“I’m fine, thank you.”

One of the most dreaded questions in every English teacher’s arsenal is: How are you?

From an extremely young age, students are asked this question and given the magic response “I’m fine,” which then grows into “I’m fine, thank you,” and stagnates at “I’mfinethankyouandyou?”

(And we are all aware of the vicious cycle known as andyouism.)

The great news is that, with young learners, we can attempt to eradicate this epidemia before it begins. Today, we bring you a new part of your class routine: “How are you?”

With children who are three and four years old, you can already get them telling you how they really are, instead of that they are “fine.” (And if this doesn’t have you jumping on your chair, read on…)

Super Simple Learning makes a wonderful set of flashcards that you can print, laminate, and use every day for this part of your class routine. Find them here.

After singing a hello song and making a circle, we review the emotions flashcards and make hand play for each one that they have learned. So, “I’m good” is one thumb up, “I’m great” is two thumbs up, “I’m wonderful” is reaching up to the sky, etc.

Once we’ve reviewed, we ask the student on our left, “How are you?” and (especially at the beginning) show them the options on a flashcard. They answer and then ask the next student (lots of times, we model the first few times with, “Ana, ask Carlos, ‘How are you, Carlos?'”). Go around the circle before moving on to your next activity.

With three and four year olds, we generally use “good,” “great,” “wonderful,” and “not so good.” With older students, you can incorporate even more emotions.

When a student answers with the dreaded “I’m fine, thank you,” we often try to mimic their answer, but exaggerating their style (very fast, very quiet, very sad, etc.) It gets them laughing and very interested.

When they discover that saying “I’m fine, thank you” is way more funny than “I’m good” or “I’m great,” then we incorporate high fives for those students that answer correctly on the first try.

Soon, you’ll be knowing more about your students’ emotions and hearing less of the dreaded “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

“Phrase of the Week” for older ESL / EFL learners

In our school, one of our favorite secondary-level activities is the “PHRASE OF THE WEEK!” This is such a fun opportunity to make students laugh, expose them to authentic English and involve them in the class.

I saw this picture on Facebook and it made me realize how perfect puns would be for the “Phrase of the Week”:

By the way, did you know that you can follow our blog on Facebook? Check out https://www.facebook.com/esllessonplanssantaeugenia. That’s ESLLessonPlansSantaEugenia on Facebook!

“Phrase of the Week” is super fun and super easy. All you have to do is google “English idiomatic expressions” to come up with a full database of phrases that will take you through the whole school year.

Every Monday, we give the students the “Phrase of the Week.” You can write it on the blackboard and ask the students to try to guess the meaning. For example, “an arm and a leg.” If it’s very difficult, you can write it in a sentence: “This shirt costs an arm and a leg.” If you have a student guess the meaning, great! If not, you can explain it to students.

A great activity is to ask the students to write their own definition in their “Phrase of the Week” section of their notebooks. Ask for three or four volunteers to write their definitions on the blackboard and then formulate one acceptable class definition. Have them copy the class definition below their own definition in their notebooks.

(If you have extra class time, you can always put up 10 definitions and have the students vote for their favorite! To keep things fair, you can write them or have students exchange notebooks so that the author is a mystery. The student with the most amount of votes can win a prize, like a positive point or a homework pass! This will keep students super motivated to learn the “Phrase of the Week.”)

But don’t start there! Continue incorporating the “Phrase of the Week” throughout the week. Here are a few ways to do that:

• Pop quiz: What’s the phrase of the week?
• Bonus point on exam: Write and explain the phrase of the week.
• Come to class, say hello, call on a student, and ask “What’s the phrase of the week?” immediately.
• If you notice that the class is getting a bit unruly, ask “What’s the phrase of the week?” and have them choral repeat a few times before continuing with the lesson.
• Towards the end of the year, have a contest in groups or individually to see who can write down the most phrases of the week. Give a prize to the winner!
• Come into class and write a phrase of the week in a different way (back to the example of “an arm and a leg,” you can write “This shirt is very expensive.”) Ask the students to say it in a different way, using a phrase of the week.
• Let the students come up with a phrase of the week! Assign each week to a different student and let them present and define the phrase of the week.

This is a great ice breaker activity that will get your students motivated and your class off on the right foot! The bonus? It’s been shown in our classrooms to get students’ attention immediately and quiet them down – quite a feat for Spanish secondary students!

