1. Remember, you are their teacher and not their friend – young learners (particularly those from different educational systems) have certain expectations and boundaries about your role as their teacher.  Not every young learner is comfortable being ‘mates’ with their teacher.  It doesn’t mean you’re serious all the time, but it is good to be aware of the cultural differences that exist.   

2. If your school allows it, come prepared with a class set of stationary (i.e. coloured markers, glue, scissors, rubbers etc.) in a big tub to encourage affective skills like sharing, cooperation and being responsible for stuff that’s belongs to everyone. 

3. I have found that playing children’s music in the background helps foster a calmer atmosphere for the class to work in.  Often the students learn the song just through listening. 

4. Read to your students.  A regular event like “story time” helps young learners to focus on the story.  Sometimes I use the actual texts from their books.  If the story wasn’t very interesting then I tried to find a way to make it interesting.  Other times I read from an actual children’s book depending on the level of the class.

1. Having a model (i.e. sentence, paragraph,) for students to refer back to is very important.  It’ll enable them to gauge their own learning to what they’re trying to achieve.

2. Keeping a record of new phrases and vocabulary in a separate notebook to their work is a good way to promote autonomous learning by having students actively choosing new words and phrases to learn. 

3. Encourage students to own an English-to-English dictionary.  This is very important if they want to improve their comprehension skills. 

4. Encourage students to watch English language films and TV with the ENGLISH subtitles on instead of subtitles in their own language. 

5. Get your students reading!  Newspapers, advertisements, internet websites – anything.  It you can get your hands on simplified versions of English literature (i.e. Wilde, Bronte, even Shakespeare!) to give to your students to read, all the better!