Chapter 20: Getting Youth on Your Side: Coping with Young Learners 285
✓ Interest and motivation: Try to make your activities lively and based on
the children’s interests so that they really want to get involved.
✓ Sensory and kinaesthetic activities: Use all the senses (maybe not so
much of taste). If you can’t bring in real objects, tap into their imaginations.
Ask about how things smell, and what they look or sound like. And get
them moving! You can encourage mime and acting out stories. Do
activities standing up. Ask them to come up and write or draw something
on the board.
✓ A balance of activities: Try to alternate between sit-down activities and
ones involving movement so that the kids don’t end up over excited or
bored. It disturbs other classrooms if there’s constant noise but short
bursts are more acceptable.
✓ Thorough preparation: If you’re unsure of yourself, youngsters take
advantage and start messing about. Know exactly what you want to do.
✓ Have a starting and finishing routine: Repeat the same little songs at
the beginning and end of the lesson for several weeks. Kids feel secure
when they know what’s going to happen and when they’ve picked up the
words.
✓ Revision and repetition: Repeat information from previous lessons to
reinforce the ideas and give the kids a chance to show off what they
know.
✓ Visual stimulation: Make your classroom and materials bright and
colourful with lots of pictures.
✓ Discipline: This is an area of concern for a number of teachers. It’s best
to let children know what will happen if they’re naughty. Unfortunately,
you may not speak the children’s language when you begin but you can
always ask for the assistance of the school or a parent to set out the
ground rules.
I find it helps when the children know that parents are likely to get
involved if problems arise. For minor cases of disruptive behaviour
you try getting that pupil more involved by giving them a special
responsibility. This can improve confidence and prevent restlessness.
Imagining Once Upon a Time
You should always practise language within a context, and in the case of
children, fairy tales and kids’ stories in general are ideal. Another benefit of
stories is that they encourage the use of the four skills – reading, writing,
listening and speaking. Stories improve general linguistic ability because
children begin to paraphrase and summarise. In addition, they actually get
some cultural awareness through this gentle introduction to world literature.