With pre-school or lower-primary children, setting up a classroom routine is as important as any other element of your class. for more info https://kalvischools.com/

2.  With pre-school or lower-primary children, setting up a
classroom routine is as important as any other element of your
class. Once routines are carefully established, children know
what we expect of them. A well-chosen routine can save
valuable class time, help with discipline, and allow you to spend
more time on meaningful instruction.
 It’s important to establish a clear routine from Day 1. Simple
routines like a Hello and a Goodbye song to mark the start and
end of English time, and different ways of controlling transitions
between activities like using songs or chants to signal a change
from story time to table-time are important in pre-school and
early primary classes. Younger children love it when their lives
are predictable. The best way to capitalize on this is to build a
routine into your classes, making life easier for you too.

3.  The reason why children at this stage love routines is because
they do not have a developed concept of time and they measure
their time in school by the activities they do at set times in the
school day.
 With older children you might have a lesson negotiating
classroom rules where they volunteer behaviors which they
think will help to make the classroom a happier place and to
help them get the most out of lessons. You will often be
impressed and surprised with some of their ideas; like treating
each other with respect, always doing their best work and
handing homework in on time! You can then make a list of their
rules and even get everyone, including you, to sign it. Make
photocopies of the list for everyone to stick inside their books
and you can enlarge it to display somewhere in the classroom.

4.  Although chocolate is delicious and many of us could happily eat it
every day, we would soon become bored with a diet of chocolate.
Why? Because it would no longer be a novelty. We would actually start
to feel sick of it! The same can true of any classroom activity. A favorite
activity can be fun and educational, but if we do it in the same way
every day and only do that type of activity, it can become boring. We
know that different children learn in different ways and that different
activities cater for their needs in English. Stories provide children with
input, as do songs, rhymes and chants. Play, drama and well-chosen
games help them internalize language and use it to communicate.
However, there are many other activities children enjoy that help them
learn language and we should exploit them to full advantage.
 While making things, children also make meaning. As they explore
shapes, colors, textures, constructions, they are extending their
experience and understanding of the world.

5.  Creating fun in the classroom does not mean that the
children have to be on the go constantly or that you, the
teacher, have to be the all singing all dancing entertainer.
Fun can be created in many ways – singing, stories,
quizzes, chants, games, acting out… The list is endless.
Believe it or not, one of the students’ favorite games is the
List Game, where they choose 6 topics, which the teacher
writes on the board and number from one to six, each
number corresponding to the sides of a dice. The children
get into teams. One team throws the dice and all the
teams have 3 minutes to write a list of words from that
topic. They have as much fun with this game as with a
running dictation.

6.  While it’s important to make learning fun for young
learners, in the limited amount of time we have for English,
we need to make sure that there is what is called as
language pay-off in every activity. When preparing a game
or any other activity, it is important to be clear about the
language and learning objectives. We can sometimes get
carried away when we see our students having fun,
however we must be sure that there is enough language
learning going on to justify the activity.
 Monitoring is most important during communicative group
activities. Children find an award very motivational, e.g. a
gold star for the table using the most English, or you could
give the table not using enough English an Untrophy.

7.  The dictionary defines music as an “art of sound in time that expresses
ideas and emotions through elements of rhythm, melody, harmony and
color.
 Music has unique qualities and a well-chosen song or piece of music
can provide language learning benefits from Pre-Primary all the way
up to the end of Primary, providing the children with useful language
input that can be fun at the same time. If the children leave your
classroom singing an English song in their head they will carry it with
them all day and at home too, something Tim Murphy referred to as S-
S-I-T-H-P – Song Stuck in the Head Phenomenon.
 As teachers, we can also rest assured that by using music, song,
movement, and all the other activities involved in the musical process,
we are addressing most (if not all) the Basic Skills and Key
competences.
 Remember that, of the many factors that influence learning, few are
as far-reaching – or little understood – as sound and music.

8.  To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to
understand.
 One thing the children really like is when you
sometimes let them choose the order of your class.
I tell them what we are going to do but ask them
what they would like to come first, second, etc. I
don’t do this too often or it is no longer a surprise!
 Turn song time into a karaoke competition.
 Bring props for your story and hide them in a bag,
inviting different children to feel and guess what’s
inside and then using them to act out the story.

9.  Present a song as a letter to the children. Let them
read and work on the letter, asking who they think
sent it, whether they are happy, sad, etc. Then
surprise them by playing the song at the end. Try
the Beatles ‘Love me do’ as a Valentine’s letter or
Louis Armstrong’s ‘Wonderful world’ for Peace Day
– but remember you can only do this once or twice
in a year or it will no longer be a surprise!
 Try doing even the most familiar things in a different
way. Instead of making a list of words, let them
create a mind map.

10.  When the children write sentences encourage them to do
color parsing, for example using the colors of traffic lights,
writing the pronoun in red, the verb in yellow and the noun
in green. This will make the sentence more memorable
and can help with corrections. Instead of referring to
nouns, verbs, etc, you could say for example; “The red
words are he/she and it. Have a look at your yellow words.
What’s missing? Good, the ‘s’.”
 Don’t always ask the children to write on a blank page but
instead investigate the use of graphic organizers.
 Let them present their writing in the form of a shaped
book, for example, or write their food poem on a paper
plate.

11.  We all like positive feedback and respond well
to recognition of a job well done. Most small
children want to please their teachers and love
any positive attention you show them. Try to
praise the children for any effort on their part,
whether it is using English or being the first to
follow one of your instructions. Praise good
behavior and you will find many of the children
trying to copy.
 Know that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did, but people will
never forget how you made them feel.

12.  Teachers often feel that they are at times obsessed by
testing children. Try to view tests as just part of the
teaching and learning process, as you need to be
regularly, but not constantly, assessing the children’s
progress in order to make sure you are catering to their
educational needs. However, a quick rule of thumb over
testing is that a test needs to be valid. This means that we
should test what the children have learnt. We also need to
take care over how they have learnt it. You may think this
is obvious but we should not use a new activity type in a
test. I saw a teacher give the children a dictation in a test
when they had never done one in class!

13.  It can be difficult to remain enthusiastic all the
time but when a teacher enters the class
smiling and seems enthusiastic about an
activity they are presenting, they will find it
much easier to captivate their class. Hiding your
flashcards in a bag, peeping inside and asking
the children to guess what is inside will get their
attention a lot quicker than putting up the
flashcards and getting them to repeat the
words. That element of surprise adds to their
enthusiasm.

14.  Update your skills: from time to time sign up for some training.
It’s always good to feel what it’s like to be a student again. You
can learn so many new things in one day and maybe a speaker
will remind you of an activity you already knew but haven’t used
in a while. You can even try to use sessions you don’t
particularly like as a learning experience to realize what some
students in your class may be feeling if you haven’t made your
class fun, relevant or interesting to them.
 Remember also to make sure that you have some YOU time
outside school. As the old saying goes “a little bit of what you
fancy does you good”. Whether it’s taking your own children to
the park and having fun, going swimming, texting a friend or
skiing down a mountain, you need to have a rest for your own
sanity.

15. Kalvi International Public School
134, A R Hospital Road,
KK Nagar,
Madurai – 625020
Email ID: helpdesk@kalvigroup.com
Website: https://kalvischools.com/
Ph no: +91-9500710004