How to Choose Materials
This video will first show you “where” to find materials to use in your classroom. Then, you will learn about “why” you may choose material for a certain topic, like listening, reading, or speaking comprehension. Lastly, you will receive tips on how to pick material for different ages and skill levels.
Below are the key-elements of the video:
As we saw in module 2, using video and audio materials improve the quality of your lessons. Now we will see how to choose teaching materials.
To choose our teaching materials, we need to ask ourselves a few questions.
First, let's ask ourselves: how old are the students? What is their level? What are their needs and interests?
It is important to remember the age of our students: we cannot ask a child to do things that are older than them. And we cannot always ask an adult to play or colour.
We must also remember the level of the students. We cannot ask a student who cannot say "Good morning!" in the foreign language to talk about politics.
Finally, we must also remember the needs and interests of the students. A student who loves photography may prefer to work on photos and not on newspaper articles.
We also have to ask ourselves another question: what do students do with learning materials?
Students can do several things with teaching materials.
- They train listening;
- They train reading;
- They practise writing;
- They make conversation;
- They learn new words and their meanings;
- They study grammar;
- They do a creative writing activity;
- They discuss an interesting topic;
- They learn the structure of a newspaper article;
- And much more...
Finally, we must ask ourselves: where can I find learning materials?
Learning materials can have different origins.
- Learning materials can come from the students and can be photographs, favourite objects, food, interesting newspaper articles;
- Learning materials can come from television, advertisements, TV characters or short films;
- Learning materials can come from places. If your students do not know your city well, they will be very curious. You can help them learn more about places such as the municipality, monuments. For this you can use maps and tourist leaflets. But you can also help them have conversations with people in the neighbourhood;
- Learning materials can come from the internet. You can find online games, online photos, leaflets, films and short videos.
Sometimes it may happen that you and your student are alone. Even in this case, it is better to have teaching materials. However, if you do not have teaching materials, you can use conversation based on the student's interests.
Do you want to download these key elements in pdf, click here
