Arun Ganapathy, India
Dear Ann,
You might like to try the following.
1 if the class is monolingual then a good way to start is by giving them the corresponding sounds in their mother tongue (if there is a contrast - it makes your task even simpler!- tell them that's why they need to learn it! At any rate, try just one or two sounds per class.

2. LOOK at the chart in Adrian Underhill's book "Sound Foundations ". It has helped me introduce the sounds. I have often had students pick a sound from the chart and teach it to the class with their own examples!

3. Reading aloud helps- as they mispronounce (and very often it is because they can't produce a sound in a word) show them what made the word sound incorrect and how learning the sound can help them . This way you can introduce at least one/ two sounds per class. Again, have you ever asked yourself if it is necessary to know the entire sound system of English. I have found that, in most cases, just a few sounds will help students sound more English and I am presuming that that is your objective as well.

Mahsa, Iran
I think you can allocate approximately ten to fifteen minutes each session to teach the phonemic symbols. It will be useful to introduce 2-3 symbols at a time. Write the symbol on the board and say the sound then ask the students to repeat it as you are pointing to the transcription. Then ask them to tell you as many examples as they can of the words which include the presented sound. You can write the words on the board and introduce some other examples yourself.
Later on, as the students make progress they can read the phonemic transcription of some simple words of which they have already learned all the phonemic symbols in isolation. For example, if they learn the sounds: /e/, /p/, /t/, /h/,and /n/ They can read the phonemic transcription of the words such as ten, hen, pen, and net. You should be careful to start with simple phonemes and then continue with the more difficult ones over time. It will take a whole semester or more to teach all the phonemic symbols depending on the number of sessions in each semester. To make the lessons more enjoyable you can use different word games. Good luck

E. Boeck, Germany
I suggest not to teach it in a lesson in its own right but to introduce phonetic symbols along with new words as they come up in the classroom. Students should note down the phonetic transcript beside the new word. Teaching the symbols in a concentrated fashion in one go can be off-putting, and thus not helpful in our attempt to help the learner make use of this useful tool. Over time all relevant symbols will have been introduced, and one can presuppose that learners can identify them without difficulty and -that's the beauty of it - read the correct pronunciation off a dictionary WITHOUT OUTSIDE HELP (the 'autonomous learner'!).

Bettina Steinhauser, Austria
Dear Ann
I just thought of a lead-in that might make students aware of how important phonetics are: Words like CU (see you), used in the internet and text messaging quite frequently stem from what they sound like. Or EMINEM - the phonetic writing of Matthew Marshall.I don't know how to proceed though.

I have the difficulty that my 15 year olds don't know how to spell the English alphabet and I sing the song to them that I was taught when I was 10, but I don't feel comfortable singing and practising with them.
I did come across a book called "Teaching English Spelling- A practical guide" by Ruth Shemesh and Sheila Waller published by Cambridge University Press (Series for Handbooks for Language Teachers) I haven't set my eyes on it yet, but maybe it is helpful. Maybe somebody out there has heard about it. So sorry for not being very helpful. But let's hope, somebody comes up with some useful advice. Good luck

P.S.
By coincidence, I stumbled over this site:

http://www.developingteachers.com/phonology/sound_activities1.htm