Teach International

Online TESOL Course – Unit 8

Unit 8 – Enhancing Your Lessons: Teacher’s Toolkit

Your first lesson: what will you do?

Every teacher will always remember their first ever lesson! Whether the lesson was a complete success or a
complete disaster does not stick in the memory as much as just knowing you survived it! Before you go into
the classroom to meet your students for the first time, it is likely that you will have a plethora of worries and
concerns racing through your mind. Even after teaching for many years, it is common to still feel nervous when
meeting a new group of students—just remember that this is a completely natural way to feel! The reason you
are feeling this anxiety is simply because you want to be the best teacher possible, you want your students to
like you and your classes, and you don’t want to be seen as being incompetent or silly.

As well as many of the techniques we looked at in Unit 7 for classroom management, there are some other
tried and tested tricks of the teaching trade which will help to make your first lesson one that you remember
for the right reasons!

1. SMILE! Even if you are feeling petrified about standing in front of a class, “fake it until you make it”:
smiling is the best way of doing this! Smiling will help you to relax (even if you don’t feel it!) and will
put your students at ease.

2. Be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm is very infectious, and if you are positive and happy about being in the
classroom, your students will respond in the same way.

3. Be yourself! Think about the good qualities you know you have and really use these good qualities
to your advantage. If you have a good sense of humour, bring this into the classroom. If you are patient
and thoughtful, be these things! Don’t worry about your weaker points, as these will be areas you
develop further as you become a better and more confident teacher.

4. Make your first lesson a social one. Don’t get down to the nitty-gritty in the first five minutes. Instead,
help you and your students to relax by learning each other’s names, by listening to your students, and
their interests and motivations for being there. Have fun with them! Really get to know each other, and
you can be sure they will want to come back for your next lesson! You may like to set a task where
you tell your students five things about yourself, and then they interview their partner to find out five
things about each other, then they report back. An activity like this will allow you to learn a lot about
your students and you will also be able to gauge their English level.

5. Talk to other teachers. Before you teach your first lesson, find out as much as you can about the
organisation of the school. Find out what resources you can use and where to find them, find out how
the timetable works—when the breaks are and what time lessons start. Also ask about any other
protocol in the school such as setting of homework and other student management issues.

6. Be well-prepared. The more prepared you are the more confident you will feel. Follow your lesson
plan if you get stuck—your students will not care if you need to pause for a few moments to refer to it,
and using your plan shows them that you are a well-prepared and organised teacher—you’ll instantly
gain their respect. You may also like to have some tasks that are easier and some that are harder than
the level you have been told your students are at. You won’t know until your first class exactly what
your students’ ability level is, so if you have a variety of tasks on-hand it will help you if things are too
hard or too easy for your students. Also have a back-up activity ready in case you have time left at the
end of class that you need to fill!

7. Speak slowly and clearly! This is probably the hardest thing to think about when you first start
teaching EFL/ESL students. Especially when feeling nervous, your words may fall out of your mouth
quite rapidly! Be conscious that English is not your students’ first language and use plenty of gestures
and clear demonstrations to communicate with them. Body language and facial expressions will also
be signs that you and your students use to interact with each other, so be mindful of everything you
say and do.

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8. Take a deep breath and don’t worry! If things don’t go exactly to plan, don’t worry. Lessons often
won’t go exactly as you had thought they would, but don’t panic if things diverge and go off-track a
little. If things go wrong, just take a deep breath, smile, and move onto the next thing. Remember that
you are the only one who knows the plan, and your students will have no idea you have made a
mistake or change unless you make it into a big deal or you tell them! Nobody is perfect and your
students don’t expect you to be. If everything does go wrong, just remind yourself that if your students
have learnt nothing else, at least you have given your students a chance to hear your speaking and
for them to speak in English as well!

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Warm-ups and Ice-breakers

Ice-breakers usually are used when you first meet a new group of people, so that you can all learn a little about
each other. On the other hand, a warm-up is a great teaching tool to use at the start of a lesson when you
already know the students. Never, ever underestimate the value of a warm-up at the start of class! This 5-
minute activity or game at the beginning of every lesson you teach is absolutely vital for getting your students
focused on the lesson ahead. It is possible that your students have not spoken a word of English since their
last lesson, and if this is the case, it takes a little bit of time to get the brain thinking and working in English
again. Warm-ups are also energising and motivating. Your warm-up or icebreaker therefore needs to be a
simple task, one that gets your students moving physically if possible, and it should be something fun to really
set the mood for the rest of the lesson. It should not be above their level of ability.

