First Day of English Class: A Nice Beginning

When we are teachers, it’s common to feel a little scared about our first day of class. Even though students more commonly have this feeling, teachers also feel scared.

There are plenty of reasons why a teacher can feel scared about having his/her first day of class. The first impressions are always important, and it’s necessary to leave a really nice big impression. Additionally, connecting with the students is also important. Maybe some teachers will say this is not important, because you are there for teaching and not to make friends, but, as a teacher, I have noticed that things work better if you have feedback with your students and if you make them feel good in class, as if they were at home. Then, when you want them to speak or do exercises, they will feel less shy and ask you questions without being afraid of you.

Regardless of that though, a good first class will make your students feel motivated and happy about their new teacher, and realistically, a good motivation always helps to learn a new language. We all know it can be a hard thing to do, but if we have the appropriate help, we can get through it.

So, the question will be, “how can we start off an English course without becoming boring or too basic?”

We all know what we should be learning during the first English class (I am talking about a beginner’s class). We could talk about introductions, the verb “to be”, and vocabulary, among others things. So, how can we teach these topics without using the whiteboard or notebooks too much? It’s simple, I recommend you that you do a speaking activity.

When we are learning, the first thing we want to do is to speak. Even though we still may need to learn grammar and vocabulary, we want to speak. Realizing that, I did this activity with level I students and it was fun. My students really enjoyed it and it was a good ice-breaker activity.

Steps:

 

First of all, you have to prepare some cards with different names, personalities, occupations, likes and dislikes. Before the class, be sure of  the number of students you are going to be working with and how many girls and boys there are. I tend to create more cards with extra names in case there are extra students or I won’t be able to know the exact ratio between boys and girls.

Then, you need to find accessories that fit the descriptions of you characters. For example:

NAME: Karla

AGE: 18 years old

OCCUPATION: Singer

She likes going to parties and singing

As we can see, Karla is a singer and likes going to parties. You may want to find a microphone for her character. Next, you have to find another accessory for the other character, and so on. The thing is that you must create characters and you have to look for objects that fit those characters.

It’s important to remember that you must prepare the activity before the class, one or two days before if it’s possible.  When the first day arrives, you must bring to the class the cards and the accessories.

When you start the class, do a quick placement test and make them introduce themselves, helping them whenever it’s necessary. Then, you have to teach them the appropriate way of presenting themselves. Most of the time, students will know how to say basic information but they will make some mistakes. When you are teaching introductions, say the common mistakes so they will not do those mistakes again.

If you need to explain some rules about presenting themselves or working in their books, just do it. This depends on the teacher.

Finally, put the objects in front of the table (try to do the activity at the end of the class). They will feel surprised and they will start asking questions about the objects on the table. 

Then, give each student one card. When everybody has gotten their cards, stand in front of them and explain to them what they are going to do. (If you go to the website, you will find a PDF file with the directions for the activity and some cards I created of some characters. Additionally, I also included some objects you can bring to the class that fit the characters I created).

Basically, students have  to read the information about the characters and then, pick an object that suits their characters. So, if for example, Carlos is a soccer player, he may choose the ball and not the guitar.

When all the students have picked their objects, they have to introduce themselves using the information in the card. So, they will be a different character with an object that represents them.

Sometimes, students may choose the wrong object because they didn’t understand what was written on the paper. If this happens, tell the student to exchange the object with a student who has his/her object.

This is a good ice-breaker because students start speaking and they make connections between objects and words. Also, they get used to using new words. Additionally, if you have good objects like colorful hats, crowns or clothes, it will be funny when they have to use them.

In the end, they will present their characters and they will see the characters of their classmates. When they see themselves using the different objects, maybe they will laugh or have an amazing time.

When it’s almost finished, be sure to congratulate your students and let them know that they can learn English and have fun at the same time.

I did this with my students and they had an amazing time. They enjoyed the activity and they learned useful and basic vocabulary.

“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”
― Malala Yousafzai

PDF file: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/First-Day-English-Class-2506279 

 Presidential elections (will/ future simple)

Teaching the future simple may be an enjoyable experience as we have plenty of activities that we can use to review this tense: plans for the future, predictions, promises. You will never imagine what kind of activities we can do in order to review this tense in the funniest way ever.