Tips for organizing small groups

If you have the benefit of a language assistant in your classroom, working in small groups can be a great alternative to traditional teaching methods! It can also help get your students excited about language learning at any age! This post will give you some tips on how to organize small groups in the classroom setting.

One of the most important parts of working in small groups is to be organized and plan ahead. It’s great to say “We’re going to work in small groups!”, but how will you break students into groups? Will the groups stay in the classroom or go to another appropriate learning environment? How will you keep track of what group’s “turn” it is for small groups? How will you deal with students who do not adapt well to the small groups environment?

These are all questions that you will need to consider when you are contemplating using small groups in your classroom. Try to have a defined idea of what exactly you will be doing and what you want to gain from small group work so that you can answer these questions as best as possible!

One of the most daunting tasks of small group work is forming the different groups with new students, whose abilities you may not know very well at the beginning of the class. We’ve had great experience with using a short English / Science (which is given in English at our school) test on the first 2-3 days of school to place students into groups.

The idea is that the short test should build on things that students have been exposed to, perhaps in previous levels (or in their lives, their preschools, etc.), and preview what they will see during the year. We usually show students ten pictures and ask them a question, thus the test has ten points. We group students by how many points they have (the first group has the students who have scored least amount of points, and so on). This is a good system because it allows you to tailor the activities to the students’ needs and levels, but it’s also nice to mix up the levels if you find that works better for your class. That way, your more advanced students can help those who need a bit more encouragement.

(Note: We also allow ourselves the freedom to change students around in case the test was not an accurate measurement of a student’s ability. Sometimes they are nervous and are actually quite better than what the test shows, in which case they would move up a group.)

The entire test should take about 1-2 minutes to complete. It’s helpful to ask students “What is your name?” and “How are you?” before beginning to help them break into English. You can explain that you are going to show them pictures and ask them questions. We’ve found that using a soothing tone of voice and smiling helps shy learners!

Here are ten pictures and questions that you can use to organize your small group! (All of these are geared towards ESL / EFL young learners, ages 4-6).

1. Is this a boy or a girl?

Copyright http://www.sweetclipart.com

2. What color is this?

Copyright http://www.clipartpanda.com

3. What do you see?

Copyright http://www.clipartguide.com

4. What is he wearing?

Copyright http://www.clipartpanda.com

5. Does he like fish?

Copyright http://www.clipartbest.com

6. What is she doing?

Copyright http://www.clipartbest.com

7. Who is this? (point to Mommy)

Copyright http://www.sweetclipart.com

8. Where is the fish?

Copyright by Winchester Lambourne Etsy Shop

9. How is he feeling?

Copyright http://www.mycutegraphics.com

10. What’s the weather like?

Copyright http://www.acclaimclipart.com

So now that you’ve got your groups, be sure that you explain to them how small groups will work. That way, you can avoid twenty-something students screaming “What group is today?!” when you walk into the classroom.

It’s helpful to hang a small poster in the classroom with the group names (you can even get them to vote on their favorite names!) and the students in each group. You can put a bit of velcro on each group and move an arrow or other cute symbol around each group so that the students can tell what students go next in small groups! This will help things move a bit faster at the beginning of class as well.

Small groups can be a great way for students to get more individualized attention in the language-learning classroom, and these tips will help you organize great groups from the start! What have you found to be the most effective small group tactic? Leave us a comment!

Rewarding Good Behavior (aka Trying to Avoid Bad Behavior)

We’ve all been there: you have such an amazing lesson that you’ve worked on during your entire weekend, you get to class on Monday morning ready to make your students have so much fun that they forget they’re learning, and then one student decides to act up and throws the class behavior out of whack. Ok, for some of us, this sounds like everyday in the classroom!

Young learners are particularly vulnerable to bad behaviors because they are still “learning the rules” of the learning environment. Not only are you teaching them English, but you are also teaching them how to behave in a classroom setting.

There are several types of negative behaviors that young learners often exhibit. One of them is not paying attention to the teacher or listening to his or her instructions. This is often the most difficult one for the teacher, because we feel it is a personal affront to our authority. Perhaps another student prefers to play with and/or distract his or her neighbor instead of looking at the teacher. Yet others will cry non-stop in the classroom, because they miss mommy and daddy, because they didn’t win at an activity, because they are still adjusting to school, because they don’t feel well, because… you get the picture.

The first and most important technique for dealing with negative behavior is to not let it affect you personally. Try not to let these behaviors raise your blood pressure, produce anxiety, or make you angry. (Yes, we all realize that this is easier said than done.) Try to remain cool and calm.