There are many ideas for warm-ups and ice-breakers. As you start teaching, it is recommended that you collate
the ideas, activities, games and worksheets that you use in your lessons into a folder or file which you can take
into class and have on-hand. This will then become your teaching toolkit which you could find useful to use in
a variety of different teaching situations.

Remember that warm-ups won’t just be for your first ever lesson, but in every lesson, so the more you compile,
the better! Children will often enjoy singing a song they have previously learnt, and adults love having a bit of
a laugh, so keep the warm-up light-hearted before you have to go into the more serious part of your lesson.
Here are some well-known warm-up ideas which you may consider using—these can be the first that you add
to your toolkit.
1. Truth or Lie?

Each person must write down three things about themselves—two are truths and one is a lie. Others then must
try and guess which the truth is and which the lie is by asking questions. The aim of the game is to make
everyone believe the lie is a truth! After people have asked about most of the others’ truths and lies, everyone
can reveal their lie. Then everyone should count up how many correct guesses of other people's lies they
made, and take away the number of people who correctly guessed their own lie. The winner is the person who
gets the highest score (and is therefore the best liar!).

2. Three things about me

Everyone should write down three facts about them, but have only a clue as to what the fact is. For example,
you could say 1978, Rufus, Germany. Then, the others have to guess what that fact relates to by asking
questions. For example: Is 1978 the year you were born? Was that the name of your first pet? Is Germany
your favourite country? Keep asking and answering until they guess the fact correctly!

3. Vocabulary Brainstorm

Write down a word, and then try and brainstorm as many words which relate to that word as possible in just
2-3 minutes. For example, if the word is “green”, then you may brainstorm words such as “grass, grasshoppers,
frogs, trees….” The more words that are brainstormed, the better!

4. Fruit, Vegetable, Animal or Mineral?

Think of a fruit, a vegetable, an animal or a mineral, but keep it a secret! The others must try and guess what
it is you are thinking of using only yes/no questions.

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Time-Fillers
Time-fillers are short 5-10-minute-long games or activities which get your students practising English. It is very
handy as a teacher to have a bank of time-fillers on hand in your toolkit to use in your lessons when the need
arises. You may find that you need to fill a small block of time at the end of a lesson. It can be difficult to plan
exactly how long an activity is going to last.

Sometimes, you might have 5 minutes left at the end of your lesson plan, and you need to fill that time with
something productive (or else it will be a waste of precious English learning time!). Sometimes, an activity you
had planned doesn’t go quite to plan, and your students may find it too difficult or get bored with it, and a time-
filler is great to get from your toolkit to do at this stage. You might decide that your students need re- energising
after a particularly arduous task, and popping a time-filler into the lesson can be just what your students need
to re-focus.

It can sometimes happen that the equipment you wanted to use—tape recorder, photocopier or television—
isn’t available or doesn’t work! This is a teaching emergency where you need to have a filler on-hand to do
during the time you wanted to be doing something else! Another situation when a time-filler is useful is when
you are called in to teach a class at the last minute, and have not had time to prepare—if this happens, delve
into your teaching toolkit and grab a few fillers to do in this lesson. Time-fillers can be an EFL/ESL teacher’s
life saver!
Here are some time filler ideas to continue with getting your toolkit started:

1. Dictation (with a twist)

This is not like the dictation you may have done as a child in primary school or high school. This is a special
version of dictation to use in the EFL/ESL classroom. You could use just about any text—you could grab a
paragraph out of your students’ course book, or from the newspaper, or choose some song lyrics or a poem.
You could even use something written on the back of packaging or a list! Whatever text you choose, make
sure it is at the right level for your students’ ability. You will first read the text at a slow pace, and just ask your
students to listen. With the second read, your students will write what you dictate. Say each sentence twice
but there is no need to include commas, full stops, etc. Then get your students to work in pairs or small groups
to try and re-write the text together, using what they have each written. They will also use their knowledge of
grammar rules to logically piece together the text. You can then read the text again so your students have a
chance to fine-tune and review what they have written. To check the work, get your students to compare theirs
with another group’s and give a chance for them to ask you any questions about their accuracy, spelling or
about the meaning of the text itself. This is a great activity for your toolkit, as it can be easily used for any level
and combines all of the macro skills.

