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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    1. Spider-Man comic books

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    2. Poptropica English Space Island Adventure

    app English Kids Readers are stories that have been specially rewritten for English language learners aged 5-12. The great thing about using a book designed for children is that they can enjoy and learn at the appropriate level. Children's books also often have exciting plots and fun dialogue – and that is definitely the case with this story, from the Poptropica English universe, about Peter, Pepper and Captain Cloud meeting aliens on their tour around Space Island.

    Many of you will be familiar with the major movie starring Will Smith, but I, Robot actually started off as a collection of nine short stories by Issac Asimov. Written in the 1940s and 1950s, they tell a tale of humans, robots and morality. Each of the short stories can be read separately and they contain simple, descriptive language, making them perfect for English learners.

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    How to improve literacy in the classroom

    By Katharine Scott
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    Katharine Scott is a teacher trainer and educational materials developer with over 20 years’ experience writing English language textbooks. She’s co-author of the app Primary course - English Code and is based in Spain. Katharine outlines a number of practical ways you can help English language learners develop key literacy skills.

    What is literacy?

    Teachers at all stages of education often complain about their students’ reading skills. The students are literate. In other words, they can interpret the graphemes, or letters on the page, into words. But they struggle to identify the purpose of a text or to analyze it in a meaningful way. We could say that the students have poor literacy skills.

    Literacy is a term used to describe an active, critical form of reading. Some of the skills of a critical reader include:

    Checking new information

    A crucial literacy skill involves discerning whether a text is factually true or not. A critical reader always checks new information against existing knowledge. As we read, we have an internal dialogue: Where does that information come from? That’s impossible because ….

    Separating fact from opinion

    This skill is essential for understanding many different types of texts from newspaper articles to scientific research.

    Understanding the purpose of a text

    All pieces of text have a main purpose. This may be entertainment, in the case of a story or persuasion, in the case of advertising. A critical reader will know how to identify the purpose of the text.

    In the classroom, different types of text require different responses from the students. It’s important, as students grow older, that they know how to read and respond appropriately to a piece of written information.

    Identifying key information in a text

    This is an essential skill for summarizing information or following instructions. It is also important when we transform written information into something else, like a chart.

    In many ways, literacy is the key skill that underpins learning at all stages. This may seem like an exaggeration, but consider the importance of the four skills outlined above.

    Strategies to promote literacy

    Many teachers and parents of early learners instinctively develop literacy skills before the children can even read.

    When we read a story out loud to a child, we often ask questions about the narrative as we turn the pages: What is going to happen next? How do you think …. feels? Why is …?

    These questions set the foundations for literacy.

    Working with a reading text

    Too often, the comprehension questions that teachers ask about a text are mechanical. They ask the student to “lift” the information out of the text.

    A tale of two dragons

    "Once upon a time, there was an island in the sea. One day, people were working in the fields. The sun was shining and there was one cloud in the sky. The cloud was a strange shape and moving towards the island. Soon the cloud was very big. Then a small boy looked up."

    Taken from English Code, Unit 4, p. 62

    Typical comprehension questions based on the text would be:

    • Where were the people working?
    • How many clouds were in the sky?

    These questions do not really reflect on the meaning of the text and do not lead to a critical analysis. While these simple questions are a good checking mechanism, they don’t help develop literacy skills.

    If we want to develop critical readers, we need to incorporate a critical analysis of reading texts into class work through a deep reading comprehension. We can organize the comprehension into three types.

    1. Text level

    Comprehension at “text level” is about exploring the meaning of individual words and phrases in a text. Examples for the text above could be:

    • Find words that show the story is a fairy tale.
    • Underline a sentence about the weather.

    Other text-level activities include:

    • Finding words in the text from a definition
    • Identifying opinions in the text
    • Finding verbs of speech
    • Finding and classifying words or phrases

    2. Between the lines

    Comprehension “between the lines” means speculating and making guesses with the information we already have from the text. This type of literacy activity often involves lots of questions and discussions with the students. You should encourage students to give good reasons for their opinions. An example for the text above could be:

    • What do you think the cloud really is?

    Other “Between the lines” activities include:

    • Discussing how characters in a story feel and why
    • Discussing characters’ motivation
    • Identifying the most important moments in a story
    • Speculating about what is going to happen next
    • Identifying possible events from fantasy events

    Literacy activities are not only based on fiction. We need to help students be critical readers of all sorts of texts. The text below is factual and informative:

    What skills do you need for ice hockey?

    "Ice hockey players should be very good skaters. They always have good balance. They change direction very quickly and they shouldn't fall over. Players should also have fast reactions because the puck moves very quickly."

    Taken from English Code, Level 4, p. 96

    “Between the lines” activities for this text could be:

    • What equipment do you need to play ice hockey?
    • What is the purpose of this piece of text?

    3. Behind the lines

    Comprehension “behind the lines” is about the information we, the readers, already have. Our previous knowledge, our age, our social background and many other aspects change the way we understand and interpret a text.

    An example for the text above could be:

    • What countries do you think are famous for ice hockey?

    Sometimes a lack of socio-cultural knowledge can lead to misunderstanding. Look at the text below.

    Is the relationship between Ms Turner and Jack Roberts formal or informal?

    73 Highlands Road Oxbo, Wisconsin 54552
    April 11th

    Dear Ms. Tamer,
    Some people want to destroy the forest and build an airport. This forest is a habitat for many wolves. If they destroy the forest, the wolves will leave the forest. If the wolves leave the forest, there will be more rabbits. This won't be good for our forest.
    Please build the airport in a different place. Please don't destroy the forest.

    Kind regards, Jack Robers

    Taken from English code, Level 4, unit 5, Writing Lab

    If your students are unaware of the convention of using Dear to start a letter in English, they may not answer this question correctly.

    Other “Behind the lines” literacy activities include:

    • Identifying the type of text
    • Imagining extra information based on the readers’ experiences
    • Using existing knowledge to check a factual account
    • Identifying false information

    Examples:

    • What job do you think Ms Turner has?
    • Do you think Jack lives in a village or a city?
    • Do wolves live in forests?

    Literacy is more than reading

    From the activities above, it’s clear that a literacy scheme develops more than reading skills. As students speculate and give their opinions, they talk and listen to each other.

    A literacy scheme can also develop writing skills. The text analysis gives students a model to follow in their writing. In addition, a literacy scheme works on higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, deduction and summary.

    Developing literacy skills so that students become active, critical readers should be a key part of educational programs at all ages. Literacy activities based on a reading text can be especially useful for the foreign language class.

    With literacy activities, we can encourage students:

    • To use the text as a springboard for communicating ideas and opinions
    • To analyze the text as a model for writing activities
    • To see how language is used in context
    • To explore the meanings of words

    More crucially, we are developing critical readers for the future.