The First Lesson

Tips and Resources Pack for Teachers

No matter how experienced or well-prepared you are as a teacher, when meeting a student or particularly a group of students for their first class, it’s difficult not to feel at least just a little bit apprehensive. Even if you know their age, their level or their job title, there’s still so much to find out: How will they respond to different types of activity? Will they be raring to go or wishing they were somewhere else? What are their expectations of the new teacher?

In today’s blog I’m sharing some helpful tips from my own experience of teaching English as a foreign language one to one and small groups. Along with these ideas I’m also sharing a lot of resources I’ve created over the years, which I hope will help you to find out about your new student/s, assessing their needs and discovering their interests.

There’s quite a big selection of materials here because each individual/group is different and so it’s good to have plenty of options. For more information on how and when to use these documents you should definitely read the Teacher’s Notes. Here’s a brief description of each resource:

• About Me Map – a mind map to help learners select and plan what they want to tell you about themselves
• Questions About You – questions using different tenses/aspects, where you can find out a bit about each other whilst revising grammar – two versions available: for teenagers and adults
• Language Priority Cards – to establish the learner’s priorities in terms of language, what they want to focus on, what they find more challenging
• Topic Cards – to find out about the learner’s interests and what topics they want to focus on during the course
• Self Assessment Chart – For learners to assess their own needs and how they should go about achieving them
• Self-Assessment Questionnaires – To find out about a learner’s experience of studying English, their interests and their own assessment of their needs – two versions available: for teenagers and adults