A Great Blog on Teaching English to Young Learners of English

This blog belongs to a colleague of mine. Her name is Nina Kisin.
She is a private school teacher.
Regarding the blog, I must say the posts are extremely useful and interesting. The blog offers ready-to-use materials.
Nina, if only I had known about the posts back at the time I was substitute teaching first- to fourth-graders...
Still, at least I now have some great ideas and tips for future reference.
If you are working with young learners and you have been running out of ideas, I suggest you take a look at the blog:
http://teachyounglearners.blogspot.com/

Dear followers,
Have a successful week at work (or whatever that is you are occupied with at the moment) and please feel free to post comments on the blog, and especially to share useful ideas, links, personal experiences, etc.

How to deal with challenging learners?

Hello everyone.
I'd like to direct you to something very useful my good friend and colleague, Vesna Dejić, recently posted on her blog (her blog is also related to teaching English).
Recently she attended a webinar on dealing with challenging learners and she summed it up in a blog post.
Personally, I find the post really helpful, and will try and incorporate the tips from it in my teaching as soon as I start teaching once again.

As you all know, there is an ever growing number of challenging learners. We, as public school teachers, have a duty of finding a way to deal with such learners. It is our job to provoke and boost their interest for learning English.

Here's the link to the post:
http://vesna-blogforenglishlanguageteachers.blogspot.com/2012/03/dealing-with-challenging-learners.html

I am sure you'll find this blog post (and the entire blog) useful and interesting in many ways.

Never is too late, I guess?

Wow, it's Sunday already!

This has been the final week of my substitute teaching at this school.

It's such a shame I managed to dig out a few amazing articles, along with some useful pieces of advice just this week.

Still, never is too late. Right?

Actually, now that I have the experience and have read something on the topic, I'm ready to move on. I've just realized that I'm no longer a complete novice at this profession. I have gained some incredibly invaluable experience through hard work and practice. At the same time, I've come to realize how we have so much to more to learn and work toward after we graduate. The moment we get the degree, it's only the beginning of the whole thing...

And when it comes to the experience I've gained here, I know there have been many great classes, and not so great classes here and there. There were days when I was brilliant, and others when I would simply wait for the classes to end and go home, and sleep... There were some sleepless nights, dilemmas, worries. But most days I truly felt great about what I do.

From what I've been through, I now see that being a public school teacher is extremely demanding and highly rewarding profession. A dream job most days, and a living torture sometimes.

When it comes to the age group I've been teaching (first- to fourth-graders), I've come to realize that it's not that hard to teach this age group (in terms of knowledge and curricula), but it's hard to keep them interested, concentrated and focused, amused and engaged. They have hard time staying focused, and get easily distracted. Sometimes you feel like a clown or an entertainer, and it's a part of the job description, no doubt.

For me, it is a bit tricky that I have had very little contact with young children. Only now have I actually got to know how they think and what they are like, and I'm truly thankful for that.

I must say most of the children are not that difficult to work with. Some are quite specific and at times even annoying, but the majority of them are simply adorable.

I know I'm going to miss the children, and think about them from time to time. I guess that's normal.

I hope I've contributed at least a bit to the children's love for English and that they have more will to learn it.

You know how people usually say, children get to love the school subject if they like the teacher.
By the way, do you think this is true?

...

Instead of going on about my teaching practice and how I feel right now, I'm sharing these great links I've been recommended in a Facebook group, by a university professor (and a methodologists of teaching English to young learners) at the Faculty of Teachers' Education in Jagodina.

• Crazy Animals And Other Activities for Teaching English to Young Learners

• Ten Helpful Ideas for Teaching English to Young Learners

• The challenge of teaching children

Have a lovely Sunday; and enjoy the lovely spring weather.
Oh, and don't forget to set your clocks and watches forward one hour ahead!

And one more thing, did you happen to read something on the topic, and what do you think about these links?

Substitute teaching -- something new, something old, something borrowed

I've accidentally found this Top 25 Substitute Teaching Blogs list and some of the blogs I like very much.

For instance, there is a very interesting blog called Substitutes, FTW! Teaching Tips, Classroom Experiences and Lesson Plan Ideas with a few especially useful posts, such as

Classroom Management: Kids Asking Too Many Questions?
Here I like this suggestion:
"As the book describes, "sweeping" should go like this:  when you assign seatwork, let them know exactly what you want to see as soon as they get started.  For instance,  "I am passing out your worksheet now.  I need to see three things as I come around:  a sharpened pencil, your history book opened to page 74, and you silently reading."  For some classrooms, it may be a good idea to write the "initial sweep tasks" on the board so they can see it, or have them repeat them."

And there is this incredibly interesting post on Mystery Motivators for Classroom Management.

Oh, and the same substitute teacher-blogger offers an interesting sollution for the seating arrangement, as well.
I must say I've solved this problem by making nametags for my students. I've printed the tags and distributed them as soon as I started working at this school. But, the problem with the tags is that quite often a number of students forget their tags, and then I have to improvise on the go. Anyway, by now, I somehow managed to memorize most of the names.

In the meantime, I'll try to find this book: Every Teacher's Guide to Classroom Management, because it would really be highly helpful to me, a novice substitute teacher.

It ain't easy being a novice

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So far, this has been a really busy week. So many obligations at work, and with the exam period at my Masters studies approaching, it's starting to be extremely demanding.

Not to mention that as a complete novice, it takes quite a lot time to prepare for each and every class.
Oh, and there is also a problem with a mild epidemic of cold, or flu: each day a number of children misses a class, and it's really hard to catch up with this. (Or it's just me?)
...
I don't know how things are at your school, but I've noticed that children are much easier to work with when we are in the morning shift. That's what I've been told. My colleagues at work, their teachers, told me that right at the beginning. And when we're in the afternoon shift, children tend to be much more lively, and sometimes almost unbearable.
...
Tell me, how do you cope with such problems at work?
Is it just me, a fairly inexperienced novice, or is teaching really a highly demanding profession?

Still, most of the time I enjoy working as an elementary school teacher, while a few times it feels like the worst job on the planet.

However, for me, things are going to change soon. Namely, I'm working at this school until March 23, because the teacher I have been substituting is about to end her maternity leave.
And one thing is certain: that's going to be a huge change. I'm going to miss the children.
When I think about it, I'm already a bit sad....