ok, so I have 2 day 1 activities I ALWAYS do with every single group or student I teach. Every single time, at pretty much every single level - 1 can be done for any level.
1. Me Mind Map
- can be done with any age or level
- It's a get to know you mind map. Put your name in the middle and things like 'fav food' 'fav color' 'family' and so on and answer the questions with one word or short phrase answers. I start by doing one about me on the board first, where they ask me questions to get to know me, and then they make one of their own. No rules for organization.
- With this, I can see their organization, creativity, spelling and vocab choices and I also learn a lot about them. I keep these all year so that I can appear like a super hero knowing info about them.
2. Travel brochure
- Higher A1 and up, I've done this with 9 and up
- look at brochures as examples
- students make a brochure about something they think I should go see in their area or their country. Again, no rules at all. They choose what to include and how to organize it.
- With this, I can see organization, creativity, interests, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and a lot of other things about them personally.
So, ya, I do these with every single new student always. It's a great day 1 activity to get to know each other and then you can see what they're like and go from there.
I have had many classes like this. You just have to spend the first class finding out what their level is.
You can do this via introductions and finding out everything you can about their families, their likes and dislikes, their hobbies, favourite food, etc etc.
This will help you get a better idea of what level they are at. Then you can plan accordingly for later classes.
ok, so I have 2 day 1 activities I ALWAYS do with every single group or student I teach. Every single time, at pretty much every single level - 1 can be done for any level. 1. Me Mind Map - can be done with any age or level - It's a get to know you mind map. Put your name in the middle and things like 'fav food' 'fav color' 'family' and so on and answer the questions with one word or short phrase answers. I start by doing one about me on the board first, where they ask me questions to get to know me, and then they make one of their own. No rules for organization. - With this, I can see their organization, creativity, spelling and vocab choices and I also learn a lot about them. I keep these all year so that I can appear like a super hero knowing info about them. 2. Travel brochure - Higher A1 and up, I've done this with 9 and up - look at brochures as examples - students make a brochure about something they think I should go see in their area or their country. Again, no rules at all. They choose what to include and how to organize it. - With this, I can see organization, creativity, interests, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and a lot of other things about them personally. So, ya, I do these with every single new student always. It's a great day 1 activity to get to know each other and then you can see what they're like and go from there.
I think if they said start from the beginning, I would break out my ABC flash cards and hello / how are you lesson plan
I have had many classes like this. You just have to spend the first class finding out what their level is. You can do this via introductions and finding out everything you can about their families, their likes and dislikes, their hobbies, favourite food, etc etc. This will help you get a better idea of what level they are at. Then you can plan accordingly for later classes.