THE BEST ways to make teaching English fun
Teaching English to teenagers can be quite difficult because they are notorious for not wanting to participate in class. They are often shy, tired, and haven’t chosen to take your English class.
That’s where this video comes in. In it, I give only the best tips on making teaching English not only fun for the students, but fun for you as the teacher.
Continue watching to find out how.
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Transcript:
Here are my top ways to make teaching English fun, and this is a video for teachers, of course. So the first way is to make a lesson plan. I know lesson plan, you might think like kind of boring, not that interesting, but actually, your classes will go much more smoothly and you can incorporate a whole bunch of interesting topics, or kind of interesting games and that kind of thing.
The second idea I have is to evaluate your teaching skills. I don't mean like thinking about oh I'm good at this or bad at this, but each lesson that you do, kind of quickly think what went well and what didn't do go well. The things that went well, incorporate more of that into your classes and then the things that didn't go well, incorporate fewer of those kind of things into your classes.
The third idea I have is to do some professional development. By this, I mean joining a teaching organization, maybe taking a class like the Celta or the Delta, or just talk to your colleagues about what they're doing. You can find a bunch of teacher training things online.
The fourth idea I have is to collaborate with your colleagues. I kind of waver back and forth about collaboration. I think sometimes it can be really helpful, sometimes it's actually more hassle than it's worth and it takes a lot of my time and I feel like I can actually do things much more quickly on my own. I like to have a little bit of a balance. So maybe if I'm struggling about how to like teach this unit or I'm not sure of a fun activity, I'll ask my colleagues. But I don't necessarily plan all my lessons together with my colleagues because I like to teach in a way that's authentic to me.
The next idea is to incorporate games in class. I love to play board games. I'm pretty competitive. I had a twin sister, and I still have a twin sister, so I grew up and we were always competing with each other. I like to incorporate like a little element of competition in my classes, some board games and I bring some little prizes or maybe like I'll do a game at the end of a lesson and of course, there's like learning outcomes to all these things. I don't just like randomly playing games in class, but it's used as a way to review whatever I've taught in that lesson.
The next thing is to bring your own interests and hobbies into the classroom. One example I just mentioned. I love board games, so if I'm doing like a little party class or just kind of like a little free class, I'll bring actually some of my own board games into the class. This works well for like small classes of say three or four or six students. I'd bring things like settlers of Catan and I would teach students how to play it and we would play and I found myself actually just really enjoying that class and I would have a good time as well
The next way is to mix it up. If you kind of do the same old like stale boring thing all the time, your students are going to feel bored. You're going to feel bored. OIne example I have is when I taught in Korea. I taught at this university and for two years, we used the same Book World Link 1 for conversation one. Like the beginner conversation level and I taught in a semester, I taught like each class maybe like eight times. So I taught the same unit eight times that semester, eight times next semester, eight times next semester, eight times next semester. I could potentially use the same lesson plan 32 times, which was kind of ridiculous. Obviously, the students probably thought I was bored with it, so I would challenge myself to kind of just change it up mix it up a little bit, think about what went well, what didn't go well. Maybe do a new game, kind of keep things fresh and interesting.
Timestamp English teaching video:
0:00
0:08 Lesson plans
0:29 Evaluate
your
teaching
0:57 Professional development
1:19 Collab with colleagues
2:00 Games
2:45 Bring your interests
3:52 Mix it up!
4:54 Final thoughts