The current article contains six pre-lesson considerations for teachers interested in acquiring a more balanced and student-centered teaching approach. Suppose teachers were to focus solely on lesson objectives, such as teaching grammar patterns. In such instances, they may lose sight of pre-lesson considerations such as the local teaching context, team teaching relationships, positive role modeling, effective lesson pacing, instructional techniques, and novel task implementation. Although a perfectly rounded teaching approach does not exist, teachers can attempt to create a balanced approach that best suits their students’ needs. The pre-lesson considerations in this article are well-suited for teachers seeking such balance.
This two-part miniseries is written primarily for teachers of young learners, but many of the considerations discussed can also be applied to adult classrooms. The companion piece to this article will focus on social-emotional learning and other essential childhood developmental skills, such as the mechanics of young learners’ behavior, thinking, and development. Part two will also draw connections between the importance of social-emotional learning and a selection of the pre-lesson considerations discussed within this article. The pre-lesson considerations have—intentionally—not been supplied in a particular order; however, the first topic, local teaching contexts, should be highly relevant to teachers who are employed overseas. Although an assortment of Japan-specific classroom examples is utilized throughout the article, the pre-lesson considerations can be applied, as warranted by teachers and administrators, to classrooms located anywhere in the world.
Local Teaching Contexts
Before teaching a lesson, specific preparations apart from lesson planning must be performed. A language teacher’s pedagogy should partially reflect local ethnic (e.g., whether or not to teach handshaking) and sociopolitical factors (e.g., how to use pronouns). Crookes (2003) referred to such considerations as the local ethnopedagogy. When joining overseas educational institutions, teachers import cultural beliefs and practices with them—often without overt knowledge of doing so. Such cultural beliefs can sometimes contradict the local ethnopedagogical practices, so teachers must determine what is and is not acceptable for them to discuss and teach in their new employment roles.
Schools contain unique ethnopedagogical climates. Before opening textbooks, teachers must do their best to understand school rules, sensitive historical topics, correct cultural disciplinary protocols, and team-teacher expectations—if applicable. Such ethnopedagogical considerations can make or break lessons if teachers do not appropriately interface with them. Over time, institutions change rules and expectations, so teachers must remain vigilant and stay informed regarding the latest institutional expectations.
One of the best ways to learn about ethnopedagogy is from coworkers. Sometimes, asking veteran coworkers about the local teaching context can be as informative as asking a school administrator. The critical takeaway is to absorb as much accurate ethnopedagogical information as early as possible in your new teaching role. Having a reliable ongoing source of accurate guidelines and informal rules can, and will, save teachers from finding themselves in uncomfortable situations. Team teachers are often an excellent source of such feedback if a positive working relationship has been established.
Team Teacher Relationships
Many language teachers in Japan do not hold Japanese state-issued teaching licenses, so a licensed Japanese teacher usually accompanies such teachers in traditional school settings (e.g., elementary, junior high, and high school settings). Sometimes, team teaching is also used in kindergarten and eikaiwa (i.e., private language school) classrooms. When a language teacher from overseas is paired with a licensed Japanese counterpart, the teaching dynamic is called team teaching (MEXT, 1994). Team teachers are paired for English language lessons and also to facilitate content-based (e.g., math or science) lessons delivered in English.
Before team teachers start planning lessons together, they must discuss classroom management. Most licensed Japanese teachers have particular, and well-established, classroom management protocols. If team teachers dive into lesson planning without having preliminary conversations about classroom management, they may set themselves up for disagreements before entering the classroom together (Reidak, in press). For example, if students are being disruptive, the team teachers should have a pre-established rule for how to deal with such young learners. Students become understandably confused if team teachers have misaligned or seemingly separate rules.
In addition to classroom management, team teachers should also actively discuss their pedagogical preferences (Nishino, 2012). The team teachers need to find the time to talk, not just once at the beginning of the year, but regularly throughout the academic year. Solely discussing lesson objectives is insufficient; team teachers must preplan how, and who, will teach each lesson segment. To facilitate such smooth lesson flow, newly paired team teachers can—and should—compare schedules to find an informal weekly or biweekly meeting time. If the team teachers cannot schedule adequate time to share their concerns, praises, and new ideas, the team-teaching process disintegrates into two uncoordinated solo teachers sharing undefined teaching responsibilities. Maintaining a professional relationship is critically important for team teaching to be effective. If team teachers are on two different pages, it is difficult for them to project a positive model of teamwork and cooperation to their students.
