Section 2: Planning Classes

Chapter 12: Keeping Students Attention and Making Lessons Interesting

When you are teaching in your classroom, you have a clear reason to be there as you are earning money and doing your job. However, what is your student's reason for being in your English classroom? Depending on their age it can be absolutely nothing (younger learners) or for self-improvement (older learners). No matter what the age you should always make the goal to have interesting lessons while also making them educational and fun. Classroom lessons will not be a fun time for you if both you and your students are not having a fun time. When it comes to many English learners, they have not developed social skills fully in English so you will need to make lessons engaging and informative to slowly build them up or build them up from their previous experience and knowledge from other classes. Make a routine for your classes and always plan things out with a structure where you present knowledge, have a game or activity involving the knowledge, and following up with the students using that knowledge again to show that learning has taken place. If you make sure to always change things up such as changing the games and activities every day for around two weeks in order to create a good rotation for your classes. When you find things that work, don’t overdo them! Make sure your students enjoy a game or activity and then have a cooldown period where you don’t reuse the game too often, you always want activities and games to remain fun and enjoyable while also being educational and focusing on drawing your students into your classes! Many teachers make the mistake of trying to have only one fallback game or one game that they enjoy playing such as bingo, but for kids those activities can be tired out fast, and once your students become bored of it, it can be very easy for you to lose control of your classes.