Preparing To Teach Children- A CELTYL or Cambridge YL Extention to CELTA Pre-Reading Guide

If you are already teaching EFL to kids, then obviously the more things you can try out in class before the course the better. If not, you will certainly learn enough activities and see enough material to keep you going for years, so at this stage it is probably more worthwhile thinking about children in a more theoretical way. Alternatively, there are many activities that are most useful (or even necessary) with children but which can also be a lot of fun and very useful with adults, which you can experiment now. If you are working with (or have) children but not yet teaching kids’ EFL, there are many activities in the books below which are fun and educational even for native speaker kids.

The ‘theory’
Books such as “Very Young Learners” start with the differences between adults and children as learners, giving a sound background for the practical ideas that come later in the books and that you will be seeing and trying out in your course.

The practice
Things you might want to experiment with your adult or children’s classes are:
-Music and songs
-Video
-TPR
-Jazz chants
Although ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ and Sesame Street are probably not suitable for a business class, the books Using Authentic Video and Music and Songs are full of ideas that can be used with all kinds of classes. Jazz chants can take a bit more determination to introduce to a adult’s class, but are a great, fun way of practising rhythm and stress.

You might also want to search out Beginner level classes, as the need for body language and simple explanations is great practise for children’s classes. The book Beginners is full of great advice suitable for both children’s and adult class. The final thing which is hopefully not going to be as much as an issue in adult classes as kids classes is discipline, but the book Classroom Dynamics ties discipline in with ideas such as making a class ‘bond’, and is simply one of the most inspiring EFL books for any teacher or class.