Let’s assume that the children have had time to settle into the classroom environment and that you are ready for them to begin the first lesson. This is their best learning time. They have focused in on an English environment and have had a short time to adapt to the change from their last situation. This first lesson will include the most difficult material to be taught. It will likely include listening, and because listening and understanding are the most difficult, this is the best time to give your oral explanation. This articles provides suggestions for getting the children excited about your lesson.

Tips for Giving Oral Explanations to ESL Students Aged 5 to 8

- Have a picture that represents your subject matter.

- Draw on the board as you talk. Don’t worry about your artistic abilities. The children will love it if their drawings are better than yours. Funny things facilitate learning.

- Take advantage of their drawing ability and have them draw small parts of what you are explaining on the board. They will be listening! They’ll be laughing and involved, learning English will be exciting.

- Dramatize what you are saying with your own actions. Sometimes it seems that teachers need to be able to do everything!

- Follow your own dramatics by giving the children a chance to imitate them while you give them the language.

How Can You Capture Every Child’s Attention?

- The first lesson needs to present something of interest. It might be a song, verse, picture, map, or a video. Most children are fascinated by machines or electronic equipment.

- If you are using a textbook you have purchased, it might be effective to display some part of it using an overhead projector.

- Children relate to computers. When they sit down at a computer they give it their full attention, no matter what problems they may have.

- Perhaps you are wondering how to include boring subjects such as phonics. If your lesson includes a listening phonetic lesson such as identifying rhyming words, then this is the time to teach it. Using any of the teaching aids mentioned above or any others you may have, move into the difficult content.

Let’s suppose you are teaching rhyming words .
Have the students listen to a funny / interesting verse.
For Example:
Explain that Buzz and Click are friends who live on the planet Saturn. Click is singing a song as they run to the store. Explain that Click is a girl alien and Buzz is a boy. They are excited about visiting their friends on Earth and are running to the Robot Store to buy two robot dogs to take with them. They’ll fly to Earth in a rocket.
Talk about what Buzz and Click might look like. What does a robot dog look like?
Print this rhyme on the board, have the children repeat it several times and identify the rhyming words.
Here we come
We’re full of fun.
Buzz and I
Are glad to run.
Possible extentions of the lesson:
- have the children draw what they think Click and Buzz would look like
- brainstorm and list other related rhyming words
- talk about what they might see in a robot store
- talk about the planet Saturn
- draw a robot dog and write a rhyme about it

If you are teaching specific sounds or rhyming words, make up or use a program that offers meaningful examples of what you are teaching. Use examples that are fun so the children can enjoy repeating them. They will learn if they are enjoying the lesson.