Managing Very Young Learners

Introduction

It can be very daunting going into a class of 20 or 30 five-year-olds when you have little teaching experience. How do you react when three of them are crying and don’t want to be there? What do you do when they start crawling under tables or throwing bits of paper? How do you deal with the children who don’t want to say or do anything? And how do you organise trips to the toilet without finding yourself with an empty classroom? Here are a few ideas which will hopefully help you to deal with these situations as easily and efficiently as possible so you can still teach some English!

Materials:
Teddy bears or puppets
Red and yellow card
Music
Board pens

In the beginning
You are a new person in their lives and quite possibly in a new environment with new rules. All of this can be very destabilising for very young children who are used to being around their parents and people they know. You really need to build up their trust before they can learn anything.
When they come into the classroom be there to welcome them and use their names as much as possible.
Have three or four teddy bears lined up on your table and ask the tearful looking children to look after ‘Snoopy’ as he is very shy. They will love the responsibility and this will act as a distraction.
You should always have the same teddies, or puppets at every lesson as they can serve to introduce new language or explain rules to games etc.
Have some quiet children’s music playing while they come into the classroom to make the environment more welcoming.

Practicalities
When one child says he wants to go to the toilet suddenly everyone will want to go. You’ll quickly get to know those who ask to go just as an excuse to leave the classroom.
You should establish toilet or drinking water rules in the first few lessons.
If you have the teacher with you in the room then halfway through your lesson, at a convenient time for what you’re all doing, you should organise a toilet run with either of you taking a handful of children at a time until everyone has been.
If your lesson is shorter than an hour it might be more practical to arrange with their teacher for them to do a toilet run before the class starts.
Have some tissue in the classroom for blowing noses!

Routines
It’s very important to always begin and end your lesson in the same way each time. The more children are familiar with class routines the easier they are to manage.
At the beginning of your lesson you may have to take a register. This will provide you with a perfect opportunity to install calm before starting the lesson. Otherwise you can make up your own opening routines.
You could have a ‘hello song’ which the teddies sing to the children and then the children sing it to the teddies.
Ask everyone to get their books and a pen out and to put their bags under the table before you start the lesson.
Make sure all your papers are ready before the children come into the classroom so you can properly give them your undivided attention. If they are in the room before you then make your entrance as quickly as possible, lay out your materials without completely turning your back on the class and begin the class always with the same greeting.
At the end of the lesson you could have a ‘goodbye song’ or simply a mini-conversation ‘Thank you. See you next week. Have a good week.’ Where the children repeat what you say. Get them to be quiet before saying this farewell and they will soon understand what they have to do at the end of each lesson. Don’t just run out of a rowdy class at the end!
Discipline
You need to see what system works for you and the children you teach but you must have a ‘system’! Children need to know what is expected of them rather than be told off and not know why.
Draw two faces in the corner of the board at the start of each lesson, one smiley and the other sad. Write their names onto piece of card that you can keep for the year. Stick them onto the board in-between the two columns. If they do something good like participate, help a friend or tidy up after themselves then you can move their name over to the happy face column. This is great incentive for them and shows that you aren’t just concentrating on the children who misbehave. If a child does misbehave you can move his name card across but give him the chance to move back to the middle and eventually to the smiley face column if during the rest of the lesson he does two good things. At the end of the class make a point of congratulating those who are in the smiley face column.
Like in football you can distribute yellow cards for minor naughtiness and red cards for mores serious misbehaviour. Two yellow cards can be replaced by red cards. Depending on what set up you’re teaching in you can tell the teacher about those with red cards at the end of the lesson or write something in their books or keep a record yourself of how many red cards they get. In any case speak to the teacher of how she disciplines her pupils and you can fit into her system.
Seating arrangements are key to a well-managed class. Make sure you have eye contact with everyone. If they have their backs to you children are more likely to be distracted. If they are sitting in round tables then keep mobile yourself. Don’t hesitate to change where they are sitting if you find they are easily distracted by sitting next to certain children. Shier children might feel more at ease if they can sit next to someone they get on with.
Make sure they only have the bare minimum on their desks. A friend’s pencil case can quickly become far more interesting than the lesson itself!
Ban the use of pencil sharpeners if possible! If pencils break then arrange with the teacher for one of you to fix it otherwise 5 year olds often love to spend hours sharpening a pencil down to the tip and then spilling the contents next to the bin not in it!
In the first lesson you should establish a handful of memorable class rules. These could include, no shouting, no going under or over tables, always listen to the teacher and your classmates, no throwing pencils etc. Explain these rules when you have everyone’s full attention.

Large classes and mixed abilities
The reasons that children can be difficult to manage are often easier to deal with than naughty children themselves.

