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Teaching ideas for first lessons

September will come one day and again we will face another challenging school year. First lessons in a new school year seem to be extremely important since we usually tune in our students to our demands and expectations. They are also informed of the ultimate goals to be achieved during the coming school year.

All of that sounds really serious. However, we do not wish to frighten them, we just want our students to become aware of tasks ahead which have to be performed. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to build good rapport with students. It is claimed that students of a teacher with good rapport are more successful in learning a foreign language. Could it be a better time than the first lesson to start establishing great rapport with our students? Not only can this first lesson give students the picture of tough and tedious job ahead of them but also the promise of friendly atmosphere, empathy and interesting lessons as well.

September will come one day and again we will face another challenging school year. First lessons in a new school year seem to be extremely important since we usually tune in our students to our demands and expectations. They are also informed of the ultimate goals to be achieved during the coming school year. All of that sounds really serious. However, we do not wish to frighten them, we just want our students to become aware of tasks ahead which have to be performed. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to build good rapport with students. It is claimed that students of a teacher with good rapport are more successful in learning a foreign language. Could it be a better time than the first lesson to start establishing great rapport with our students? Not only can this first lesson give students the picture of tough and tedious job ahead of them but also the promise of friendly atmosphere, empathy and interesting lessons as well.

Building good rapport

Sometimes to build good rapport with a group of people takes minutes, sometimes weeks; however, there is a chance to develop friendly relationships and later on enjoy them if only some rules are being followed. Jim Wingate looks at common challenges the teacher meets in a classroom and one of his articles “10 ways to build rapport with your students” gives some useful tips.

In general, Jim Wingate emphasises the meaning of being friendly towards students, and consequently making them feel at home in the classroom. In addition, praising students and expressing our appreciation could give students the feeling of their strength. Finally, the teacher should be able to understand students’ problems and moods. Jim Wingate particularly encourages teachers to infect students with enthusiasm. Though, if the topic or grammar is boring he advises being honest with students and go through it together.

First lessons

If the teacher is to fire enthusiasm for English among students, it should be generated from the very first lesson. To do so students should be welcomed in September not only with a long list of their duties and the teacher’s expectations but with an interesting lesson which can increase students’ motivation and arouse their interest.

My collection of the first lessons has been created for years. I was exposed to most of them while participating in various teachers’ refresher courses. Though, the lessons applied to the classroom are modified to the needs of the class. The lessons are planned for nearly 30 minutes as at least a quarter is filled with some information which students are bound to be familiar with before the course begins.

Selection of the lessons

Form One

1
So, each student is asked to choose an adjective which will describe his or her personality. The next step is to say aloud one’s name and the adjective. The next student repeats the heard name and adjective, and adds his or her name and adjective as well. It goes like that until the last student in the class has repeated all the names and adjectives. The other students are allowed to help a classmate who has forgotten a name or an adjective to avoid putting students in stressful situations. The teacher listens carefully to all the students and tries to memorize the names and adjectives because finally, the teacher should take up the challenge and be able to say all the names and adjectives describing students. It is nice to be remembered by name and students appreciate it. Then, the bell rings and they all are familiar with the names of classmates; they are not strangers any more.

2

Here is a teaching idea which lets our students introduce themselves briefly. The teacher provides students with a short poem entitled “Me” which serves as a model to follow. Anyone can produce such a piece of poetry. Mine is:

Me
My name is Małgosia.
I have blue eyes and a round face.
I take after my father.
I am cheerful and friendly.
I love dogs and I have one.
I can cook very well.
I like the colour of the sky.

During a lesson like this, students have a chance to remember the names of their colleagues and get to know a bit more about one another, as they touch the topics of their look, personality, feelings, abilities and likes.

Form Two

1

To make students aware what to do in order to excel at English, the teacher asks a simple question “What to do to be good at English?” Then, the teacher should stimulate students to share their ideas with the rest of the class and write them down on the blackboard. Students are encouraged to put the ideas down in their copybooks. There are usually about ten different concepts which are regarded by students as necessary to become successful in English.

The next stage is to ask students to tick these activities they actually do to improve the language. Finally, the teacher asks one student to say what he or she does for his or her English and whether he or she is going to do a bit more and what precisely. After that the teacher encourages students in groups of four to answer the same questions and in general discuss how much they are involved in improving their English. If the time permits, the teacher elicits the answers from students working in different groups.