2. Boggle

Get your students to call out, or pull from a hat, 3 vowels and 6 consonants. Write these letters on the board
and then get your students to work in pairs or groups to make as many words in 3 minutes as they can think
of, using only these letters. The winner is the group/student with the most words!

3. Picture Descriptor or Picture Stories

A picture has a thousand uses in the EFL/ESL classroom! Whenever you see an interesting picture in a
magazine, or an interesting newspaper story with an unusual headline or picture, keep it! Add it to your toolkit
and you will have a great filler on-hand. Hold up the picture or pass it around so every student has seen it.
Then, dependent upon your students’ level, you can get your students to work in groups or pairs to either:

- Describe the picture, and then share their description with the class. You could write new vocab on
the board as you discuss it as a whole class.

- Ask your students to make up a story about what they think happened before the picture was taken,
or what they think happened afterwards. They could also write the story down if you want them to have
writing practice.

- Get your students to describe the person in the picture—what is their personality, who are they, what’s
their name, what is their job and so on.

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- You could show half the class one picture, and the other half another picture, and in pairs the students
have to ask and answer questions about each other’s pictures.

The possibilities are endless! Get creative and you’ll find that one simple picture can be used in many different
ways!

4. Spelling Bee Buzz

This is an adaptation of the regular spelling bee. All your students will stand up in two lines facing each other.
You will say a word that they have been learning in class. The first person in the first line will say the first letter
of the word, then the person opposite them will say the next letter, and then the second person in the first line
will say the next word, and so on, zig-zagging down the line until the whole word has been spelt. If a student
says the wrong letter or doesn’t know the letter, the other team will get a point. This makes the game very
competitive and compelling! You could also do this in pairs or groups of three, which might be better if you
have a large class.

5. Story Chain

In this activity, your students will create a spontaneous story, with each student saying a line to create the
story. You could do this activity as a whole group or in small groups if your class is large. You can start off this
activity by saying a sentence such as: “There was once a three-legged dog….”, or “The young girl crept down
the creaky stairs….” or anything at all that you think will interest your students. The first student has to say the
next line of the story and this will continue around the class until the story ends! It can be quite challenging,
but also a lot of fun for the students as they try and keep the story going.

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Computer Technology in the Classroom

There is now a whole field of TESOL which is dedicated to the use of computers in the language classroom.
Known as Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), this field looks at ways computers can be used
in the language learning classroom to assist your students in their learning. It also looks at how an English
language classroom can remain communicative and interactive even with computers in the room. In many
schools in developing countries, you won’t have ready access to computers for your lessons. The school may
have one or two computers for teachers to use, and that’s it! In some schools, there may be just one computer
per class, while in schools in developed countries, where technology reigns the lives of many people, there
may be whole computer labs with many computers for your students to access, and for you to take your
students into for some of their lessons.

Computers are very motivating for students, as working on a computer provides a different environment
and stimulus to that of the regular classroom. Children and teens especially love lessons involving computers!
However, computers need to be used in the right way, so that your students are still communicating. This
means that you will need to create tasks, and select software programs that your students will find interesting
and useful, and which will help to improve their English. Just like desks in the classroom are barriers to
communication, so can the computer screen! There are extra challenges to using computers with your
students, but also many benefits!

There are many websites on the Internet which have been designed for EFL/ESL students. Sites such as
www.eslgold.com will include things such as grammar quizzes and vocabulary exercises. While students may
find these useful, they aren’t the best types of sites to get your students using in your lessons, as these are
essentially activities which your students can do at home, individually. Remember that language learning is a
communicative process, and when your student is only interacting with the screen, inputting answers and
getting computer generated responses, it is not communicative. It’s a good idea to get your students to work
in pairs or small groups, and to perform collaborative projects and tasks so that they are still practising
their language skills, communication skills, as well as developing their team work skills. This may sometimes
be more difficult to do than in a lesson without computers, but it is crucial if the lesson is to be beneficial for
your students’ learning.

It’s also great if you can find a way to integrate what you have been teaching in your lessons into the
computer lesson in some way. There is no point in taking your students out of their classroom, into the
computer lab, just to start learning something that is not related to the curriculum or what you have been
teaching them.

