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Teaching English in the classroom is already a challenging task for most teachers due to children’s attention span are very short. Kids tend to lack the focus required for an entire session and they get bored easily. Such it would be even more challenging for teachers when teaching English to children online as they cannot play and have fun in a classroom physically but only view the teacher from a computer screen that sometimes can be too small to see the teacher. So, how to effectively teach English to young children online? After learning the entire TEFL course unit, I have picked up some of the important points to incorporate on my teaching skills if ever I would end up teaching children online. First and foremost, the most important is structuring the lesson plan. The lesson plan should be very simple and concise with a lot of activities involved. The material that should be used can be like a power point presentation but an interactive one. Since these are children and they love watching cartoons, there should be a lot of colorful pictures in the presentation. The presentation should not just have pictures but should also involve the 4 skills, reading, listening, writing and speaking. The session should include playing songs and playing games on screen. The method that can be used is a Straight arrow ESA lesson. It would be nice to follow a course book to know what to teach for young learners as beginners but not totally and completely following the entire course book. The teaching phase should be slow but not too slow that the child gets bored. Activities should vary every 5 minutes or so. The entire session should not be very long perhaps less than 30 minutes should be ok. For the first lesson, it is important to check whether the child already has some basic knowledge in the English language for you to know what type of teaching is involved. If the child has ZERO knowledge in English, the teacher might need to engage the student more. Such this is the part where the teacher will already establish rapport to the student. Making funny gestures and funny noises at the same time incorporating the first lesson can be possible. I think for this task usually the lesson is more of conversational English where the teacher will teach Hi’s and Hello’s and include playing songs. This would require a lot of repetition in teaching. If the student has some basic English language, it is good to start warming up and conversing with the child to see what words does the child know. By this, the teacher might start to say “Hello, How are you today?” and see how the student can react then eventually asking a difficult question as the conversation goes by but not too difficult to use very deep vocabulary. It should still be simple for a kid’s understanding. Again, being funny is still important for the children to be interested. Once this has been established, the teacher can already start with the lesson plan. Study phase should show pictures and the teacher speaking the words on the picture therefore letting the students to repeat and follow the teacher. Nouns and verbs are simple words that are usually easier for beginners to grasp specially those that are commonly seen in their daily lives. In the activate phase the teacher will review and ask questions based on the earlier lessons. The teachers should always help the students to answer and guide them. It is ok for the teacher to be repetitive as this is one way for the students to remember the words. The most common problem in an online lesson is the child’s lack of focus. This will be very challenging especially for boys as they like to play around instead of sit on a chair for a long time. The teacher should be very patient and make sure not to get angry for the entire session. Smile is important as the facial expression. Words of encouragement are highly recommended to motivate the children such as giving thumbs up or rewards during the session will help. It would be nice to end the session with a high energy from the teacher so the student will be excited and look forward for the next online class.
