infantil & primaria Pedagogy

If you are excited and passionate about what you are teaching, your students will (likely) be (more) excited about learning whatever it is you are teaching. This is especially true in infantil; students will light up the moment you start to be enthusiastic about something. Often all it takes is a good, excited teacher to make a student realize that they are capable of learning in a subject that they had written off for good.

Do not simply stand by the board, rather circulate around the room and move with the students. For younger students, this includes sitting with them at circle time and moving around the classroom during transitions. For older students, do not simply stand at the board if you are lecturing; move closer to and farther away from them and thereby keep their eyes on you. By moving you will make sure that all your students are physically involved in the class.

Start class and end class the same way every day, especially if you have students with special needs. In general, having a routine and making the class predictable (not the activities, but the structure of the class), will help remove anxiety. When there are changes in routine, be explicit about the change and the reason for it. The beginning routine may be as simple as a two-minute “Do-Now” on the board or a quick call-and-response with or without motions (particularly effective for younger students, such as “eyes open, ears open, mouth closed”) or taking out the materials that will be needed for that day’s class. The closing can be going over the homework assigned (even if it was not assigned by you), a quick review of past concepts, or something fun such as a brain teaser or tongue twister.

if your students are upset because they don’t understand or “can’t” do something, offer to help and do not minimize the difficulty. Acknowledge what is frustrating your students, whether it be something directly related to class or something outside of school, and try using the “3 P’s” (see page 52). By modeling such behavior, your students will begin to mimic you and help you create a positive classroom culture.

You are the (assistant) teacher and so you are an authority figure in the classroom. While saying “please” and “thank you” is simply good manners, do not say things such as “can you please just be quiet!” Try saying instead, “use your inside voices” or “this is an independent activity. All your voices should be turned off.” Be calm and direct and do not make it seem like your students’ behaving appropriately is a favor to you.

Instead of telling students to “stop” or to “not,” tell them what they should be doing. For example, instead of saying “stop looking out the window” say “eyes up here.” You can also redirect your students nonverbally by tapping their book where they should be, or catching their eye and making the “shh” motion.

This may seem silly, but it is very effective and helps ensure that there are no misunderstandings. For example, a grantee taught a lesson on following instructions to all of his classes using a PowerPoint with a very specific set of tasks they had to complete on a sheet of paper. His directions were writing a heading (his specific style of heading), skipping 2 lines, copying the sentence “Justin Bieber is the best singer in the world.”, and signing their name at the bottom right. This works wonderfully to establish expectations and/or procedures right at the beginning, and in many classes will work the whole year. You can reward your class with a game if (and when) the entire class follows all of the instructions correctly (even the period placement and capitalization!). Similarly, be specific when you give instructions. Avoid saying things like “answer the questions,” saying instead, “take out a blank piece of paper, number it from 1-5, and answer the questions. You do not need to copy the questions. I will collect your papers at the end of class.” Be sure to model instructions as well, as even specific instructions given slowly may be difficult for students to understand. If your students know exactly what is expected of them, everything will be much more efficient, and your correcting and giving feedback on their work will be much easier.

This will help you to better budget your time and keep you on track with your lesson plans. This will also help make sure that your students do not waste a lot of time during transitions. Moving from rows into groups can be complicated depending on the size and spacing of a classroom, but try to always say “Get into groups of 4; you have 1 minute (or however long makes sense)” instead of “get into groups of 4.” Also remind students when time is almost up instead of when time is up so that they are prepared to finish. If you have access to a projector and a computer, using an online stopwatch can help students adhere to this time limit as well.

If your students are interested in the subject they will pay more attention, and you will create an atmosphere in which your students’ ideas and feelings matter. When assigning research projects , reading assignments,  or writing assignments, allow your students to choose from a few options. Alternatively, you could allow a student to take 5 or 10 minutes every week to teach the class something. Remember that, in general, as long as your students are speaking in English, you will be given a fair amount of flexibility in the activities you plan.

Your students, especially the youngest students in infantil or primaria, need to be physically active and have frequent breaks. By incorporating activities that will have your students stand up and move they will be more on task and be better able to focus. Do not take recess away as a punishment: children need to move in order to be effective learners; chaining them to their desks is counterproductive.

You can use a random number generator, index cards, popsicle sticks, or whatever you see fit. Make sure you explain to your students that you are going to call on them randomly (X amount of times during the period) and that this is to ensure that everyone gets a chance to participate (and stays engaged the entire class period). This method can also give you a more accurate measure of what your students understand and if they have mastered that lesson’s learning objective(s). You can also use this method to set a minimum and maximum number of participations. Each student must participate at least X times but no more than Y times during the class period. This will help balance participation for those classes that have a few students who tend to dominate the conversation.

If your students are yelling, speak quietly and make an effort not to try to scream over them. Similarly, reinforce positive actions – praise students for doing the right thing, whether that be a student working quietly, writing a fantastic position paper/essay, or speaking only in English for an entire activity. Tell them that you are proud of them for helping another student. Praise not only your class, but also individual students. Consider having prizes, such as stickers (especially for younger students) or being the group leader during a collaborative learning activity (especially for older students). By modeling appropriate behavior and reinforcing positive actions, your students will be constantly seeing what the classroom behavioral norms are and will begin adopting them.

For younger students, it may be watching a favorite Peppa Pig video at the end of class; for older students it might be playing hangman for the last 5 minutes. If your students know that they can earn something they want, they will be more motivated to stay on task. Privileges should be granted sparingly, however, and should not be part of the closing routine of your class.

Every teacher has days or classes in which it just seems like everything goes wrong. Raising your voice can be very effective, but only if you do so once or twice during the year, not every day. Resist the urge to yell at or belittle your students. When reading this, we are sure you are shocked by the suggestion, but you are human. Think about how many times you have heard teachers say, “lower your voice, no one wants to hear you!” or, “your parents may accept that behavior, but we don’t do that here.” These statements often slip out and we give them no notice, but they can be very hurtful and rarely serve to correct behavior.

When a rule is broken, calmly remind students of the rule (“We raise our hands in class”) or model the appropriate behavior. Be consistent: if a student is out of warnings, you must react in the same way and with the same consequence for all of them. Never threaten your students, and certainly never threaten with something that you cannot or are unwilling to enforce (i.e. “You’ll have to stay inside for all of recreo!”).