PANDA CLASSROOM ADVICE

Age Range: 6 – 10 years
Average number of students per day: 10 – 15 students

Teaching Methods:

What activities and methods worked well with these students?
• Games: The students really enjoy games like hangman. It works well to
make them compete in small groups.
• Routines: practicing something everyday makes sure that all students get to
understand the material at least once or twice, and enables the teacher to
explain again a rule if needed.
• Slideshow: a slideshow prepared ahead of each lesson helps keep students
focused. It proved particularly efficient for explanations of activities and
games, and helped focusing them and making sure they’d listen and
understand.
• Worksheets: if the task to achieve is very simple, and the instructions
explained clearly, then worksheets are a good way of explaining the
information.
• Short films/cartoons: can be used to introduce new vocabulary and wrap up
material.

What activities and methods were problematic with these students? Why?
• Worksheets: if you give them paper exercises, prepare something that the
faster kids can do in the meantime when they finished.
• Repetitive games: try to rotate between games you know the students enjoy
and other popular games from your community and/or ones you find online
What routines did you have in your class? Why?
1. I explained the rules of the classroom and the behavior that I expected from
my students
2. Went over the lesson plan for the given day (e.g going over the months,
ordinal numbers, emotions, “phrase of the week’). The teacher who was here
before me used to make them copy these sentences in a small booklet called
“My Little English Book”, which was a good way to encourage students to
practice their writing.
3. Once I fully went over the lesson, I gave students the chance to play a game
together (these games were usually tied to the lesson)

Discipline:

What was your overall discipline system with the class? Was it successful?
• Stars: for every good answer student would get a star, and for bad behavior
a star would be removed
• Toys: there are many toys in the Panda classroom, therefore, feel free to
take them away if students are misbehaving
• Rules: no matter what you do, prepare your rules ahead of starting or, at
last, after your first week. You can even prepare them with your children.
• Seating arrangement: allocate students different seats at the beginning of
each week, in order to avoid them sitting with all their friends.
• Bathroom breaks: since students try escaping to the bathroom when they
don’t want to participate, it is important to remind them to go before or after
class.

What specific discipline problems did you face? How did you handle them?
• Troublemakers: do not hesitate to speak to these kids privately first, and if it
continues, move student to a corner of the classroom.
• Shouting: DO NOT SHOUT (or not too often, they either already suffer from
that at home, or it won’t prove effective many times).

Other:

Is there anything the next teacher should know in this class?
• Attendance: always prepare your activities knowing that you can have 18 or
8 students showing up.
• Level discrepancies: some students ready for next level when some others
are far from it. Do not hesitate to explain more than once the instructions,
and make sure you have explained everything they need to know prior to the
activity.
• Start by the basics: Pronunciation, Nouns, and sentence structure are the
things which have to be acquired in this class. Don’t hesitate not to follow the
curriculum if it doesn’t sound appropriate to you, and to spend a long time on
grammar if needed.

For further information reach out to Hippolyte Cailleteau at
hippolyte.cailleteau@sciencespo.fr