How to teach 7 year-olds? Read: help!

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have recently started teaching English as a foreign language, and I have some experience teaching other topics, usually computers and math. However, all my experience has been teaching teenagers or adults that more-or-less wanted to be there, or could at least pretend they did. They roped me into this class saying I can speak Vietnamese, so I can yell at the kids to keep them in line.

I need some ideas how to keep the kids interested for 90 minutes, or failing that keep them from killing each other or causing property damage. We have a nice book to work with, but the syllabus only has me covering two pages a day, which is usually three phrases that they already seem to know, leaving me 85 minutes to fill on my own.

The one class I’ve taught so far, I managed to get (most of) them dancing the Hokey Pokey, but failed to teach them Mary Had A Little Lamb. They did sing songs from the book, but I couldn’t get them interested in learning new ones.

To sum up:
Help me!

2

How about a spelling bee?

3

Plan to change activities before they get bored with whatever you are doing, since that is the time when they start to go crazy. So you need lots of activities planned. Like 15, I would think, for a 90 minute period. And if you don’t get to them all, that’s ok.

Review, review, review–every day, you’ll have more to teach because you need to revisit everything you’ve ever done before in some new way.

4

Paging Kyla!

She recently finished a stint teaching English to kids in Bulgaria - although I’m pretty sure her students were older - and did some really creative things (including soliciting postcards from English-speaking locations where Dopers live) that you might be able to use or adapt for your class.

(You should not teach your students to write sentences like that last one… :slight_smile: )

GT