Here is an example of how you may integrate your school curriculum with a CALL lesson with your class. Let’s
say that you have adult students who have been working on the topic “Looking for work”. The past few lessons
you have reviewed the Past Perfect and the Present Perfect tenses, which are useful tenses to master when
talking about past experiences and current actions (likely tenses for writing resumes and job interviews!). You
and your students have looked at the different formal and informal ways of asking and answering questions in
a job interview and your students have even done some job interview role plays. You have taught some new
vocabulary related to finding a job, and in the last lesson, you taught the structure for writing a resume which
your students also practised by writing a resume for a fictional person, in groups. If you had access to a
computer room, it would then be a great idea to do a CALL lesson that would get your students working in
pairs to write an actual resume for themselves on the computer, and they could then check and correct another
pair’s work. This computer lesson would therefore integrate the knowledge of the past few lessons and provide
them with good computer skills practice. Your students would also still be interacting with each other while
doing the task on the computer!

However, person-to-person interaction is not the only type of interaction which can happen in the CALL
environment. It is also possible to find ways for your students to interact and be involved with the computer
itself. Person-to-computer interaction can occur through use of specially designed language-learning
software, which gets your students listening, reading, writing and responding to questions asked. Your school
may have software like this on-hand if they have a computer lab. There are also tools such as key- palling, a
type of modern-day pen-pal system using email correspondence; and webquests, a type of Internet scavenger
hunt.

Dependent upon the age and culture of your students, lessons which integrate the use of the computer may
be thought of as exciting and motivational, or for those students who are not computer literate or who are afraid
of using new technologies, it may lead to some anxiety. Therefore, if you are lucky enough to have access to

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computers at your school, when you are doing your lesson planning, you will need to consider your students'
technical skills and experience. This may cause your language class to become divided in terms of the
overall abilities of the students. While it is important to ensure that tasks encourage the weaker learners to
actually practise and learn the technical skills, you should try and group the students in a way that encourages
peer support so that weaker students are not left out and fall behind in the tasks. Try utilising computer literate
students to your advantage, who can act as experts and can assist with peer teaching.

The amount of time students have to use computers, either inside or outside the class, is also important.
Many of the activities you do with students in class on the computer, once demonstrated, will need to be
practised in order to be properly learned. Always allow enough time to do the tasks in class, as not all students
will have computer access outside class. This can pose difficulties when you may only have one computer
class a month!

There are also some classroom management issues to consider when working with computers in the
classroom. You may not have much choice over the layout of the computer lab in which your lessons will run,
and this could create difficulties in terms of classroom management. If you have a board to use, then utilise
this, getting your students to move their chairs away from the computer. Otherwise, using a photocopied
handout could suffice if there are instructions to give to your students. If your lab has a projector, you could
demonstrate the operation of exercises or particular software straight from your computer. Another alternative
is to make an electronic document perhaps saved on a shared hard drive or via email or class weblog which
your students can access and follow directly from their computers.

Regardless of how the instruction occurs, you will have to be vigilant about monitoring your students and
assisting them in their pairs and small groups whenever necessary. You will also need to ensure your
students stay on task and focused on the lessons’ outcomes at all times, as the nature of computers and the
Internet means your students have freedom over what they do. This careful observation, to ensure they are
not accessing their own native language content and personal emails, is crucial especially in the beginning
when student responsibilities may not be so clear and when their skills will not be as developed (and therefore
tasks will be more difficult to complete). Also, be prepared to assist with technological difficulties that
could arise.

The final consideration in using computers for teaching English relates to language content. Many of the
educational software programs which you will come across, as well as the Internet itself, are designed with
native speakers in mind. This means that there is a divide which separates language learners from native
speakers, as the language used is often too difficult for non-native speakers. Additionally, the content offered
is not always relevant, with the content often designed to communicate with just one or two cultures, not many,
diverse ones. There are limitations on every program which you choose to use, and do consider if there is
another, more effective way of getting your students to practise particular target language rather than the
computer and software program. Always ensure the software or CALL activity is in line with the desired course
outcome expected by your school!

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Using the TV and Video/DVD in the Classroom

Another form of technology that you may be able to utilise in your lessons is that of a television on which to
watch videos or DVDs. Just like the use of computers, the use of these technologies requires careful
consideration and planning. The lazy teacher is one who will put on a video of an English movie and get the
students watching it for an hour-long lesson. Doing this is not really helping your students to progress in their
learning; if you decide to use video you need to find ways to integrate it within your curriculum and to also
ensure it is communicative.

