In my experience, the majority of online teachers are guiding children and young people between the ages of 8 and 15, and so have access to many resources for curriculum, experienced advice and support. Broadly speaking, online teachers are walking the same path of uncountable traditional teachers and any difficulties can be traced to the added element of the technology involved. However, even experienced and confident online teachers must sometimes work with students who don’t fit the typical mold, and those unique challenges require specific and practical online teaching strategies.
These particular strategies focus on the ESL learner, but creative teachers should be able to adapt them to science, math and other subjects.
Table of Contents
Young and New Learners
Students with zero experience or exposure to English are a particularly challenging group, one with which I have little personal experience because I don’t have the courage/energy to face them. I can nurture a seedling, but I don’t have the skills to sprout one. Consequently, these practical online teaching strategies and tips are from colleagues and resources I’ve consulted.
Anyone who has experience with young children can attest to their limited attention span. For this reason, it is advised to keep lessons short – less than 30 minutes – and to vary the activities often. Be hyper-engaging; don’t try to lecture. You will also benefit from having a parent or older sibling present to explain your instructions and to refocus the student when they inevitably drift away. Do not be shy to share apps or activities with parents to practice with the young learner when they are not in class.
Both older new students and the little ones should respond well lessons rooted in realia. Integrate the words you are teaching with physical movements or physical objects. Repetition during classes and review in subsequent classes (through games, drawing exercises, free chat, etc.) are key.
Get them moving
A song like “Heads and Shoulders” is great to both teach basic body vocabulary and introduce a fun physical intermission in the lesson, but it has limited potential. Much more adaptable to learning basic nouns and verbs is the “Simon Says” game. No matter what your go-to songs or games are, it’s good to get students moving and interacting with the world that their new language describes.
Drawing is more than fun
Another means to unite language with physical activity is to play drawing games. A game like “Picture It” (where you say a word and the student draws a picture) is great for everything from basic shapes to animals, family members, foods, machines and more. A game like “I Draw, You Guess” (teacher slowly draws a picture and the student tries guess the object before the drawing is complete) gets students to draw deeply on their vocabulary. Drawing games are usually easy and fun to flip, too.
Language is for stories
Learners don’t need to do all the hard work in class. Sometimes passively listening and responding to questions is a wonderful way to focus attention and settle things down. Level-appropriate stories allow your learners to practice their listening and comprehension skills, and questions about the text and the pictures engage their interaction and production muscles.
Show and tell
An age-old means of sparking the student’s interest and excitement, keeping the environment safe and familiar, and exercising their vocabulary and production abilities is a show-and-tell session. Young students can bring toys, artwork, even talents or skills to the camera. Older learners might share projects, homework, photos and so on.
Find and show
Similar to show and tell, a game of find-and-show trains learner’s listening and comprehension as well as gets them moving and uniting language with realia. Asking a student to get up from the desk and find something that exemplifies your word is an activity that can be used for simple vocabulary (show me something pink / small / heavy / long / round) or adapted to the abstract (show me something yummy / that makes you happy / that is alive / comes from nature). There’s no reason not to ask for items that exhibit two or more properties as the student advances.
Secondary School and Adult Learners
Generally, this group of learners is more motivated because they have specific goals and are often investing their own money. Curriculum can be targeted to their needs and they are more amenable to extra-curricular work. They might even insist on it. General reading and vocabulary are less of a concern while pronunciation, listening and occupation-specific language (essays, reports, presentations, jargon, etc.) come to the fore.
Don’t forget that these students are likely more comfortable using technology and performing research, so take advantage of this to facilitate autonomous learning opportunities.
Learning from each other
Students who have already had English instruction in school or are using English at work will undoubtedly have resources that they have used and valued in the past. Apps, web sites, podcasts, videos are all fair game for this exercise. Have the students share their resources with their classmates (or you) and everyone agrees to try out one unfamiliar resource for a week. At the end of the week, all will report on what they used and assess its value and features. This exercise can be repeated over several weeks.
Weekly news bulletin
Compose a brief newsletter highlighting or summarizing an international, national and local news story. Share it with your students by email and then nominate one class member each week to produce a new weekly bulletin using your original as a model. Students will get practice in reading and digesting news stories, summarizing them and composing a “report”, critiquing the work of others, as well as getting an exposure to the world around them.
Model answers
Most learners, especially mature learners, will benefit from learning by example. A straightforward exercise would be to assign a short text to read along with some comprehension questions. Students submit their responses to you, and then you provide your own model answers. Have the students revise their own work as necessary and resubmit their work. This takes a lot of effort out of proofing and correcting student work and enables students to absorb and implement high caliber principles of analysis and response.
Presentation time
Who doesn’t love standing in front of an audience and making a presentation? Almost everybody. Nevertheless, in most secondary classrooms as well as in the corporate world there will be occasions when presenting is unavoidable. Exposure, repetition and familiarity are the only means (that I know) to make this situation less stressful. Happily, you have created a safe and comfortable online class environment and your students can use technology to illustrate their ideas and understanding. Using Google Slides, MS Powerpoint or LibreOffice Impress ask your learners to create a short presentation about a recent lesson demonstrating their comprehension and share it with the class, ideally in a synchronous setting.
Keeping it social
Students in this age group almost certainly have had log exposure to social media and messaging apps, so don’t be afraid to include them in your toolbox. Making a private group available through Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat or others can encourage your students interact, share moments and links, discuss events, and collaborate on classwork.
Low(er)-Tech Environments
As mentioned in a previous primer about preparing for some initial challenges when teaching online, not all students have unlimited access to a high-bandwidth connection. Students may have irregular or unreliable connections, or their connection may be limited in data transfer speeds. In these situations, asynchronous learning may be your lot but don’t despair. There are many ways for you to make this work. These are just two examples.
Audio or video recording
Pre-recording a lesson, while not ideal, is definitely do-able. What is important is test and guide your student’s understanding of your lesson by requiring an audio or video recording in response as homework. You could require them to submit questions about the lesson, to explain what they learned, to model your recording with one of their own, or to produce a completely original recording related to the subject of the lesson. Recordings can be shared though online folders such as Dropbox or Google Drive.
Chain story, aka “Consequences”
Remember email? For a great many people on the planet it remains a primary communication tool (like a pencil). Having your students play a game of Consequences by email is a fine way to get them to practice reading, comprehension, and composition as a fun activity. You start by emailing the first paragraph of a level-appropriate story to one student, and they add their own paragraph to continue the story. The composition is passed on to the next student, with each student contributing their own paragraph. In the end you might have students critique and make corrections as a group, or discuss the story on a private online forum.
Teaching is a constantly challenging (and humbling) profession, and there are certain teaching scenarios that offer more challenges than others. Regardless, we are fortunate to live in a time where we can easily access practical online teaching strategies, training and support to help us adapt to our own challenges. Never be reluctant to reach out and explore.
References and Further Reading
Recognizing Initial Online Teaching Challenges
https://indieteach.com/online-education/982/primer-online-teaching-challenges/
10 Tips for Effective Online Discussions
https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2018/11/10-tips-for-effective-online-discussions
5 ways to enhance your social presence in online courses
http://www.emoderationskills.com/5-ways-to-enhance-your-social-presence-in-online-courses/
Teaching Online Focus Paper
Nicky Hockley, Oxford University Press
Images by
Rohit Farmer on Unsplash
Wes Hicks on Unsplash
Nail Gilfanov on Unsplash
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