Online Teaching ESL Kindergarten

 

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”  - Charles Darwin

Covid has changed the world and how some of us have to teach. We can  no longer stand in front of our students and teach them. We need to teach through a computer. This new method of delivery requires a new way of teaching. Those teachers that just teach their online lesson as they would their stand up lesson are not going to be as effective as those that adapt to this new world.

One of the first things you should do is decide what your aim is? Or what should your aim be? Is it to impart a lesson? Is it to give the parents a break? To entertain the children? To give them social stimulation? To burn off energy? All or some of these?

For myself, all of them is correct. I want them to continue their English language learning, but having them just sit and watch me on the screen is going to quickly get boring. Hence making the lesson entertaining is critical. While also remembering this children may not get a chance to go outside and run around so I have to make sure the lesson is energetic to help burn off some energy and allow them some time to talk to their classmates to provide the social stimulation they require. English is best learnt when students get a chance to talk to each other and though it's harder as a teacher we should be facilitating that opportunity. Lastly, as much as teachers don't want to admit sometimes we are baby sitters and for online learning I admit one of my goals is very much to give tired parents a break.

If you want to be the best online teacher I highly recommend role playing, games, physical activities and having students communicate to each other. You're students will look forward to your classes and so will the parents.

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Reward and Punishment Systems

A recent theory I had for children is that they either respond to the carrot or stick and you should tailor your management system to the style that works best for them.

For those that don't know the carrot is the idea of a reward motivating a student while the stick is the idea that a punishment motivates the student.

There is already a lot of material out there regarding both ideas. The thing is both are said to have negatives. Rewards, students shouldn't be motivated by being rewarded, but by their desire to learn. Punishment, students shouldn't be motivated by fear of losing something. And sure both of these statements make sense, but ask these experts then how do you get a student to do what the teacher asks? How do you motivate this student to learn? And you won't get a solution. They just want to point out the negatives with no further advice to give.

With the above paragraph written here is my system. I also believe this system works well for parents.

I use a smiley face system. Smiley faces, could be stars, ticks, or any other positive symbol. The student does something good they get a smiley face. All students at the beginning of class during circle time will get their first smiley face. It helps get students talking during the conversation time. It also gives something to take away if their behavior is getting out of hand.

After that smiley faces are rewarded for doing something before the other students. Such as repeating sentences at a good volume while others are saying them quietly or not at all. As soon as one student is rewarded for talking loud all the others will as well.

The one secret is to keep handing them out. Don't stop. If you stop using the system the students won't believe they can earn your reward. Be consistent.

For punishments, I believe giving students a chance to fix their behavior. If for example you say no talking and some students are still talking. Start counting down and put your hand next to where the smiley faces are letting all students know you are serious. 90% of the time all students will correct themselves. If they don't however, follow through and take the smiley face.

For my class 3 smiley faces = 2 stickers while the rest of the students get 1 sticker. It's a simple reward that isn't too special, but it's the competition to have that one more sticker than your friends that also helps push the students to be the best they can.

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Classroom Management for ESL Preschool

A preschool class is hard to control. An ESL preschool class is even more so as your fresh faced students don't understand a single word coming out of your mouth. As a teacher at the start of a new school year you need to introduce your classroom commands. They need to be simple, few and have corresponding actions that naturally show the meaning of what you are saying.

Below are my ideas on commands to have, actions to use and why.

My rules are: Sit down, stand up, cross your legs, line up, go to (color line) and if the class is picking them up relatively easily listen(be quiet).

Each rule/command has an associated action: 

• Sit down, I push my palms down. 
• Stand up, I raise my palms up. 
• Cross your legs I first do it myself as well as crossing my fingers. Later I'll only cross my fingers as I say the command. 
• Line up, I slap my hands together in front of me. 
• Go to (color line), I point at the line I want. They don't know colors yet either, remember. 
• Listen, I put my finger to my mouth and then my hand to my ear.

All of the actions are natural. They could be understood with no words associated with them. This is what ESl Preschool needs. We need to make everything easy to understand. The actions help teach the words and are a reminder what we mean.

The most important part of teaching all of this is that you teach it in a fun game. We're not teaching these rules/commands to be mean. We're teaching them so that we have control of the class. That we can teach to the best of our ability and most importantly to stop anybody from getting hurt. 

In another post I'll discuss reward and punishment systems.

NOTEs: 

1: Keep your commands/rules to a minimum.

2: Have a corresponding action

3: Make it fun to learn them. Competitive race type games work great!

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