They should always have something to do.
They should always be challenged. If they are bored then they will soon play up.
Help the children who don’t understand. Use the teacher and the stronger pupils as resources. Children love helping other children even at 5!
Have a reserve of extra activities for those who finish very quickly.
For large classes try to limit activities that are solely teacher-centred where everyone has to listen to you. By the same token 5-year-olds may find pair work difficult and need lots of guidance. You can’t be everywhere at once. So the key is to vary the type of activity and grouping you use.
Lots of children can mean lots of noise. The louder you shout, the louder they will become. If you want their attention then stand at the front of the class and put your hands on your head. It will take a few minute for the whole class to copy you but there will always be a few who are watching you and will be in intrigued by what you’re doing. Slowly the class will become silent.
Teaching speaking and listening skills

In this article you will find a few tips to get you started with teaching speaking and listening skills to young learners. The aims are:
To think about what you say in class and to make your language more accessible to your young learners
To think about how you can make listening fun and easy, not hard and boring

Age
The tips below are for your classes with 5-7 year olds although you can use similar principles when teaching older primary age (8-12).

Listening - Instructions
Remember you are their model so always think about how you are going to introduce an activity before you go to class. Writing out instructions as part of your lesson plan will really help you to notice what language you are using with your young learners. You may find that your language is too complex for the beginner pupils.
Imagine yourself as a beginner learning a new language and see if what you say is too difficult to follow. You may need to modify what you say. Instructions, if well thought out and accompanied always with demonstration, can be communicated purely in English.

Listening - Class management
Don’t panic if you don’t speak the children’s first language. This won’t prevent a bond forming between you and the children. If they know you as the person who only speaks English then they will always want to communicate with you as much as possible in English.
Discipline can be easily understood by young children through your facial expressions and smiley/cross faces drawn on the board.
Feedback can also be understood clearly when you use your face to help express whether or not you are pleased with the work they produce.
Listening - Using a song
Prepare the learners before they listen to anything.
Show them pictures of characters from the song.
If it’s a song about teddy bears then bring in some teddy bears to show them. If the teddy bears sing sections of the song then use them as puppets and make them actually sing the song.
Use actions as much as possible to accompany songs so that the children can participate. This will help build their confidence, increase their enjoyment and give them extra clues as to the meaning of the words they are listening to.
They should predict, ‘imagine’, what they are going to hear. Again, sticking with the teddy bears, ask them if they think the teddy bear is happy or sad.
When they are listening they should always have something to do. They need a reason for listening. You could allocate part of the song to a small cluster of children so they have to listen out for their part and sing along to that part only.
Use the same song again and again. Listening is a difficult skill so building their confidence is vital at all stages of language learning. If they recognize the words they will be much more motivated. This is valid not only from a language point of view but also from a logical point of view. Listening to a song you know and like is always an enjoyable experience. Familiarity helps children feel secure.

Speaking - Songs and chants
Using songs and chants in class gives the children a chance to listen and reproduce the language they hear. They are working on the sounds, rhythm and intonation.
Remember when you speak or sing keep it simple but very importantly, natural so that when they copy what you say they can have a chance of sounding natural.

Speaking - Whole class chorus drills
If you have a large class make sure the language they produce is not just confined to stilted whole class repetitions of sentences produced by you. If the class tries to speak at the same time they automatically slow down and the intonation and rhythm are lost. Whole class repetition does of course have its advantages as it allows weaker students to build confidence with speaking without being in the limelight. Do chorus drills as described above but limit them and always move on to letting individuals speak.

Speaking - Real language
As with listening, make sure they always have a valid reason for speaking. The more realistic the need for communication, the more effective an activity will be. In other words get them to ask their neighbour ‘Do you prefer chocolate or strawberry ice-cream?’ rather than saying; ‘What’s my favourite food?' This last question is just asking the children to guess rather than think. Avoid getting them to repeat sentences such as; ‘What is my name?’ or ‘Is this a book?’ Not only do you know it’s a book, so the interaction isn’t very interesting, unless the book is hidden in a bag and they are having to work out the contents, but also the response is limited to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Closed questions are ok to lead onto something more with low level learners but be aware of not using them too often.

Speaking - Further suggestions
Vary the types of speaking and listening activities you do. Keep them interested by introducing new approaches to speaking in class. This could mean talking to different people, talking to different numbers of people, speaking as a whole class, half a class or in small groups.
For different levels in the same class you can ask them to listen for different things. Ask the weaker ones to tell you how many teddy bears there are in the song and the stronger ones to tell you what the teddy bears are doing in the song.
To make one activity suit all levels ask them to practice saying between five and ten sentences. This way the quick finishers have more to do and the weaker pupils still feel they have achieved the task if they have practiced only a few sentences.

The reference: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/