Young learner classes at our school are mostly organised by age. This means there can be quite a range of abilities, and differentiation* is an important part of planning. I generally find that our materials can be a bit on the tough side for my class, so I’m used to providing more support rather than extension tasks.
Here’s an example of how I supported my young learners in class last week. We were studying celebrations. I produced lots of short reading texts about different festivals/events and displayed these around the room. I’d made a couple of words in each text bold. Students did a vocabulary matching task, here’s part of it…
Note the HELP box. If students felt they needed more help they could move the box. There was a clue underneath telling them which text the word appeared in (e.g. ‘Text A’). This meant their choice was narrowed down to two words.
Tags: British Council Bangkok • CELTA YL • Differentiation • ELT • General • lesson ideas • Self awareness • tefl • the British Council • Young Learners