If you have your own classroom or can use part of a classroom as your own, it's a great idea to make an English corner. This can be a space to display work but that's also a fun and interesting place to work dedicated to English.
Your school may ask you to participate in an English Club or you may want to develop some sort of club of your own. Using your initiative with both classrooms and clubs will be both a rewarding and stimulating bonus to the actual teaching you’re doing. Here are some ideas to get you started.
The English Zone
- Try to start each session with a ritual so that they know they have entered into the ‘English Zone’. This is especially important if you are just coming into their normal classroom and teaching where their normal teacher would be.
- Make your classes distinct from what they are used to by having a welcome song.
- If possible, gather everyone into a circle on the floor to get them out of their seats. If this isn't possible, ask about changing the seats or even the room.
- If you can’t change the seats themselves then get the children to sit in different places.
- Marking the beginning of your classes will help learners to concentrate on what you’re going to do.
Displaying work
- Displaying work gives learners immense satisfaction seeing their poem, picture or poster on the wall.
- The work you display should be as ‘correct’ as possible. Make sure you and they thoroughly check what they display. They can check each other’s work as well. It doesn’t always have to be the role of the teacher to check and correct.
- Let them take responsibility for checking before displaying their work but oversee this process for very young learners.
- Don’t stick up scraps of paper, first drafts or scribbles. This doesn’t mean however that if your group of five-year-olds have all drawn pictures of their favourite toy you only display those which are distinguishable. In this case you must treat everyone the same and value what they have done.
The English theatre club
- An English Theatre Club could take up a fair amount of your time but it will be time well spent.
- Why not aim towards putting on a short play at the end of the school year for their peers or even parents. The National Theatre has a series of plays written especially for young learners which you can easily use for all primary ages.
- This is a great year-long project in which everyone can be involved, from the one-liner walk-on roles, the assistant backstage ‘manager’, the lead role or the prompt.
- For very young learners you can begin with non-verbal activities to put them ease while maintaining English as the club’s main language.
- For older primary they could imagine their own scenes to act out.
The English conversation club
- Although you shouldn’t expect a real debate, a conversation club doesn’t have to be reserved for secondary. This could be with slightly older primary children as 10–11 year olds can take a real interest in other people’s opinions as well as obviously expressing their own.
- Allocate a session to a couple of children. They can be responsible for choosing a subject they want to talk about. This could be their favourite sport, singer, film or friend.
- Tell them that they should bring with them one object connected to their subject. This is their visual aid. It will also help you and their peers to ask relevant questions about the subject.
- Sessions should always have a structure which includes some prepration time. Have a set structure to the session i.e. 5-10 minutes for the two children who have ‘prepared’ a subject, and 10-15 minutes for a general topic that you have bought pictures in for and have vocabulary to introduce (say five new words).
- Take along some photos of your family, hometown or friends. Ask them to bring photos too. Visual stimuli will often help arouse interest especially when they themselves have provided the visual aids. A photo of your own house will interest them much more than a photo taken from a magazine.