In this case, I decided to use a presidential context in order to review the future simple.

First, you need to teach the future simple to your students. Remember to say the different usages it has: making promises, predictions, expressing wishes. Also, teach them the differences between will and going. Then, make them practice the future simple and tell them for the next class they will be tested.

You can use this activity to evaluate the future simple. Even though you will be using mostly will and not going to, encourage your students to use going to a few times.

Steps:

-Organize your students into pairs.

·       .Explain to them that the situation is going to be like presidential elections

·         -One of them must be an interviewer and the other must be the president

·         -Tell your students that they need to create a dialogue and make a short presentation of the interview. Then, develop questions from the interviewer and answers from the president.

·       -  Remind them that they are going to be in an interview. Tell them they need to be dressed up to suit the situation. Your students may be dressed formally if they have to be the president.

·         -Tell them to be creative, you may be surprised at what they prepare for that class.

·         -At the end, when all presidents have made their promises, the elections will take place. Give each present a final chance to repeat their promises and then start voting.

·        - The presidents can’t vote, just the interviewers and they can’t vote for the president they interviewed.  I just asked them one by one to name their ideal president but if you want to make it funnier, prepare a box with a hole on the middle and tell them to put in papers with the name of the future president. Then, remove the papers from the box and show the results to your students

·         

     When you have the winner, congratulate him and give him a prize –I gave him a prize, it’s not mandatory, but it is a good motivation.

Recommendations:

·       -  This is not a political activity or something to provide hate between different ways of thinking about the country. It’s just an activity to review this verbal tense. Remind to the students of this if you see that someone is not comfortable.

·      -   If you want to do this activity in a different way, you can tell your students to research about a specific country; their weaknesses and strengths, and other things that would be useful to know in order to be the president of that country. Then, you can do the presidential elections of that country instead of your own country. In this way, it would be a little bit harder because they have to research, plan to do it with some weeks of anticipation.

·        - Tell your students you will be evaluating creativity. This will make the activity funnier as they will feel motivated.

·     -    I did this activity with adult students and it was a success. If you are going to try this activity with kids, maybe you will need to modify it a little.

·     -    I did this with a group of 15 students and it took about one hour. Tell them it is a short interview so they will not take a lot of time. If you group is bigger(like 30 students) you may need to split the elections into two days.

·     -    I tell them they could use a paper and read, but they need to be sure and to read fluently. You can do it in this way or tell them to memorize.

·   -      Finally, when you evaluate your students, take into account the creativity, fluency, pronunciation, and security. Don’t focus only on grammatical mistakes.

This is a picture of my students presenting the activity. One of my students did a microphone of cardboard, another student was a presenter of CNN and was really professional and there was a student who created a promotional picture of her saying “vote for me” and she put it on the whiteboard.

I was really happy with the results and they had fun when they had to elect the president.

If you are wondering who won the elections, it was a male student. He was popular because he said there won’t be work on Mondays. What a propose, eh?

Hello! My name is Gabriela Gouveia and I’m a certified English teacher. I spent 4 years of my life studying at university in order to become a teacher. I have been studying English for some time and during my short teaching career, I have noticed that sometimes, teachers tend to be a little bit boring or they have a lack of motivation. This is why I decided to create this blog and now I want to share some of my work with you.

Welcome to my educational blog. This is going to be dedicated to English teachers who want to revolutionize the way of teaching English by making it fun, interesting and enjoyable. You will find activities, games, and some ideas for teaching grammar in a different way, and also games to make your students start saying their first words in a second language. Moreover, you will find activities for more advanced students and some advice you may take into account when learning or teaching a second language.

I have used most of the activities in the classroom with my students, so, sometimes you may find pictures and videos of my students doing the activities I created.

Remember, we are here to help one another, so any recommendations or ideas can be made in the comment box. It would be good if teachers join this site to create a new way of teaching that students will love because our main goal should be that students learn as much as they can in the best way possible. Writing lots of text on the whiteboard or making students memorize verbs written in their notebooks is not a good idea. We need to develop different ways of teaching as students don’t all learn in the same way.

I hope you like this blog and that you will tell me your experiences and provide your opinions.

See you soon,

Gabriela.