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hello i hope you are having a great day today my name is teacher colleen and welcome to another video this is part of an esl teaching tip series where we talk about skills that you need to become a better teacher today's video is all about engagement how do you get students interested and excited to learn english and want to come back to your class [Music] so as we get started i do want to mention that i have a blog post with more information about engagement in the description box down below as well as my email address and the two esl companies that i personally work for online so if you want any of that information that is there for you let's get started right away talking about engagement how do you get students interested and excited and want to be in your english class so i think there's two broad tips that apply to every student and then i have more specific tips because a four-year-old is different than a 12-year-old so there's different things that are gonna work for them so let's start off with those two broad tips i'm pretty sure you can hear you're gonna be able to hear a little bit of background noise today i'm so sorry if you hear any constructions or dogs where i live is just noisy so we're gonna have to move past that so the two things that can help students is making sure you put the student first and incorporating student choice so talking about that first thing putting the student first of course this sounds so obvious you're the student is who you're teaching of course they come first but sometimes it's easier said than done especially early in the morning you wake up you wanted to start getting started at class you look at the student then you look right down at the slides and start teaching and it's so important to remember look up and observe what's going on with the student how are they reacting to what you're learning today is it too difficult or is it too easy so let's talk about some of the things you might see in your student so maybe it's a little too difficult you might have the student being a little distracted maybe they're looking off to the side because they don't really understand or maybe they are just repeating after you everything you say or maybe they're repeating the question but not answering the question or maybe they are staying silent or have that like deer in the headlights look their lesson is probably a little too difficult or maybe it's not the lesson maybe there's something specifically going on that's too difficult and so as a teacher you need to see those behaviors and be like okay what is it maybe they were reading and they just stopped reading because they didn't know how to pronounce the next word so it's easy you help them pronounce it or maybe it's the sentence structure they don't quite know how to answer the question correctly or maybe there's a comprehension problem they don't understand this word exactly in english yet and so you need to show some examples of how it's used you need to figure out what it is that your student is struggling with and find a way to practice it demonstrate it and help them learn it now this can be the exact opposite when you're watching your student in class maybe you're seeing that it's too easy for them so they might be bored they might be rolling their eyes when they're answering a question they might um be reading really quickly or answering everything really fast before you even answer a question because i just want to get it done because they're bored of this english class and so if you see that happening you're like okay i need to find a way to extend maybe we can add some more vocabulary maybe you can make longer sentences maybe you can i can ask them their opinion about something what they think um it all depends on that student but remember you won't know that your student is bored unless you look up at them and you're observing their behaviors and you're making changes based off of that now let's talk about the next thing that's really important as well which is student choice i find that often these students are young students they've had a whole day of school their parents have made them do all their homework and now they're making them do an english class so they haven't had a choice all day so give them a little choice maybe it's a choice of reward systems offer them do you like this one or this one i actually have a whole video about reward system i'll link it above if you want to check it out because rewards is a great place to add a little bit of student choice or also sometimes maybe asking the student do you want to read part one or do you want to read part two or asking the student about things they like during the lesson i'm like oh do you agree with this or do you not like this you know it can totally depend on the student but finding a way to ask them about their opinion or allow them to choose something about the lesson really helps them be engaged because if they chose a reward they want to get that reward they chose but if you don't give them a choice they're less likely to care about it okay so incorporating those two things observing your students behavior and allowing student choice works for every student but let's talk a little bit about those more age specific things that might depend whether it's a younger or older learner so for those younger learners things that help them get really engaged is movement i made a whole video about tpr i recommend watching that i'll link that above as well but moving in class 25 minutes is a long time to sit if you're four five six years old so finding a way to move whenever possible will help little kids stay engaged also pretend play is so great oftentimes students will come with their toys to class and i'll share a quick example of this i had a student she's one of my regular students um she's super smart she has great english skills but she's not always ready to participate in class so for example we are talking about reading and writing and so we are supposed to use the sentence he writes she reads they go to the playground and i was