Many newcomers to teaching become a little overwhelmed when they suddenly find themselves thrust into a classroom for the first time, with 50 or more kids to teach!
Yes, it's true many teacher training programs fail to mention this when you're taking their courses. Depending on where you work and who you work for, your classes could be anything from 20 up to a whopping 60 kids!
I myself have had experience of both ends of the scale and I can tell you right now, I prefer the 20 odd end of it!
Well such is life and such is teaching! Think of it this way, if you can handle 50 to 60 kids then less is a should be a walk in the park for you. It will over time actually make you a stronger teacher and you'll gain more experience and pick up more classroom techniques and skills.
Yes, it's true many teacher training programs fail to mention this when you're taking their courses. Depending on where you work and who you work for, your classes could be anything from 20 up to a whopping 60 kids!
I myself have had experience of both ends of the scale and I can tell you right now, I prefer the 20 odd end of it!
Well such is life and such is teaching! Think of it this way, if you can handle 50 to 60 kids then less is a should be a walk in the park for you. It will over time actually make you a stronger teacher and you'll gain more experience and pick up more classroom techniques and skills.
Getting back to our new teacher who might find himself/herself thrown in at the deep end without any kind of support.
What can we do? What's the best plan of attack here? What's the magic solution? Well 90% could be planning! Yes, being prepared for a lesson, it's that simple! Failing to plan = planning to fail!
Imagine for one second, It's your first day... you haven't got any teaching plans / ideas... what do you think the outcome will be? Well no prizes for guessing that things could turn out not quite so rosy for you!
Seems rather simple doesn't it? You'd be surprised how many teachers show up without a plan. Ask them what they're going to do and you might receive an answer like oh, the school will provide me with my materials! Oh, I'm just going to wing it!
You can't rely on the school providing you with everything, especially here in Thailand that is a huge mistake to make! As for winging*it, you might get away with it for a while, but in the end you'll fall flat on your ass!
Simple and easy way to look at the lessons.....
Lessons are normally 50 mins to 1 hour.
I divide my lessons up into segments of 20 mins. 20-40-60!
First segment 20 minutes = book work, pronunciation, speaking, vocabulary learning/building.
Second segment 20 minutes = two teams class game/activity based upon what has been practiced and learned in the first part of the lesson.
Third segment 20 minutes = English interactive dvds, my favourite ones have to be the walt disney magic English cartoon series.
These are especially liked by the younger kids and are excellent because the kids love to watch cartoons and this helps them to associate fun with English, which can't be a bad thing, especially in language acquisition!
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