Your Best Way to turn Active Little Monsters in the classroom into Little Angels

One of the most common gripes amongst TEFL teachers is that famous 'problem class'. Every school seems to have one! And yet, sometimes a teacher comes along and actually enjoys teaching them. Of course, no one can understand why they would possibly like those horrible little monsters and naturally assume that the teacher must be crazy or bribing their students somehow.

However, the fact may be that this teacher has just stumbled upon a commonly overlooked area of planning. This area applies specifically to young children, but can also work with older students. Generally most children are not rude, angry, sad or upset at the same time, nor consistently over a period of time. Hence, if a class is an ongoing problem, you need to find something that the students all have in common. This is something I have only recently discovered, although I admit I should have realized far sooner. It is something that I just never really thought about planning specifically for before. This area, the one that most children have in common with each other, is their incredible energy levels. They just seem to have unlimited amounts of energy that far exceeds that of their adult teachers or parents.

By focusing on controlling the energy in your classroom (or home, if you have more that one child), you can completely change your teaching environment. For my own classes, this has led to what was once my DREADED CLASS of the week, turning into an enjoyable class to teach. The core to making you plans work, is to understand that young students find it extremely difficult to sit still and that the longer this is left untreated, the worse their behavior is likely to become.

There are of course different approaches to teaching TEFL. However, as long as you plan to use that 'problem energy' during your class, you should see massive improvements. The ways of using this energy can vary. I sometimes kick off a class with a five minute workout, as not only will this calm the over-active, but it will also wake up the sleepy ones. Other ways are to play games using the subject matter taught that day (active games!), surveys, timed races/challenges, role-play activities (using cards), multiple choice splat activities etc etc. The number of techniques just goes on and on, especially with TEFL teaching. But, so long as you make a point to try and use some of that overabundant energy, you should see improvements in your TEFL classroom, if not actually observe these previous little demons turn into little angels.

So, go on, make them jump into learning!

I hope this helps to change some of your troublesome classes into classes that you actually look forward to teaching. If it helps, please leave me a comment.

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