trying to get her engaged and she wasn't listening she had this little elsa sticker book and she was showing me her elsa stickers and she's like look elsa look anna and i was like look she reads she writes this is what we got to practice and she wasn't she wanted to talk about elsa and anna i'm like okay well does elsa like writing and then she came back and was like elsa likes writing perfect english sentence yes okay does anna like reading anna likes reading perfect english sentence i'm like to anna and elsa like to go to the park anna and elsa go to the park was it the exact target sentence no but did she use the vocabulary did she understand the question we used her little elsa and anna stickers that she was showing me in class rather than trying to have her put down what was distracting her we incorporated it into the lesson and this happens all the time if students have a little stuffed animal toy i will always ask the toy oh how are you and i'll have the toy answer the question along with the students if you're having a younger student who's struggling to focus um and you want them more engaged in class movement tpr incorporating toys works super well also something that i found is the songs a lot of times students really like so if i have a student who like disappears in class or has completely gotten super distracted and everything i've tried hasn't pulled them back in sometimes i'll go back to the song slide in the lesson and we'll play the song and wherever the student is they'll come running in from wherever they are and then from there i can get them back into the lesson and so that is something that i think that might be helpful for you as well so because little kids they're not always excited to sit for 25 minutes and listen so you have to make it engaging and fun what works for older students this is more about like conversation and engagement in that way talking about the things that they like and talking about their interests and giving them an opportunity to express themselves those are the things that will get older students engaged and i actually have a mistake to share with you that i just made like a week ago with one of my regular students i'm not really sure how this happened this normally doesn't happen for me but i think i was running late from my class and so i was going really quickly i said hello how are you and we got started in the lesson right away and normally i ask my students some questions i'm like oh how was your day what'd you do today um you know things like that and i completely skipped that part and i saw like in her reactions remember i'm looking at my student she was a little like like kind of like surprised and kind of sad because i think she had something to share with me about her day and i realized that i was like oh okay and so we went on to the next thing and the next moment i had to take a break i asked her about her day and we spent like five minutes in the middle of the lesson talking about her day and how it went rather than at the beginning because it's important to let your students talk about themselves even if it takes away from the lesson because they'll be more engaged and interested in their lesson if they know that you're interested in hearing about their day so that was a mistake that i made that i was like oh my gosh i feel like a beginner here how did i not let them talk about their day first um but i saw how like she was a little disappointed and then after we were able to talk about that she was excited and she was interested in the rest of the lesson just because she has some time to talk about what was interesting to her another thing that's great is asking students their opinion or what they think or i even do this with my level 2 students sometimes for example they've like got slides with a bunch of different animals on them or a bunch of different like cute cats or cute dogs and i'll be like i like this cat what do you like and they get a circle the cat and they get to share their opinion of course it's just like oh i like this cat over the other cats but asking the student for their opinion um is a good first step and then you can as the student gets older and older you can talk about more and more specific things um i also i have a student that's like a level six um yeah he's a level six and we he likes reading so we talk about books a lot so i'm like oh what's your favorite book in english oh what's your favorite character in that book can you tell me about what happened in that book and the book is not really part of the lesson but that's what we'll kind of talk about at the beginning of class or during class if there's something that's related to reading because i know that's what interests him so figure out what your students are interested in and bring that into your classes so of course these tips work for some students and don't work for others it's always about adapting to that student so remember to take a look at your students see what they need try getting them engaged in class through different strategies different things that might interest them and always be willing to adapt to your student and that's how you can really get them engaged in your class of course if you have any questions or any other advice or things that have worked super well for you please let me know in the comments down below i would love to hear about it thank you for spending your time with me today and i'm so sorry if you could hear a lot of noise in the back of this video um i tried to like stop talking when the dog was barking and then talk again but i don't know how well i did thank you again for spending your time with me today and i hope to see you very soon or wow that lot noise is so loud so bad okay are my glasses is this distracting to you guys i've got a bunch of noise and i've got my glasses that are reflecting the ring light my neighbor has a dog and the dog always is barking and there's painting going on what a bad day to film what a bad day to film okay let's try this again people are getting louder and louder in this building so i gotta go quick before any more noise happens