Copyright Keepcalmandposters.com

One of my personal zen moments always happens when I go to a shopping center here in Madrid. Seeing children running, playing, acting insane despite their parents’ desperate please… it all makes me realize that kids are kids, and their favorite “This is boring” statement is not a personal affront to my (ahem, awesome) lesson plan.

Now that we’re all cool as a cucumber, how can we discourage negative classroom behavior? One trick to try is to refrain from punishing negative behaviors, and rather reward positive behaviors.

Here’s how you can reward positive behaviors with young learners.

For very young learners (1-3 years old), you reward by allowing them to participate in really fun activities! Keep their interest in what you are doing and make them participate vocally in order to join in the activity. For example, if you are teaching your students how to wait in the classroom, try using maracas. Make each student ask for a maraca (“A maraca, please” or “Yes, please”) before they can join in on the shaking fun! Then yell STOP! and place your maraca in front of you. Wait for everyone to do the same. Once they all have the maracas in front of them, count 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 and then pick up your maraca and shake to your heart’s content! Repeat the stop and counting several times. This will teach them in a fun way that they should wait their turn, wait for the teacher, and stop and pay attention when the teacher gives the keyword stop. Give a reward to the ones who demonstrate good behavior consistently (a sticker for the first student to stop, etc.).

For students ages 3-5, you can start working on reward systems in order to encourage good behaviors and discourage bad behaviors. One great way to do this is to reward on the spot for good behaviors. Little Marcos is sitting properly in his chair? Say “An applause for Marcos! You’re sitting properly!” and wait five seconds until everyone else catches on and sits properly. Other great ways to reward this age group is with a favorite song (“Wow, you’re all sitting properly! Good job! I’m very happy! Let’s sing…”) or short game. If you have one student who is really messing things up, leave them out of the activity (“Sorry Sergio, but you have to sit properly if you want to play the game.”) The idea is to show them that good behaviors lead to fun!

For students 5-8, one of my favorite good behavior techniques is the No Monkey Business! Poster. 

Copyright lessonplansesl.wordpress.com

At the end of every class, students get to put a sticker on the monkey if they have had good behavior collectively! I laminate copies of this poster for each class. When they get a certain number of stickers (10, 20, whatever you decide) then the class gets a prize! This can be a physical prize – like a new pencil, a rubber, or a piece of candy, if it’s allowed – or a chance to play a special game that they love! You can always use “the Monkey” to quell negative behavior as soon as it pops up (“If you continue, there will be no sticker for the Monkey”). 

I laminate the poster because, if the behavior is truly hideous, I will take a sticker away and make a big deal out of it.

By trying to encourage positive behaviors with rewards and fun activities, you automatically discourage negative behaviors without punishment. Although avoiding punishment forever is unrealistic in a learning environment, if you try to encourage good behavior first, you will find that you are punishing much less!

What is your favorite positive behavior reinforcement technique? Leave us a comment!

Nine Favorite Teaching Supplies for Hundreds of Classroom Activities

Gearing up for a new school year often means lots and lots of lesson planning, professional development courses and shopping for teaching supplies. In the US, many schools started last week or this week, but in Spain, August equals vacation, and schools won’t begin until at least September 1.

Of course, that means that teachers are already thinking about the next school year! Today, we thought that we’d share nine of our favorite new teaching supplies for young learners and a few activities that you can do with them! They are our favorites because they so versatile that you can get hundreds of activities out of these 9 toys.

Nine of our favorite new teaching supplies for 2014-2015!

Let’s start with a description of each product from left to right (top to bottom), where you can buy it, and prices:

1. Ikea Lekkamrat Toy Bath Set – We found these on clearance at Ikea for 3.99€ per set. 
2. Magnetic Capital Letters – This set of 48 letters was purchased at Dideco for 5.52€ (including teacher’s discount of 20%. See details here.)
3. Ikea Titta Djur Finger Puppets – This set of 10 animal puppets was found at Ikea for 4.99€. I’ve used these with toddlers before, and they are amazingly durable!
4. Rainbow Mini Soft Plastic Animals – This tube of 8 rainbow animal puppets was purchased at Dideco for 8.21€ after teacher’s discount (about 1€ per animal).
5. Portable or Mountable 40x60cm Magnetic Whiteboard – Purchased at Dideco for the amazing price of 6.26€ after teacher’s discount. This is perfectly transportable for those of us who teach on the go! Also available in 60x90cm for about 12€.
6. Learning Resources Farmers Market Color Sorting Set – This amazing and versatile set of toys and buckets was purchased on Amazon.com for $22.99. This item will ship to Madrid, and though it’s one of more expensive investments of the year, it’s awesome!
7. Julia Doll – This 23cm tall little blonde was found at Dideco for 12.60€ after teacher’s discount.
8. Animal Sponges for Painting – Also from Dideco, this set of 10 sponges was a steal for 4.87€. They also have modes of transportation and other common objects!
9. Fabler Björn Teddy Bear – At the steal price of 0.99€ per teddy, our budget stretched to allow each of our seven very young learners (2-3 year old class level) to have their own “baby” for class activities. They fit into Ikea’s small Kassett boxes (2/2.99€), which means that they can be a surprise for every class!

