Top Tips for the Classroom for Newly Qualified Teachers

If you are an experienced teacher, what tips would you give someone new to the ‘chalk-face’?  Here I’ve listed five tips that have helped me over my 20-year teaching career.  Have a look – do you agree or disagree? What would you add?

1          Make a good first impression

We are fortunate in the TEFL world that we mostly deal with students who are motivated and receptive.  I’m probably not alone in adopting a ‘TV game-show host’ persona when entering a language school classroom.  Basically, the adage ‘be firm but fair’ has served me well with lessons usually created to be as much student-centered fun as possible. However, it definitely depends on the environment.  With younger students in a language school or high school we might adopt a different approach; I once taught at a high school for boys in the Gulf with classes of 40 students.  Before my first class a Syrian colleague of mine advised me not to smile for the first month – to this day I am grateful to him as it set the tone for my classes for the next two years,  Due to some quirk in human nature, the students became eager to impress me and get on my good side (there must be shelves of studies on this phenomenon).  Almost half of my British colleagues left during the first year of the contract due to student behavioral problems…

2          Create a bank of materials     

If you use some new material in class and it works well – save and file it for future lessons.  It sounds obvious, but sometimes in our rush to get out of the class or when we move on to another school, we sometimes throw away piles of papers including great lesson activities.  Just take a moment to copy/scan the activity and file it under level and lesson aim - that bank of materials you’ve amassed means that you can go out and enjoy your new environment rather than prepping for the next day’s class.

3          Always be prepared

Always be prepared for your next day’s class before you leave school.  If you are, then you will be able to enjoy a relaxing evening without the anxiety that can creep up on you throughout the evening/night fretting about whether you’ll have enough time to prepare in the morning, be late for school, or wondering if the photocopier will be free. By the way, your preparation should always include a back-up activity just in case your class fly through the lesson or your higher-level students are twiddling their thumbs because they finish everything in a blink of an eye.

4          Don’t worry if you have a bad lesson

Every teacher has a bad lesson.  This can be due to a wide range of factors which have no bearing on your teaching skills.  Or it could be due to you trying out a new activity which hasn’t quite worked in its current form and needs tweaking; good for you for trying to make your lessons fun and interesting.  Don’t let it get you down, just think about what didn’t work and why and then adapt the lesson for then next time. 

5          Remember your students’ names

It seems a minor point, but remember how good you felt when your teacher addressed you by your name?  In the next blog we’ll outline some easy ways to remember all your students’ names.