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Make teaching fun when following a syllabus

kid looking bored with textbook need to make teaching fun

Do you want to make teaching fun and liven up your English classes, but you can’t because you are stuck with following a syllabus? You might be following a set curriculum and only have 1 hour a week. There’s no time for any games! You are not alone, many teachers follow a syllabus, which is a huge help to a teacher. Imagine if you had to think up every lesson from scratch? The textbook creators have spent months working on these books, ensuring progression is gradual, and all the basics are covered. So having a textbook is a time-saver for you.

Make teaching fun with games!

My ESL games are perfect for use alongside any syllabus or textbook. First, look at the new vocabulary and grammar in the upcoming unit in your book. Notice also any revision. Those words and structures will be what you work on using games.

Introduce new English with listening games

Here’s how I proceed in a typical lesson. I usually start by teaching something new when the children are fresh. First, I use some listening games to introduce new vocabulary or new grammar. I never overwhelm pupils by introducing new vocab and grammar together; it’s one or the other. Students hear the new language repeatedly during the listening game(s). During this time, they memorize the meaning and hear the pronunciation.

Progress to speaking

Then move on to speaking games where students have a chance to try these words out for themselves. These would be easy speaking drills that are disguised as games. Through repetition, students remember.

Disguise language drills as games.

Consolidate with reading and writing games

So, now you open up your textbook and read the unit. You can also play reading games at this point, where kids race to find target words or grammar in the text from your book.

And finally, complete any writing tasks for consolidation. There are writing games which are more effective than gap-fills and many textbook writing tasks.

Great results and motivated kids

The result of making teaching fun is that pupils will learn the stuff in the unit. Usually, when kids sit there and follow a textbook for an hour, it goes in one ear and out the other. I’ve met so many children at the start of secondary school in France who can just about say, “My name is Sylvie, I live in Saint Denis, I ‘ave a dog,” and that’s about it! Then you find out they have been learning English several hours a week for SEVEN years, and you wonder how they can know so little. It’s frankly an achievement to teach in a way that the children are literally prevented from learning anything!!

So please give my games a go. Please ask your question in the comments below or email me for help anytime. If you have a big class, then be careful to keep noise and excitement to acceptable levels. My books have calm games as well as handy classroom management tips. Giving fun lessons is harder work for the teacher in that it requires more energy, BUT the results are so much better and the pupils so much more motivated that the pleasure gained more than outweighs the extra effort required.

Fun teaching resources to liven up any syllabus

You can check out my games books here in download, and here in paperback.

And email me for help anytime!

Kind regards

Shelley Ann Vernon

Great resources to make teaching fun!

5 thoughts on “Make teaching fun when following a syllabus”

  1. Your ideas are always exellent. Some of them helped me to involve my pupils to the process and made my lessons fun. Thank you so much! And I would like some more games for free, because I have no account.

  2. Thanks a lot, Ms. Shelly!
    I really appreciate your teaching tips though I may not always tell it. God bless you more with brilliant wisdom in educating teachers and learners!

    Sha

  3. Domingo Meza Díaz

    Hi Ms. Vernon. I am an English teacher in Spanish population in Colombia. I teach in academic programs of Education for work and Human Development for technical level. I design English classes in two ways: the general English (reading, writing, speaking, listening, grammar, vocabulary, etc); and the English classes aimed to specific purposes of each subject or academic program. What do you recommend to me for teaching these two ways of learning ? Could you please help me with some links about, or colleagues are teaching this kind of English? Thanks. Kind regards Domingo Meza.

    1. Hello Domingo, Thanks for your question. For the general English classes follow a textbook so you have a curriculum that someone else has spent hours putting together. To make the textbook interesting to teach, I suggest one or two of my games book. I have an excellent one for teens and adults. For primary school children I have a curriculum of stories for beginners, with lesson plans and flashcards. Why don’t you drop me a line by email, with details of your classes: age, class size, level. I’ll send you some activities and stories to try.

      info @ teachingenglishgames dot com. (no spaces)

    2. Hello again Domingo, For this part of your teaching: “English classes aimed to specific purposes of each subject or academic program”. Could you please give me some examples? Is this literature, or history…or other topics? LLooking forward to hearing from you again soon. Shelley Ann Vernon

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