By the end of the lesson, students should realise how much of their personal involvement and extra work is needed to be good at English and achieve success in learning a foreign language.

2

Students might enjoy coming back to holiday motives through music. The teacher should prepare a recording containing six excerpts of different tunes. Each tune represents different holiday destinations. Students are supposed to have a guess and write their options in their copybooks. Students listen to the recording twice. After that they are asked to name holiday destinations which they associate with a certain tune. My recording consists of music from Greece, Scotland, the USA, Spain, Canada and the sound of Nature - birds, a flowing stream.

The teacher elicits the names of the holiday destinations and writes them on the blackboard. Then, students are asked to decide where they would like to spend their holidays, for example the teacher asks “Who would like to go to Greece? How about Scotland?”.

After taking their decisions, the teacher suggests that students change their seats so that they could travel together to a chosen place.

The teacher encourages students to be prepared to justify their choices, and then writes two questions on the blackboard that students are supposed to answer:

Why do you want to travel there?
What tourist attractions would you like to see there?
What would you like to do there?

Finally, the teacher chooses the speaker who answers the questions on behalf of the group. This kind of lesson allows students to come back to speaking English after some break in a relaxing way. They feel safe discussing things in a company of “fellow travellers”. Besides, while guessing the origin of the tunes, students have great fun.

Form Three

1
At this stage students should be familiar with the rules of the final exam in English both at the basic level and expanded one. So the first lesson in the new school year is devoted to repeating the information related to the exam. Students could remember the rules better if after the teacher’s presentation on “What is the final exam in English like?”, a simple questionnaire were introduced. Students are asked to form groups of four and participate in a sort of guessing game prepared earlier by the teacher. The teacher has a number of precise questions about the rules of the exam in an envelope or a cap. Each group draws one question and students agree on the answer. The next step is to read the question aloud and then answer the question. If the answer is correct, the group gets one point. Certainly, the winners are rewarded by the teacher.

Hopefully, students will remember the rules of the final exam in English and nothing will surprise them as for the organizational side of the exam. The set of the questions is included at the end of the article.

2
During the first lesson students could also look back on events which took place in the summer. Of course, the summer is a silly season for the newspaper business because not many interesting things happen at that time. Consequently, newspapers are filled with silly stories. Silly stories are not difficult to understand so students should be ready to re-tell them briefly and comment on them. It seems to be a good idea to bring some British newspapers and let students work on them. It is definitely exciting to have authentic materials at hand. Students are asked to work in groups of four. The teacher provides each group with one newspaper, and then encourages students to choose two stories which happened during the summer. The teacher tries to elicit the answer from students according to the model written on the blackboard.

• What is the article about?
• What happened?
• Why did it happen?
• What do you personally think about it?

It is advisable that the teacher should make some comments on the use of the grammar tenses for each question. Particularly, for the third one where using the past simple and past continuous tenses should be suggested. The teacher should emphasise that everyone will speak so all the students are supposed to be ready to contribute.

Should it happen that the teacher has not got any latest British newspapers, students might be asked about events that took place all over the world when they were on holidays. Then, the teacher writes them on the blackboard. Students in groups of four decide to work on two of them. Further procedure as shown above. On this very first lesson students will be able to practise one of the final exam abilities which is relating events.

Objectives of the lessons

The lessons selected for the form one are focused on establishing new relations among students. The teacher creates friendly atmosphere and conditions to facilitate building good rapport. The lessons for the form two aim at raising students’ awareness regarding the fact that without personal contribution there is no much chance to excel in a language. On the other hand, the lesson Holiday Destinations provokes students to speak English after a long summer break, hopefully, with minimal stress since working in groups gives students the feeling of safety and support before they speak up. The lessons for the form three are meant to teach students the rules of the final examination in English. During the lesson the Polish language is spoken as the objective of the lesson is to remember the rules of the final exam.

However, the lesson A Silly Story is coming back to the summer season and events which took place during holidays in order to involve students in spoken activities in English. All the selected lessons have one thing in common which is building good rapport between students and the teacher at the beginning of the school year. It is known that students get engaged with class activities better if their engagement is stimulated by both good rapport and an interesting lesson.

Małgorzata Neckowicz

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