Teach Without Stress. Great Lessons Without Great Efforts

© Jenny White, 2021

ISBN 978-5-0055-3796-6

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Meet the author

How can this book help you
Dear Reader,

Do you want to be a perfect teacher that would meet all the needs of your students and requirements of the school administration? I am sure you do. But perfection is hard to achieve. If you put too much effort into your work, you will soon burn out. This is a dead end. But there is another solution.

This book will give you “cheat codes” for being a GREAT teacher WITHOUT great efforts. You will learn how to make your teaching life more relaxed by using easy paths, tips, and shortcuts that I have learned in 20 years of teaching so that your students could achieve brilliant results.

The book contains 40 teaching tips for 10 aspects of teaching, including lesson planning, classroom management, dealing with misbehavior and many others. Each aspect corresponds to one of the ten months in a school year. There are 4 tips in a month, one for every week. So this book can be used as a weekly planner.

The best thing about the book is this “in-the-flow feeling” that you will experience every day if you put the tips into practice. Your relationship with students will be taken to a really different level, where there is trust, creativity and joy. You will never run out of ideas and your students will never get bored.

Turn the page and make the first step into a new life!

Yours,

Jenny White

September. Getting to Know One Another

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression”

Oscar Wilde

First impressions set the tone for the future relationship. They break or build barriers that will be difficult to overcome later. They create unwritten laws and rules that will facilitate or slow down the learning process. That is why the first lesson is so important.

In this chapter you will learn:

• how to capture students’ attention in the first minutes of the lesson

• how to facilitate the process of making new friends

Week 1: Find the leader – Look for biggest cluster

“Engage the leader, and the leader will engage everyone”. On coming into the classroom for the first time, you may see the following picture: students are scattered around the classroom in groups or pairs, or even sitting alone. Look for the biggest cluster. The leader is always surrounded by numerous supporters. Come to this group and start talking to them first. The leader will be the first to answer your questions. Talk to the leader. All the other students will listen to you and join in.

Week 2: Nice to meet “new you”

Put a colorful paper feather into your hair like an Indian and write on the board your new name according to this model: name + the + adjective + noun. For example, “Billy The Black Wolf”. Explain your choice: “I chose ‘wolf’ because I am lonely and strong. Black is my favourite colour”.

Invite your students to introduce themselves with new names and explain their choice. Call them by these names during the whole lesson. You can start every lesson with asking how they feel: “Are you still the Black Wolf today?” – “No, I am a Flying Dragon because…”

Week 3: Friendship Snow Ball

Students introduce themselves and add one fact about their life. Every next student should first repeat the information and only then add a fact about his or her life. “This is my new friend Laura and she likes sausages. This is my new friend Paul and he can skate. This is my new friend Lucy and she’s got 5 sisters. And this is me, Mike, I am from Portugal”. In large classes you can first show how to play in a small group of students, and next all students will play in groups of 5—6.