Now what can we do with these toys (ahem, teaching supplies) that make them amazing for ESL young learners?

For example, the Farmers Market Color Sorting Set has so many functions that it makes the steep price tag worth it. With very good reviews and made of quality materials, this set will last a long time with a bit of care. You can wipe down the fruits and baskets with baby wipes without worrying about the color running (like it would with other cheaper sets and wooden food sets). With your very young learners (2-3), you can:

• Count the number of each color fruit or veg that you see to practice numbers.
• Play the game the intended way and sort each piece by color. Hide the pieces around your learning environment, and this will be even more fun!
• Begin to introduce basic foods. The size of these pieces means that you can mime “eating” your favorite fruit or veggie and let children do the same (“Would you like an apple?” “Yes, please.” / “An apple, please.”)
• Introduce like and dislike with foods. The following really funny video is easy for very young learners to learn and understand, and you can use the foods included in this set to make up your own funny combinations!

• Set up a “play market,” where students can shop – with recycled ecological bags – for their own meals. You can give them fake money, but be careful of small plastic parts!
• Play toss and catch with a piece of fruit. The student that catches it must say the name in order to continue throwing. If they get it wrong, they go in the middle of the circle until another student makes a mistake!
• Use the fruit and veggies as realia to accompany learning songs, like this one:

As you can see, there are so many possibilities from one object!

For older young learners (5-7 years old), you can do even more activities because of their increased memory skills. For example, combine the fruits with the magnetic whiteboard and the magnetic letters, and give a student a piece of fruit or veg and let them spell it out for the class!

You can really maximize your minimal (or non-existent) teaching supplies budget by choosing products that have more than one use in the classroom.

Let’s take a look at one more of my favorite products: the Ikea Toy Bath Set. Very young learners are learning all about hygiene in their own homes, so this is a chance to capitalize on knowledge that they already have! With this one toy, you can:

• Pretend to bathe Julia, baby Teddy, or any other toy that you have in the classroom. Students with good behavior can bring in their favorite doll to get a bath! This allows you to review vocabulary related to the bath in the classroom, even the rubber ducky and shampoo! Let’s expand on that idea with a favorite song:

• You can emphasize that some dolls are big, big and others are babies by how they sit down, stand up, and lie down in the bath!
• You can practice washing body parts with a set of sponges. If you put Teddy and a bath sponge (very cheap investment at Dollar Stores or Bazaars) in a small box and give one to each student, they get a fun surprise inside the box and they can copy your example with a bigger doll in the bathtub. Let them wash (“wash, wash, wash hands, hands, hands”) hands, face, tummy, legs, arms, etc. This can go a long way when you are teaching basic face and body parts!
• You can practice wet and dry! Put a plastic bin inside the bathtub – the bathtub is not waterproof – and let students bathe the Rainbow Soft Plastic Mini Animals. Then dry them with a towel. Practice the words “wet, wet” and “dry, dry.”
• Read any children’s story about taking a bath (here are a few examples) and pretend that Teddy is afraid to take a bath. Help him over his fear and get him to enjoy the bath! Let your students follow your example.

As you can see, the trick to having a diverse and fun ESL class with young learners doesn’t depend on how many toys you have in your bag, but how many different ways you can incorporate familiar toys into the class routine. By keeping things fun and exciting, you and your students will love toys that they’ve seen countless times! 

Now it’s your turn: what activity would you do with one of the above toys? Leave us a comment!

Favorite Passive Teaching Techniques

During an ESL class, we want as much active learning time as possible! Repeating vocabulary with flashcards, role plays to practice a new theme, communicative information gaps, all of these activities and many more are what make up the meat and potatoes of our class time.

