Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Vermont? Are you interested in teaching English in South Hero, Vermont? Check out our opportunities in South Hero, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT!
I currently work in five different elementary and junior high schools in a suburb of Osaka, Japan. All of my schools are in low-income neighborhoods, with many students coming from single-parent or even no-parent households. All this to say: classroom management is an ENORMOUS issue that I have been wrestling/experimenting with over the past two years.
Yesterday, I had a meeting with one of the main Japanese teaching partners--a meeting centered on classroom management and the use of English in class. [In Japan, a Japanese teacher of English (JTE) and an assistant language teacher (ALT) work together to teach English using a mix of both languages in the classroom.] My BIGGEST point in these meetings is always: "We need to plan lessons in a lot of DETAIL." We need to plan how to use simple English to give the students activity instructions. After I explain (using gestures, varied tones, and English at or below the students' levels) the activity, students work in pairs, in groups, or as a class (depending on the class, the activity, time available, etc.) to confirm the rules in Japanese. After we've confirmed the rules in Japanese, I sometimes explain the rules one more time in English, so students can remember those key phrases for the next time.
Keeping it simple, keeping it positive, keeping it ENGLISH. Change it up so students don't get bored. Notice when they're sick of working in pairs, and switch it up. Use the same styles of activities so that they sometimes know the rules already and can focus on a particular English challenge. Other times, throw a curveball into the game to make it fresh and exciting. This unit's sections--on grouping students, classroom arrangement, teacher/student talking time, responding to problematic behavior, and establishing a rapport with the students--did not contain any particularly new or insightful ideas for me.
However, I'm really glad that this unit was concise. I'm hoping to keep this PDF handy, so I can use it in my defence the next time I am trying to convince a teacher that it is very possible to manage a classroom using English--that, in fact, running the classroom in English only encourages the students to focus and participate in a productive class.