It will depend what type of school you are working at, and what resources they have available to you as to how
you can use video and DVD. Sadly, some government schools which are under-funded may not have TVs
available for you to use. If you are lucky to work at a school which does have this kind of technology then you
have a wonderful resource on hand to use in your lessons, if it is used beneficially. Using a video beneficially
is using it as an extra resource that is going to help your students learn more than they would by just listening
to you, reading their text book, listening to an audio tape or looking at the blackboard.

Your school may have videos which have been made by EFL/ESL publishers specifically for the use of teaching
English. These video courses will often be accompanied by a curriculum book which will integrate activities,
games, grammar and other materials. Some of these productions are slicker than others! Don’t feel as though
you are limited to using just these mass-produced video courses, as you can also get a lot of material from a
regular movie, a recording of English news, an episode from a popular soap opera and even television
advertisements! You will find that you could get a whole lesson from just a 5-minute excerpt of video. It just
comes down to creativity!

Here are some tips for using video/DVD in your lessons:

1. Don’t play a whole movie from start to finish—just choose a short 3-5-minute excerpt and really exploit
it.

2. Be confident with the technology. Make sure you check that the video/DVD works and know how to
operate the equipment. Also make sure it is cued before your students arrive, as it could be terrible if
the whole lesson you had planned around the video couldn’t happen due to a technological glitch, or
if you can’t find the correct place on the video!

3. Always set a task for your students to do while they are watching, so there is a reason for them to
watch and listen carefully and not fall asleep while the lights are out!

In a lesson which incorporates video, it is best to follow the outline we looked at back in Unit 4 for structuring
a language skills lesson. It is important that you perform a pre-viewing task to ensure that any difficult or new
vocabulary or concepts are covered prior to viewing. It might be the case that the past few lessons you have
taught have been leading up to the video activity—perhaps a particular topic or language function that your
students have been learning and practising will be consolidated with a video that is about that topic or shows
those functions. There should also be a task or activity that your students perform while watching the video.
Tasks that you give to your students during the video could include a handout with questions that can only be
answered by watching and listening carefully, or which require your students to interpret what was going on in
the video segment. This will then be followed by an after-viewing activity. In the follow-up activity, you could
have a class discussion of the topic they saw, or an interpretation of the segment, or get your students to
perform a role-play re-enacting what they had watched, or you could even get the class to discuss in groups
what they think will happen next. There are many possibilities!

There are also many other great ideas for exploiting videos:

- You can get your students to watch the excerpt without sound, or to listen to the excerpt while the TV
is covered. By doing this as a previewing task, your students can talk in pairs to discuss what they
thought was happening or what might happen!

- Play an unusual advertisement and get your students to guess what they think it is advertising (you
will have to choose carefully to ensure it is not obvious what the product being advertised is). This
could then be followed-up by a discussion of how they came to the conclusion, what clues there are
in the ad, or even a discussion about the advertisement itself and how effective they think the campaign
was.

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- While watching a video, pause it part-way through to get your students predicting what they think will
happen next, and then press play to compare how well they predicted.

- The program Mr Bean works great for this activity, but any silent comedy sketch or movie scene with
the sound off would be appropriate. Get half the class to watch 30 seconds to one minute of the sketch.
Then each person in that half will find a partner in the other half of the class and will tell them what
they saw happen. Then swap roles!

- If you have a video camera, you can film your students doing role plays or prepared speeches, and
then play them back to critique.

Just like using computers, use of video/DVD is highly motivational in the classroom, and can really help to
spice up your course book and school curriculum.

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Teaching with Minimal Resources

Resources are anything additional that you can use in the classroom for your students to see, touch, smell or
feel. Resources are invaluable as EFL/ESL teachers, as they can help make it easier for you to teach a new
idea or concept because they make learning interesting and motivating and can really help to improve your
students’ learning. However, if you are about to volunteer your time as an English teacher at a school in a
developing country, then it is likely you are going to have limited resources available. Having the use of a
computer or even a TV is probably a luxury that students at that school could only ever dream of having! Your
school may not even be able to provide all the students with a course book, and your students may be so poor
that they don’t even have pens and paper to bring to class. Even if you do find yourself teaching at a school
that is well-funded and resourced, there will be times when the photocopier is unavailable, when the technology
is broken, or when you have had to take a class at the last minute and haven’t had time to make resources.
We will now look at what you can do if you ever find yourself in a teaching situation where you have none or
very few resources available to use.