But did you know that students can still learn even when they aren’t actively engaged with the teacher? Everyday moments in the classroom that aren’t part of “active teaching” can be effective at helping your young learners gain more contact with speaking and understanding English.

Think about these moments when the class is not engaged with the teacher:

• Before the class begins, particularly in class situations where the students or teacher change classrooms and have to prepare for the lesson
• If the teacher needs to work one-on-one with a student who has a particular difficulty and the other students are engaged in completing an activity
• When students are completing a cut-out, a coloring activity, a self-test at the end of a chapter, or a worksheet on their own for practice (5 year olds already do all of these alone in Spain.)
• If an emergency occurs and the teacher must leave the classroom momentarily to get help or to help another teacher or student
• When the class is wrapping up

While these aren’t ideal situations, they occur everyday in the classroom, and they take away time from the student’s direct engagement with the teacher. But by using passive teaching techniques, we can keep the students involved with the target language!

These passive moments don’t mean that students have to lose contact with the target language! Image Copyright The Guardian

A passive learning technique is any tool that the teacher uses to expose the students to English when he or she is not directly in front of them, commanding the attention of the class and interacting directly with the class.

Let’s take the example above, when students are waiting for the class to begin. In our school, teacher must switch classrooms every hour (and every 45 minutes in the afternoon) beginning in first grade of primary, and the students must sit for about 5 minutes while the teacher moves and prepares for the next class. Well, it doesn’t take much (a forgotten book, a crying child, a bathroom emergency) for those 5 minutes to turn into 10 minutes, and then you’ve lost a portion of your time to expose students to English. What passive learning techniques can we use to avoid that loss?

One of my favorite passive learning techniques is the mini-teacher system. The mini-teacher is responsible for controlling the behavior of the students while the teacher is absent from the class. The mini-teachers are chosen randomly each week, and if a student needs to say something while the teacher is away, he or she must raise his/her hand until the mini-teacher says that s/he can speak. This interaction should be done in English (and the questions that they ask are part of everyday English vocabulary: “Can I go to the toilet?” “May I drink water?” “What class is next?”, etc). If you begin this tradition at the start of the year, by the end of the year, you will walk into well-controlled classrooms that are already getting into the “English mode.”

Have each student decorate their hand print at the beginning of the year, put a bit of velcro on the back, and shuffle them in a box to “pick” the mini-teacher fairly each week. Display their handprint in the classroom so that everyone knows who is the mini teacher! Image Copyright theneighborhoodmoms.com

Another one of my favorite passive learning techniques is the calendar. The calendar manager is also chosen each week and is responsible for updating the calendar at the beginning of each English class. If you invest in an awesome calendar like the following, your calendar manager can do lots of activities that the class – after a week or two of practice – will be able to complete quickly and in English:

Picture Copyright learningenglish-esl.blogspot.com I have seen similar calendars in English and French at Dideco in Spain!

What can your calendar manager do each day?

• Days of the week – The calendar manager leads the classroom in a choral recitation of the days of the week and then puts the proper day on the calendar.
  • You can expand on this by asking “What day was yesterday?” and “What day will tomorrow be?” when students get used to this step!
• Months of the year – The same as Days of the week, but with months of the year
• What’s the weather like today? – The calendar manager asks “What’s the weather like?” and students raise their hands to answer. The calendar manager chooses a volunteer and puts up the proper picture on the calendar
• What year is it? – It seems overly simple, but this really helps students get used to how we say the years in English!
• Is today a special day? – This gives students the opportunity to tell the class something important about their lives, like “It’s my birthday!”, “It’s Halloween!”, or “I have a new baby sister!” There’s nothing that primary students love more than to talk about their own lives, so you might have to cut off this activity!

Another great passive learning technique is using background music in the classroom. We are huge fans of using multimedia in the classroom, and this is a great way for students to sing along to familiar and new songs when they are engaged in individual activities, like coloring, cut-outs, tidying up, etc. You can bring a USB with great songs ready to go and put it on when students are working individually, or if you need to give special attention to one or two students for a few moments. 

And lastly, for those moments when the lesson is finishing up and it’s time to go home, try singing a song as a class during those last few moments. This will also help with your classroom routine, sending the signal to students that it’s time for the class to end. I love this one by The Learning Station:

If you have more than a few moments (say, 10 minutes), but you don’t want to start the next lesson and are allowing the students free play time, try to encourage them to play in English. You can do this by:

• providing puzzles or play dough (plasticine) and ask them to make something that you’ve spoken about in the lesson and show their friends
• keeping an English library in the classroom where students can look at or read books in English
• letting students play with a selection of English board games. I love the Orchard Toys games in English for primary students, but they love them more!

