Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Guyuefeng Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Zhuzhou Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
In the TEFL course, I've learned about teaching materials among other things, and how to create them. The course has given me many practical ideas for my lessons. My experience. I have some teaching experience, both with children and adults. I often prepare the materials for my lessons byn myself. As a missionary, I don't know where they will send me to work. One question on the application asks, my ability to "work creatively with limited or no resources." To prepare for this, I'm trying to get used to create the materials using what's at hand. Things I've made for my lessons are, for example: -Flashcards, to learn/review new vocabulary (eg jobs, animals, etc.) Pictures to show the students; they have to describe it (eg a small town, a busy city, the countryside, etc.) I've made these things byu cutting out pictures from magazine, flyers, etc. -Bingo games to practice numbers. ID cards to fill out with the student's name and nationality. Role-play cards, to practice real-life situations (for example booking a room at a hotel, sending a parcel at the post office, and others.) Sentence building bricks, to practice grammar. All of these, using only pen and paper. -Real objects to learn new vocabulary. For example, showing the students bags, pens, chairs, tables etc that you can see around you in the classroom. Bringing things from home, to show the students. For example, I've brought a hairbrush, rice grains, a scarf, etc. - Colors: show colors around you. Also, you can take paper, cloth, other things of different colors, to show the students. -Drawing on the board. Sometimes, I create wordsearch puzzles using a website. However, I don't use the computer very much. I prefer to prepare the materials for my lessons personally. What I've learned in the course. Here are some things I've learned in the TEFL course, about creating materials: -Personalize, to match the student's interests. For example, one of my students wanted to know about vacations. Beginner level. Therefore, I prepared for her a simple lesson about basic vacation vocabulay, eg beach, sea, resort, camping, etc. -About limited resources: Unit 3, "Limiting factors." I may not have all the resources I need to teach. The course gives an advice: to "get to know the administration staff of the school, the secretaries and so on." They will help me to get the resources I need. -Unit 4, "Non-authentic materials." Before you start to create the materials for your lesson, you need to know things like: what the language point is (for example, exercises for the verb "to be", flashcards for animals vocabulary, etc.) and the stage (engage, study...) I need to know if the students are going to work in pairs, groups. How are you going to demonstrate the activity. I've also learned that, with young children (5-9 years old), the lessons should be more practical, the activities shorter, more movement, drawing to reinforce the day's lessons, singing, pretending, etc. Whereas, with the older children (9-13 years old), the lessons should include more games, talking with peers, less movement, longer activities, no "pretending", more abstract concepts, etc. All these things need to be taken intoo account, when we prepare the materials for the lessons.
