12 Tips For Teaching K-12 Students

It's not easy to teach the K-12 children nowadays, "how can I better teach them?" This maybe a common question from many teachers and parents all over the world. Here are some tips that you may find useful...

1.) Building up of discipline control:

Even when you are teaching very small children, you also have to have a certain degree of discipline control, don't bother to make use of L1 (mother tongue) to explain in details the expectations that you have on them.

2.) Be patient, and set realistic goals for students

Don't expect that the children will have a very significant improvement after taking your lessons, because the learning and mastering of language requires time and efforts.

3.) Create your own pedagogic style

Do not stick to one method, even if it's proven to work well, try to experiment the use of other methods/ways of teaching, the children like varieties.

4.) Start by showing the objectives of the lesson

In short phrases, tell the students what are the main objectives of the lesson, and have them repeat after you. That should serve as an introduction at the very beginning of every lesson.

5.) Ask them questions from time to time

Asking questions is a good way to check whether the students can really follow what you say, and remember to ask every student at least one question per lesson, do not miss out any students.

6.) Create Student-Centred Learning Opportunities

Let the students take the lead and have yourself be the facilitator of the lessons. Through group works and independent research tasks etc., students can become more independent learners, and they would enjoy this mode of teaching and learning way more than the traditional teacher-centred mode.

7.) Don't give up on the problematic students

Don't panic when you are dealing with students' behavioural issues, they do happen, and they happen for every single lesson; don't give up on students, because bits by bits, you can change their lives in a remarkable way.

8.) Integrate multiple materials to develop a more suitable curriculum

The course book is a good resource, but do not over-rely on it, try to look for suitable materials through different channels and integrate them into your own curriculum.

9.) Fun-learning through games

Make use of more games to train (for the language subjects,) the 4 language modalities of children, i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking, and there are so many different games that aim at developing different skills of students. Many researchers have pointed out that It's through fun learning that can make students grasp the most out of the lessons.

10.) Dare to improvise and come up with something new

It's good to prepare for the lessons and come up with a lesson plan, but don't stick to that, dare to take the 'offers' from students and start improvising, you may end up with something great that you haven't anticipated beforehand.

11.) Do not correct students' mistakes straight away

When a student makes a mistake, let him/her think for a while first, if he/she still cannot think of a correct answer, it's good to ask other students to guide the classmate and help to reach the answer together. This peer-learning mode works quite well in many classes and has shown a positive effect on enhancing students' learning motivation and outcome in class.

12.) Allocate some time for doing wrap-ups

For every lesson, the teachers should some key message/knowledge that they want the students to take home with. Why not spare 5-10 minutes and have the students conclude what they have learnt from the lesson so that you can know whether they have met your expectations/learning goals.