Orchard Toys games are awesome! They’re available at Dideco – with a 20% teacher’s discount! – in Spain.

So the next time that you are thinking about “wasted” class time, think of a passive learning technique that will expose students to English for those moments when they aren’t actively involved in a lesson. What passive learning techniques work well for you? Share them with us in a comment!

Perfect rainy day game that requires no preparation.

We all have rainy days. Those days when it might actually be raining, or when we are feeling under the weather, or when our students just aren’t up to par. These days can be a source of torture for both teachers and students, but if you develop a few skills, you can change your tactics and get great results!

Keep in mind that a few things might create a “rainy day” situation. If you or your students are ill, you won’t have the focus and energy needed for the classroom. If the students have had a change in routine (such as a field trip or a special activity at school), they might be too excited to focus on your normal class material. If it’s raining (or, please no!, snowing!), students’ focus might be on the window and not on you. And, let’s face it, sometimes kids are just kids, and there’s nothing we can do about it!

If you see that, despite several of your best efforts, the class is slowly sinking, it might be time to change your lesson plan.

One of my favorite “rainy day” activities is Newspaper Basketball. I love this game because it requires no preparation or special materials, kids love it, and it helps them burn off excess energy if they are too hyper to focus at the moment on your real lesson.

To play Newspaper Basketball, all you need is a piece of (recycled) paper and a trash bin. That’s it!

Newspaper Basketball is great for all ages! Image Copyright http://www.toddler-games.org

Ball up a piece of recycled paper and have students make a line. They have to get the “ball” in the bin standing close to the bin. If they make a basket, they move back one step (you can already have tape placed on your classroom floor marking the steps for an activity such as this!) and they say “Basket! One point!” If they don’t remember how many points – or the number – then they go back to the beginning. If you are playing with a small group, let the student continue until they miss. This is the mark to beat for the other students! The one who gets the furthest from the bin and makes a basket wins!

If you are playing with a large group of students, you will want to let them take turns.

Enjoy this “rainy day” activity the next time that you, or your students, are having one of those days…

What is your favorite “rainy day” activity?

The importance of creating a routine with ESL young learners

My very first job working with young learners went something like this…

I was working on my dissertation, in full-research mode, when one of my friends and scholarship-cohorts asked if I wanted to double-up with her on an Art in English after-school class for two-year olds. Like most researchers, I was a bit strapped for cash, so I jumped on the 20-something euros per hour and said “Sure!”

Every Monday afternoon, I dreaded going to the little preschool, where 12 2-year olds would run around the classroom (where they were placed for after-school English class), playing with all of the fun toys that they didn’t have in their normal classroom, ignoring everything that I said to them, and attempting to potty train (unsuccessfully). It wasn’t pretty.

I think every class ended up looking like this:

Copyright blogs.kqed.org

Almost three years and lots of experience with ESL young learners later, I realized that the children weren’t at fault for the pandemonium created weekly in that room. We, the teachers, failed to set up a routine, a plan, something that their two-year old little minds could process, memorize, and repeat.

One of the most important tools in your bag with young learners (1-5 years old) is using a strict routine!

One of your goals should be to start each class the same way. Here are a few examples of how you start the class:

• You bring the child(ren) into the classroom environment, not let them enter willy-nilly.
• Make a habit from day one of hanging up jackets, bags, umbrellas, etc., on a coat rack near the door. (You can also use cubby holes or chairs for this purpose.)
• Then, have everyone sit down in whatever fashion you see best.
• If you are in a school environment with older children, you can call the roll. This indicates that it’s time to get started!
• Open the class the same way. I like to use this song:

Similarly, you will end each class the same way.

• Reward your students for their great attention with a prize (a sticker on the hand, a little spot with children’s make-up on the hand, playing together with bubbles, etc.).
• You can use the same song each day to indicate that it’s time to say goodbye, clean up, and take their jackets.
• Wait for them to all get ready and then stand by the door.
• Ask them to say “Open, please!” and then open the door and look for their parents.

Eventually, even your lesson plans will develop into a routine that they can follow! By having them all enter the room at the same time, greet one another in the same way, and using visual or audio clues as to what’s happening in the classroom (hello or goodbye!), it will help your classroom management go from zero to hero!

If only I had known this when I first started with young learners…..