This document reflects my personal observations when conducting the English Beginner Classes.
🙂 With projector, students typing in Anki flashcards works so well, since it tells you the letters that you failed. If the word is difficult then I allow them to fail 1 or 2 characters.
🙂 Selecting written words from bag works well, because the taken word is not reintroduced and does not repeat, as in other word selection methods.
🙂 Acting actions works very well, they get motivated and happy. It makes the class less boring.
🙂 Better to cash out the points (for video games) on their free day, so it’s bigger of an event!
🙂 Write the date on the point. Cash the points by ripping the ticket.
🙂 For the Anki decks where students go in front of the class to spell the images they see on screen, if you change players every 4 flashcards it works better. For that the number of flash cards must be a multiple of 4.
🙂 For the Anki deck vocabulary review, having 4 students simultaneously with little whiteboards in front of the class works better, so there are more contestants. If nobody reaches the thresholds to win points, then the one with highest score wins. In case of draw then do a lightning round of showing flashcards and the first of the students says the name correctly then gets the point.
😔 The small kids need much help with physical things like tearing the paper, writing the name and folding it. So allocate enough time based on number and age.
😔 The balloon game worked, but sometimes it’s hard to randomly throw it around, I needed to remember what areas I covered so I don’t reuse too much the same.
😔 When prompting the students, you sometimes say for instance “How many”, and then you prompt them to say the animal that is to be counted “what here?” and they repeat “what here?” literally instead of saying the name of the animal to count. This happened many times.
😔 I don’t know how to handle the case where they take long to reply or when they fail. In both of these cases I say the correct answer and continue to prevent stopping the flow of the class.
😔 Don’t assume they can draw shapes you consider simple as in the Prepositions of Place Sheet for Students easily… That’s why I ended up making the printed handout.
😔 Activities such as Activity Placing Items Around (30 min) that involves racing for completing objectives can get chaotic! Careful!