Mind-Mapping Me

This year,  I was relocated to an Elementary School due to financial reasons within the education office.  I previously taught at a Middle School for four years so this change mean't having to learn how to connect with younger ESL learners.

It's always a good idea to use the first lesson at any new school as an introductory lesson.  This will give the students the opportunity to learn about you.  You can talk about your likes, dislikes as well as where you come from.  I put together a detailed PowerPoint presentation with pictures of hobbies, interests and my country to educate the kids about "Miss Candy"  (that's my name at school).  To make the lesson a bit more interactive, I asked the students to guess what each picture represented.  This engaged the students and held their attention for the entire lesson.

After School Class

Part of my responsibilities at the new school is to conduct an after school class.  I have complete control over this class which means that I get to select the lesson topic and chose the direction in which I want the lesson to head in.  I meet with the students three times a week so I have to have a different lesson prepared for each class.  The after school classes lasts 50 minutes (10 minutes longer than regular classes) which means that my content needs to be super fun or I will lose the kids at minute one. I currently have 5 students in my after school class which is perfect for giving individual attention to each student.

Map about me

For my introductory lesson with my after school class I got the students to create mind maps about
themselves.  I supplied the students with poster paper and a template of an apple.  We wrote our names in the centre of the apple and used that as the core of our maps.  I got the students to write little sentences about different things they like, their hobbies, family and friends.  The kids also  got a little creative and drew little pictures to illustrate their points.

The objective of the lesson was to learn about each each other but it also gave the students an opportunity to practice writing in the target language.  This activity will also be great for the first day of class at the start of a new school year.

Learning about each other

Getting to know your students is really important. Finding out their likes and dislikes can be very helpful when you're preparing future lessons.

I like to use the first two lessons of the semester as introductory lessons.  The lesson usually begins with me telling the students about myself, where I come from, hobbies, interests, etc. Then I turn the lesson over to the kids and get them speaking about themselves.  It's usually difficult for them to come up with the right words so I like to provide them with a worksheet which acts as a guideline for their introduction.

One option is to get them to interview each other using the worksheet on the right and then ask the students to introduce their classmates.  Or you can opt for the "traditional" route and ask them to introduce themselves using the worksheet below.

Seeing as we live in the age of Facebook, you can get the students to create a Facebook profile with the help of the worksheet on the left.


Note: This can be adapted to fit the 4 basic learning areas of ESL, i.e: Speaking, Reading, Writing and Listening.