In the end two students did turn up for their first Advanced lesson and I wasn't expecting them! I have no idea if or when the other 3 will turn up which makes it a bit hard to start the course. Nevermind, they'll all need a bit of time to adjust after spending an English-free summer. I need to try and bridge the gap between FCE and CAE because they are going to find the level of CAE materials quite daunting.
Anyway, today is the second "first day" as I get my other new groups. As I said in an earlier post, with the new 8 year olds I am going to get my fancy dress stuff out (sunglasses, hats) and hope that will make "introductions" a bit more fun. Drilling the same sentences over and over again will surely bore them, so I've decided that each of us (yes, me included) will invent our own new characters with a different name, age, number of brothers and sisters and maybe likes/dislikes, depending on how much the children already know.
The only class that I am slightly nervous about is the group of 4 and 5 year olds as I have now discovered that there will be 11 of them in the class! I am definitely going to have some classroom management issues with such a large number of very small children. I just hope that they don't all start crying! If that was not bad enough, I have also been told that one of the little girls is not yet 4, so that means a 3 year old in with the 5 year olds. Wish me luck, please!
I am going to spend the first lesson on trying to learn their names, as I find this really important with little ones. We will be doing plenty of "Hello-ing" and not much else. The main thing is for them to feel comfortable in new surroundings, with a new teacher, new classmates, and for them to not get frightened or overwhelmed by hearing English. I will be using a puppet, which hopefully they will enjoy.
