It's a good idea to start a class with a
quick and fun activity which will cover any late arrivals, also if a student
arrives late during an activity in which his/her classmates are enjoying
themselves, they will probably make more effort to arrive on time in future!!
At the beginning of a course, this type of activity also helps the students get
to know each other and 'break the ice'. If you have various of these 'filler'
activities up your sleeve, they might be useful if you end up with more time
than you planned at the end of a lesson, or if you have to abandon a planned
activity for any reason.
When teaching lower level students in groups, it's important to get them used to open drilling as soon as possible - Drilling is where all the students say the target structure together at the same time. The reason for this is that beginners get the chance to produce the target structure without being the focus of attention. You need to be confident when you start drilling - act like a conductor in order to get everyone starting at the same time, and joke and laugh if students are out of synchronization. Counting up or down helps e.g. one, two, three ****, or you clapping to show when to start. Demonstrate "together" using gestures and your students will soon get the hang of it. Drilling shouldn't go on too long - just enough times to give everyone the opportunity to practice the sounds or structures as a group. If you're not confident about drilling the class as a whole, you can select three or four students and drill the structure with those, then select another group, until everyone knows what to do. Drills can take various forms, based on spoken or written models; involving the whole class, groups, pairs or individual students. There are also substitution drills e.g. Teacher: "I like you."; Teacher: "He"; Teacher "He likes you."; Teacher "We"; Students: "We like you"; Teacher: "They", "She". The only thing to be careful of is that the drill doesn't end up producing unnatural English e.g. Teacher: "You" Students: "You like you." !!!!
Flashcards
Photos or drawings cut from magazines, newspapers or downloaded from the internet which show, demonstrate or indicate items of vocabulary or grammar. Flashcards should be big enough for all the students in the class to see easily, and if they are stuck on a piece of cardboard and covered in sticky-back plastic, the flashcard becomes durable and can be used with other classes or borrowed by other teachers. I recommend keeping a flashcard 'bank', accessed alphabetically or according to part of speech (verb, noun, adjective etc.), so that you can build up a permenant teaching resource.
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