Using the Board

The most common resource, which every classroom will have (unless you are teaching outside under a tree
in the dirt!) is a board. In older classrooms, it may be a blackboard and chalk, while many modern classrooms
around the world will now use whiteboards and markers. Whether it is a black or white board that you use,
it will become your most valuable resource! However, it is important to still use the board in an effective
way, especially if it is the only teaching aid available to you.

All students you teach need to see new words and grammar written down, as the visual element helps us to
retain new information. Whenever new vocabulary is brought up in class, you should write it on the
board, so that your students can learn the spelling. When presenting new grammar structures and
dialogues, writing these on the board will show your students the word order and sentence structure. You
will use the board to draw pictures, timelines and other necessary visuals and if your students don’t have
books, then the board will become the source of text for them. There are even games which rely solely on the
use of the board!

There are some important points to remember when using the board:

- Ensure that your writing and pictures are clear and legible, and large enough so that even students
at the back can see them well.

- Never have your back turned to the class while writing on the board. You will get better with practise
at writing side-on so you are writing and facing the class at the same time. If you have your back turned
for too long, your students are likely to get disruptive while all they are doing is staring at the back of
your head! Also, be careful not to stand so that you are blocking the board—keep to either side to
ensure you aren’t covering anything your students need to see.

- Plan the way that you will use the board in different stages of the lesson so that you are able to
fit everything from the lesson on it effectively, and don’t run out of room. It’s a good idea to leave a
section for recording new vocabulary as it comes up in the lesson, leave a space aside to write down
any homework you will issue and ensure there is space for you to place dialogues, sentences, charts,
pictures and visuals necessary for conducting your lesson. A badly organised board makes learning
more difficult for your students!

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An Example of a Badly Organised Board:

A useful skill to become good at is drawing. This does not mean you have to become the next Picasso, but
being able to get your point across by quickly drawing a person, an object, an action or a scene will make
teaching new concepts quick and effective. All you need to be able to do is draw stick figures and objects in a
basic way. If a student laughs at your attempt, at least you know it will be memorable! It might be a good idea
to think about and practise drawing people, emotions, actions, objects, modes of transport, animals and
occupations, as these are things which will come up frequently in lessons, and you will feel much more
confident drawing an ‘angry policeman running’ if you have already had a go doing this before you come to
class!

As well as trying to get across what a new vocabulary item is, there are many other ways you can use a drawing
to help you in your teaching.

1. Start to build up a picture or a scene, and ask questions as you slowly complete the drawing. If
you are drawing a house, for example, start off with just the base, and ask “What do you think this is?”,
and then start to add more details—the door, windows, roof—asking the same question. In doing this,
you are keeping your students involved and interested and they can learn not only the word “house”
but the associated words that go with it, thus helping your students to build their vocabulary.

2. When drilling, you will have the sentences or dialogues that you are presenting written on the board.
Accompany some of the new or difficult vocab in the sentence with a drawing which you can refer to.
Then, it is easy to just rub-out the word, substituting the actual words with a picture of the word.
This makes it more challenging for your students, as they can’t just read the word but have to
remember the meaning of the word—this is helpful for their learning process!

3. Set up a discussion by drawing some characters or a scene which you can ask your students
questions about it, or draw some objects and get your students to create a story which contains all
those things.

It is not just drawings that will make their way onto the board. As you will have seen in the example of a board
in the previous mini task, the board will also be used for text. You should have any dialogues or grammar
structures you are using in your lesson written down on the board. Text is also useful if you are the only person
who has a copy of the course book. In this instance, you will rely on the board to help your students with
learning the text that is contained within the book. This does not mean that you will write verbatim what is
included in the book! You will only write the key words or key information, and also write a simpler version of
a paragraph which may also be accompanied by pictures and diagrams. You don’t want your students to spend
the entire lesson just copying from the board—you want them to remain involved and be sure that they actually
understand what they are writing down!

If the case is that you are the only one with a copy of the book which your students need to learn from, you
may follow a technique such as this:

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1. Divide the board into sections. One column can be for pictures of things from the text, one can be for
key words and sentences, and another column can be for activities.

2. Draw pictures to represent the key words in the order in which they appear in the text, in the first
column.

3. Refer to the pictures and tell the story or read the text. At the same time, revise and check the key
vocabulary items which are essential for understanding the text with your class. Ask open-ended
questions about each picture to ensure their understanding of what it means and its significance to the
text.

