Course Content

As you may know, the CELTA course was originally aimed at teaching adults. Most of the skills are easily transferrable to YLs (younger learners), but it is great to also get specific techniques for children. If you are about to go into the energetic world of teaching YLs you need to be equipped with a teaching toolbox of techniques, ideas and activities to make the lessons as rewarding as possible.

This two-day introduction course offers CPs (course participants) a clear structure of how to manage the YL classroom, set up activities, engage learners, get students talking and deal with common problems.  Every session is extremely practical with CPs receiving session notes and activities to take-away.

The sessions include:

1. Speaking activities for YLs: Unlike adults who are motivated to speak and use English, YLs tend not to speak in English for the sake of it. This means that a good YL teacher needs a lot of strategies and techniques to not only motivate YLs to speak in English but also to develop their speaking skills. This session looks at the skills needed and also provides CPs with useful ideas for speaking activities.
2. Classroom management: Maintaining discipline and getting students’ attention are probably the most important areas of YL classroom management, and something many teachers are worried about! This session looks at how various ages of YL are different from each other and how, based on that, the YL classroom should be managed to maintain engagement. Lots of useful tips and techniques here!
3. Using songs in the classroom: This session consists of a demo lesson to give you an example of an online YL class and demonstrates how the classroom management techniques discussed in the previous session could be used. It also looks at using songs and stories in the lesson, and how it could be made more engaging.
4. Teaching vocabulary: This is a very practical session with plenty of ideas for activities to be used online and offline when teaching and revising vocabulary.
5. Teaching grammar: The standard techniques of teaching grammar that you might have learned on your CELTA do not apply to teaching young learners – in this session, we’ll look at why and what they can be substituted with. There will also be ideas of practice tasks that would engage YLs.
6. Dealing with problems: The final session on the course that summarizes previously covered information and gives you a chance to see once again how it can be applied to practice. We will look at common issues that teachers experience when teaching YLs and discuss solutions.