854. Fair play in vacation courses



One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “Within a few weeks I start a mini-course of English. The boys will also have other leisure activities: I think excursions, environment-friendly tasks, summer homework, painting, looking after the elderly, typing... It’s a vacation program for kids where they carry on doing educative and useful activities during part of their summer. In this way they don’t lose the good habits they acquired during the academic year.

The classes of English will be fun: kind of practicing speaking by playing games. The kids’ ages will be 9 to 14, in a single group! I presume the atmosphere I’m going to encounter in the classroom will be relaxed, but... kids are playful, jumpy, frisky...; they will put me to the test, likely.

The goal is to carry out games for fostering speaking, and some of them will be taken from post # 259. I’m applying some way of conducting I’ve implemented in past years:

1. I’ll try to stay calm.
2. I’ll learn their names soon – besides this helps to keep discipline.
3. I’ll say clear instructions and wait for their fulfillment.
4. Stop talking when some students are chatting among them.
5. Stare and gaze at those disruptive students.
6. Reckon the things they do well (when someone answers correctly for example), and in this way I’ll reinforce good behavior.

Albeit all these things might give a rather negative view of the classes, as if they were ones for students with many behavior problems, the experience I have from most of past courses is very positive, and we had fun, and we all created a nice rapport, and... the classes were all in English! They were nice times!” / Photo from: indian field-hockey player Dhyan Chand

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