Engaging little learners can be a really difficult task, and even more with the young ones. It is known that children have short attention spans, so here are some tricks that can help us, as teachers, to get their attention:
- Go to class with the lesson properly prepared: if not, it's possible that you make pauses and that is the moment when children disconnect and start playing around. Don't give them the opportunity to do it when it's not the time. Keep them occupied.
- Create routines to catch their attention: in the English class it can be a song, a rhyme, a jazz chant... just a clue to make them react and listen to us. It has to be done everyday, kids love repetition and it's perfect as warm up.
- Involve students in the action: the more they do the more they'll learn. So, never sit down and read the lesson, because that will bore them a lot. To engage them make them act, think, speak (in the foreign language class even more! make them repeat to memorize new words and give them opportunities to use the language in class). If they experiment with their own bodies they will be motivated and they will learn for sure!
- Keep it short and use variety: Just remember that less is more in Preschool Education, so, activities don't need to last more than 15-20 minutes each. Activities done in the same lesson have to develop different learning areas and some of them have to allow children to move.
- Teach with enthusiasm: kids notice if the teacher is enjoying what he/she does or not, even the young ones. So, use all of your energy in your explanations and demonstrations; they need to feel that what they are doing is really important and useful, and the teacher has to believe it too.
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