4. Keep asking these guided questions so that you are leading your students through the information in
the text (or a summary of the key points).

5. You may now write some sentences (in the other column), or even dictate parts of the text, for your
students to write down/copy.

6. Then perform the practice exercises which are written in the third column. These exercises could
include a gap fill, with sentences from the text written out but with key words missing. You could have
some sentences from the text written in two halves, and your students have to match the correct half
sentences. You could also write the sentences in the incorrect order and your students have to
reconstruct the sentences, re-ordering the sentences into the correct order.

7. By the end of this, they should have a clear understanding of the text you want to teach from the book,
and you have taught this in such a way that your students have practised many of the macro skills,
not just reading!

Charts are also extremely useful tools to use for presenting new grammar structures on the board. Charts can
be quickly and easily drawn to represent sentence structures and different patterns and combinations, and are
also easy for your students to copy into their books. Charts help by providing guided speaking and writing
practice in using new structures, as they clearly show your students that there are different word choices. The
chart below presents the different combinations, and in using it, your students can be confident that choosing
any of the words from each column will make a correct sentence.

rarely shopping to
He sometimes goes work to the
She usually go movies to the
I often gym swimming
always out for dinner
never

You can also make a chart that shows the variations in asking a question using the same grammar structure.
In doing this, your students can easily and clearly compare and see the differences.

he she shopping to
does you work to the
How often go ?
movies to the
do
gym
swimming out
for dinner

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The board will also be where you draw calendars and timelines, which will also assist your students in
understanding the meaning of different grammar forms and tenses.
We also mentioned that there are games for which you can use the board. A popular game in the EFL/ESL
classroom is one called Back to the Board. In this game, you will divide the class into teams. Each team will
have one member who sits at the front with their back turned to the board so they are facing their team. You
will then write a word (a vocab item you want to review is best!) on the board and the team must define the
word without actually saying the word. The person at the front of the room has to listen to their team’s clues to
try to guess the word that is written on the board! The first team to guess the word will get a point; then, swap
the team members around so another person has their back to the board and a new word is written up. Lots
of fun and great for consolidating new vocabulary and also expression!

Finally, the board should not always be used by you! Give your students a chance to do activities like the ones
we have looked at by using the board. This will encourage their participation and they will feel like more active
members of the class. If you have no idea how to draw something, maybe one of your students does, so why
not hand the chalk or marker over to them to have a go—they will find this very motivating! You can also get
your students to watch for any mistakes on the board, and whenever they find any (it does sometimes happen
that you spell a word wrong, or maybe you purposely make a mistake!) encourage your students to come up
to the board and make the relevant correction.

Using Minimal Resources

It is possible that you will work at a school that has some books, and a few old resources, but not too much
else to really work with. Again, a bit of creativity will really help, as you can start to build the resources up in
the time that you teach at the school. Finding and using resources may be time consuming at first, and will
form part of your English preparation time. However, when you have made resources once, so long as you
look after them, you won’t have to make them again.

You might have to really think about where you can get resources from outside of your teaching environment.
Think about what you can gather from the market, the local shop, or even sent from home. It might be a good
idea to take a few English magazines with you from home to use for cutting out pictures, and also taking along
things from home such a bus and train timetables, takeaway restaurant menus and
even junk mail—there is an amazing amount of classroom mileage you can get from these realia items!

It is also possible for you to get your students making resources in class as part of the lesson. For example, if
you are teaching children some new words and you don’t have any flash cards, then get your kids to make
them! Draw the picture on the board, then hand out cardboard or paper and get them to draw their own version
of the picture, copying the word down as well. Then they can keep these in the class to re-use, and in making
them, they have been more involved in the learning process.

Often, all you need is some paper or cardboard from old packaging to make some really great materials. Get
your students to bring in old packaging to class if you are lacking at your school or if it is difficult to find
cardboard at the shops. Making class sets of cards on actual cardboard has the benefit of being able to be
used again. Make sure when you make new resources that you collect them back from your students and
make it clear they don’t write on the paper or cards! Old packaging is also great to use for teaching different
topics. You could do a shopping game with real items (make English labels for the items if they are in another
language!), or use the items to talk about likes and dislikes, colours, ingredients, recipes or even prices. Bring
in household items from your home as well if you think they will assist in your lesson.

