5 essentials every child needs when you're teaching English

Jeanne Perrett
Two parents sat with their two children, writing in a workbook togeher

The educational choices available to children are evolving rapidly with apps, online courses, digital games, recordings and videos becoming easily accessible. However, amidst this technological advancement, human evolution has not suddenly accelerated, and the primary aim for teachers remains unchanged - helping children make sense of the world and leaving their mark on it.

Here are five essential ways we can achieve that for every child, regardless of their circumstances, whether it's teaching English or fostering everyday learning and education.

5 essentials every child needs when you're teaching English
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1. Attention

Paying attention to what we're doing is something that we have to re-learn. Very young childrenpay great attention to the smallest of things. Washing their hands takes forever as they want tofocus on the soap, doing up shoelaces can become a half-hour activity, or an interesting pebble on theroad can make a quick trip to the shops a very long one.

So, what happens is that we then startteaching children to hurry up. ‘Hurry up, come on, quickly, now - put on your coat NOW!’ are part ofevery parent’s repertoire. And we have to do it because we know what the children don’t - that the bus won’t wait for us, that school starts at a certain time and that people will be kept waiting if we don’thurry up.

Therefore paying attention has to be re-learnt and we need to lead the way. We have to pay attention tothe children, what they are saying and doing, and then we have to resist the temptation to do toomany things at once. And, most importantly, we have to give our children enough time to letthings sink in.

2. Skills

We have so many ways of describing skills now; soft, hard, thinking, critical, communication - the listgoes on. In some ways, these descriptors are useful as they make us more aware of the particularskills of a child, but there is still often a gap between knowing how a child is skilled and how that canbe useful to the child.

Let’s take a classic example; one of the main qualities people often think of asconnected to nursing is a skill for caring, showing compassion and being a good communicator.Yes, that is important, but the main skill needed to be a nurse is dealing competently, practicallyand non-judgmentally with bodily fluids. So, yes, we absolutely need to make sure that we areeducating our children to become skillful in various ways but we also need to think about how thoseskills are transferable.

3. Knowledge

One of the most significant changes of the past 40 years is how we can access information. Gone are thedays of one version of an encyclopedia or whatever your teacher knew; now we have online data,crowdsourced reports, scores of different formats - everything is a click and a swipe away.

So how canwe help with this? First, we have to get children interested enough in a topic to want to find thingsout for themselves. Then we must guide them through what is true and what might not be. Andthen our main job is showing them that they can add to the tree of knowledge. It’s constantly growing,and they can lengthen the branches, help fruit grow, and even dig up the roots and plant the treeelsewhere.

4. Imagination

Thinking creatively, thinking ‘out of the box’ and seeing new possibilities can and must benurtured in our children. We can use our imagination in traditionally creative ways such as writing, artwork, music and drama, but perhaps even more importantly we can use it in ‘unseen’ ways. Wecan unlearn banal responses and consider what we really think; in other words we can ‘think forourselves’. Again this skill is needed more than ever when surrounded by seeminglywise thoughts in social media memes. The nature of memes is that they look definite, as if they aretrue. They might be and they might not. We can decide when we use our critical and creativethinking skills.

We can use imagination to find solutions to problems and we can use it to make our own everyday realitiesmore exciting and life-enhancing. Whatever we do, if we have a positive image of ourselves doingit, the task becomes more meaningful and rewarding. And in a practical sense in the classroom, wecan bring language learning to life. Imagining and play acting the situations where the language we arelearning might be called for; in a restaurant, at an airport or meeting new friends. It can be a great method to teach English to kids, keeping them engaged and actively involved.

5. Support

Support comes in many forms. First concrete support, such as providing a desk and materials for children todo their homework. This is something that teachers need to be aware of; do the children have thatat home? It’s not a question of finance - not everyone can afford a separate room and the space for adesk - but it is a question of realizing that a dedicated, quiet space is needed. For example a clearedkitchen table at certain times of the day. It’s worth bearing this in mind if parents say theirchildren never focus on homework. Look at the practicalities before any attitude issues.

The most important form of support we can give is ‘being there’ for our children. Knowing thatsomeone wants you to do well, is there for you through your mistakes and successes, andempathizes with both. Someone who ‘has your back’ when you need help and is glad for you whenyou do well; that gives our children a powerful sense of security. And we can flourish when we feelsecure.

By implementing these above points, we can equip children with the tools they need to understand the world, pursue their passions and make a positive impact on their lives and others.

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    The four Cs

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    Falling into the first two categories of future skills (ways of thinking and ways of working), these can help children build confidence and self-esteem. They also encourage healthy emotional development.

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    1. Communication

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    What’s it like to teach English in Turkey?

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    Alice Pilkington qualified as a CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certified teacher in October 2009. She started working in Rome before moving to Istanbul, where she’s spent the past three and a half years teaching English to “everyone from 8-year-olds to company executives; students to bored housewives”. Having taught in two very different countries to a diverse range of English learners, Alice shares with us the five lessons she’s learned:

    1. Don't take things personally when you're teaching English

    "I am probably not emotionally suited for this job. I take everything very personally and if a lesson goes wrong or an activity I have taken time and energy to plan doesn’t work, I feel like a complete failure. It’s a trial and error experience but when things go wrong, they can go very wrong, and it really makes you doubt your abilities as a teacher.

    Having said that, the lessons that do go well can make up for these negative feelings. I shouldn’t take things personally; the majority of my colleagues don’t and it saves them a lot of sleepless nights"

    2. Teaching English is incredibly rewarding

    "There are very few feelings that I’ve experienced that compare to seeing a student use a word that you have taught them – it makes you feel like a proud parent. Equally, seeing a student improve over a series of months is so joyful.I have been teaching English university preparation students for the past year.

    In September, they could barely say what their name was and what they did over the weekend. Nine months on and they’re capable of reading academic texts and speaking at length about marketing strategies and environmental problems. It’s a wonderful thing to observe"

    3. Teach more than just English

    "Turkish students love hearing about how you appreciate their food and cultural traditions. Equally, they are genuinely interested in understanding how things operate in the UK and enjoy hearing personal anecdotes.I tend to be very open with my students – even about my personal life.I think it is partly because I have striven from the very beginning of my career to be seen as their equal.

    Turkish students are used to having a huge respect for teachers, and there is a hierarchical system in schools here, which I can never go along with. In my first lesson with most students, I tell them that they must call me by my first name (usually you refer to teachers here as ‘hocam’ which means ‘my teacher’ and shows respect) and this can take a long while for them to get used to."

    4. Failure to prepare is to prepare for failure... or is it?

    "Lessons that you spend hours preparing for generally don’t go as well as you had hoped. There were several times when I’d spend hours cutting and sticking things on pieces of card and placing pictures all over the classroom, hoping it would get some vocabulary action going, only to start the class and receive no response from the students.

    Conversely, lessons where you don’t feel very motivated or have no idea what you are going to do until you get into the classroom (which I call the ‘flying by the seat of your pants’ lessons) can turn out to be the best ones. I once had a lesson in which I was, admittedly, rather hungover. On the way to the lesson, I grabbed a book called ‘Taboos and Issues’, full of discussion topics, which I used as a basis for a rather impromptu lesson on addictions, which was very successful indeed."

    5. Teaching English isn't easy

    "Teaching English is a love/hate profession. There are weeks when you absolutely loathe it and want to quit, but then within the space of a lesson or two, you get inspired by something completely unexpected, rediscover your joy for it and love it again."