Teaching strategies for young learners
What this domain covers
This domain is about what the teacher does moment to moment: managing the classroom, giving instructions, presenting and practising language, and giving feedback. Candidates need to know strategies such as demonstration and modelling, Total Physical Response, songs and chants, games, storytelling and puppets, drilling and choral repetition, eliciting, concept checking, monitoring, grouping (whole class, pairs, small groups, individual), and judicious use of L1. They should also understand correction techniques - recasting, eliciting self-correction, peer correction - and the difference between correcting accuracy work and letting fluency work flow.
Concepts to know
Instructions should be short, sequenced, demonstrated and checked with simple questions. Teacher talk time should be controlled: children need time using language, not only hearing it. Praise should name the effort or the behaviour. Games are a learning context, not a reward. Scaffolding means providing support (a model, a prompt, a frame, a first example) so learners can succeed, not making the task easier in content.
Traps
Equating modelling with telling; assuming more teacher explanation produces more learning; correcting every error immediately and interrupting communication; giving long, complex instructions in the target language with no demonstration; treating pair work as automatically communicative; and confusing scaffolding with simplification.
Worked example
Instructions for a matching task: hold up the sheet, say 'Match', demonstrate one item yourself, ask a child to do the second, then check understanding with 'Do we write a word or draw a line?' Only then do children start. The demonstration and the check do more work than a long explanation.