Role plays are excellent to use in the classroom when you have very little material to work with, and there are
many games that use few materials or require little further preparation.

An example of an activity that requires very few materials other than the board is a class quiz. This is not the
same as doing a boring quiz on paper! In this quiz, you will have prepared some questions which relate to what
you have been teaching. Divide the class into teams. You can perform the quiz in one of several different ways:

- Get each team to think of a team name, then line up in front of the board. The person at the front of
each team’s line is the person who will answer the question you ask. They cannot confer with their
team to answer! The person in front who puts up their hand first has a chance to answer. If they get

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it right, their team gets a point, if not, another team can answer. Then, the front person will move to
the back of the line, and there is a new person at the front to answer your next question.

- Get your students to work in small groups, and to assign one person as scribe. You will ask the
question, and the team can confer on the answer, but before they call out their team name/team
sound, the scribe must write the answer down. If they get the answer right, first, then they will get a
point. If they respond without writing the answer first, they will lose a point, and another team has a
chance to respond!

- Do a pub-quiz style, in rounds, with the answers given and points added up after each round.

You can get really creative with quizzes, and they are a lot of fun for students of all ages!

Using what is in the Classroom

In addition to the board, the desks and the tape recorder (if you are lucky!), your classroom actually has many
other resources within it that you can use to assist you in your teaching. You have students, for example!
Unless there is a school uniform, your students will be dressed differently (and even if they have a uniform,
there are likely to be variances in style, etc.) Use the different colours and types of clothes to talk about
similarities, differences and comparisons. Your students will have different families and backgrounds which
can all be used in interviews and questionnaire type activities. They will all have different likes and dislikes,
and different imaginations! Your students are potentially your greatest resource!

There are also classroom objects which can be used to demonstrate different ideas. Use the objects in the
room to improvise different objects in role plays and to use as examples in presenting different grammar. The
various belongings you and your students bring into the classroom can also be great for playing one of many
games.

Here are some more activity/game ideas for using whichever everyday objects happen to be available in your
classroom on any given day.

1. Desert Island Scenario

Don’t tell your students what will happen in the game, but just ask 6-7 students to take an object, any object,
out of their bag. Put each of these objects on a desk at the front of the class. Then explain that these are the
only objects that you have on you when you get lost on a desert island. You could even draw the island with a
lone stick figure person on it to help your students to visualise. Then put your students into groups and get
them to decide what they would do with each object. After they have discussed this, tell them they can swap
one item for any other item they want and get them to discuss what they would swap and why! You can do a
whole-class feedback at the end. This activity really stimulates students’ thinking!

2. In my bag

Get your students to choose five items from their bag—it can be anything at all! They have to then move around
the class with their bags, telling people what they got, what they use it for and why they keep it in their bag.
After students have spoken to a number of other students, get them to report back on what they found out
about another student. A variation of this is for you to select some items that came from your bag, and to show
each item to your students. Then get them to work in pairs or groups to figure out why you keep each.

3. Sales People

Again, select whatever items you can find in the classroom—it could be the rubbish bin, a chair, a pen, or any
item that your students have brought with them to class—making sure there is one item for at least half the
class. Half the students in the class select an item each. Then tell them that they are sales people, and they
have to try and sell the item to one of their classmates who doesn’t have an item for sale. The sales people
have to convince the others that their item is worth buying, so they practise their persuasive speaking skills. It
is a lot of fun too when you have a student trying to sell a toothbrush or a hairbrush!

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Using Nothing at All!

If you ever find yourself in a teaching scenario where all you and your students have is a pen and paper (or a
stick and some dirt!) then you may find things to be extra challenging—but not impossible! Many of the games
and activities you have seen in this course so far require minimal resources. Here is another very popular
game that you may like to use if you have nothing but pen and paper on hand.

Pictionary

This game is GREAT for getting your students to practise their speaking and for reviewing vocabulary you
have taught. Choose the vocabulary items you want to review. Then put your students into teams and get them
to choose one person from the team to go first. The first person will come up to the front and you can whisper
the word in their ear. Then they must return to their team and draw that word. The first team that guesses
correctly what the word is gets a point! Then play again with a different team member being the drawer. Very
competitive and fun!

You really are only limited by your own creativity—make the most of the resources that you do have available
and always think of ways in which you can utilise what’s available to you!

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