed)
Why Word Stress Is So Important
Why exactly is correct word stress so important when it comes to conversing in the English language?
Here are some reasons:
Word stress heavily affects the sounds of the vowels in a word. Different word stress can make a word sound completely different.
Native speakers rely on word stress to identify words. Thus, incorrect word stress patterns can lead to miscommunication between non-native speakers and native speakers.
Overall, the skill to stress words correctly will help ESL learners more to converse more confidently in English and enjoy it!
While some languages have little or limited stress – like Mandarin –, English is a heavily stress-based language.
Unfortunately, the majority of ESL teachers and students ignore the necessity to practice word stress.
Word stress is not something extra that students should study if they have time. It is an essential part of learning English because it is a major component of the English language.
If I had two dollars for every student I’ve met who was frustrated that his or her speaking skills weren’t improving despite significant gains in the areas of grammar, writing, and vocabulary, I would have a decent amount of savings.
If you are a student out there, then you need to be studying word stress.
If you are a teacher, then you should take time each week to practice it with your students.
How to Practice Word Stress
I wish I could tell something else, but besides the few rules students just have to memorize the correct stress for each word in English language.
They should listen to native speakers – watch movies, listen to podcasts, etc. –, and then repeat the words they’ve heard, imitating their pronunciation. Or they can use the read-aloud function in language learning apps.
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