Positive Role Modeling
Sometimes teachers fall into a do as I say, not as I do mentality while teaching young learners. Inadvertently, modeling a double standard is easier to accomplish than most teachers realize. Children are impressionable, and they are watching—everything—that adults around them are doing. A checklist has been supplied below to ensure you are not breaking your own rules.
- I do not interrupt (i.e., speak over) students while they share their ideas.
- Young learners in Japan are not allowed to bring smartphones to school, so I keep my phone out of the classroom.
- Most schools in Japan have dress codes for the students, so I also do my best to adhere to the dress code.
- Students are discouraged from solving their problems with anger and frustration, so I try to resolve classroom issues without raising my voice or becoming frustrated.
- Students are discouraged from speaking negatively about their peers and teaching staff, so I do not speak unfavorable sentiments about students to colleagues during break/lunchtime.
- Students are told to make an effort, so I do the same.
People with societal roles involving authority (e.g., police officers, teachers, parents) sometimes forget that rules are generally not unidirectional. For there to be a reasonable expectation that students follow classroom rules, teachers must first model the desired behavior with their own actions. Positive role modeling coupled together with other pre-lesson considerations, such as effective lesson pacing, can be a powerful combination.
Effective Lesson Pacing
Some young learners are very high energy, while others are low energy. Some student groups seem content for teachers to repeat the same lesson routine, while other groups respond more positively to dynamic lessons featuring new and varied content. There is no set formula for effective lesson pacing, but rather, teachers must experiment and discover what best suits their students’ needs and expectations. Each student group is unique and requires slightly different learning circumstances to help learners attend to classroom content. There are, however, five key points that may help with overall lesson pacing.
- Do not keep learners seated for too long; get them up and moving.
- Find topics and themes that students will be excited to study.
- Finish activities before the students’ motivation levels wane; you can always continue the activity during the next class.
- Utilize authentic materials (e.g., plastic replicas of fruits and vegetables rather than flashcards) so that students can make connections between the classroom and the wider world.
- Never forget to maintain a healthy balance between the rigor of study and the joy of learning. In other words, try not to forget to have fun.
Young learners’ attention can switch off quickly and easily. One distracted student can lead to the entire classroom becoming distracted. The key is to expect young learners to become distracted, and rather than attempting to force students to focus, let their interest levels determine when it is time to move on to a new activity. Effective pacing is more than writing a lesson plan with approximate time delineations. Every classroom will require vastly different pacing. Be prepared to make adjustments mid-lesson so that the students’ learning needs are being met. An assortment of instructional techniques can be used while teaching young learners. Effective lesson pacing is also determined by which instructional techniques a teacher has selected.
Instructional Techniques
Teacher talk has been described as the segment of a lesson that teachers use to explain, model, and set up activities (Brown & Lee, 2015). Richards and Soares (2022) suggested that teacher talk can potentially benefit learners because the students can soak up more of the target language. Contrarily, the researchers also suggested that teacher talk should be limited to give students more time for outputting in the target language.
Rather than trying to solve the ongoing debate, I propose a middle-ground solution that may help in some teaching situations. Some lessons with extensive teacher talk feature a teaching approach known as presentation, practice, production (PPP) (Anderson, 2017). The presentation step, also known as modeling, sometimes causes teachers to over-explain—or over-model—the teaching point. If the teacher is skilled, they will get in and out of the presentation stage as quickly as possible with limited language use (i.e., they are showing rather than telling), whereas a less experienced language teacher may fall into the trap of linguistically explaining a complex concept to a group of five-year-olds. To avoid the pitfalls of a PPP-based approach, there is an alternative pedagogical tool known as task-based language teaching (TBLT).
Like teacher talk, the ongoing conversation regarding what constitutes a TBLT task is also quite intricate. One version of a task is an activity that is meaning-based (i.e., has connections to the world outside of the classroom) and promotes consciousness-raising (i.e., stimulates students to think or reflect upon the learning objectives) (Willis & Willis, 2007). If teachers attempt to utilize novel (i.e., original or creative) tasks in their classrooms with young learners, they can reduce teacher talking time while concurrently providing their students with deeper learning objectives compared to language drills or overused flashcard games.
Novel Task Implementation
Using TBLT in adult-based classrooms is more straightforward than using TBLT in classrooms with young learners. Carless (2002) suggested that young learners draw pictures to help them express their feelings if they cannot do so in the target language. Allowing young learners to draw pictures is an excellent point of entrance for utilizing novel tasks.
Supplying students with meaning-based and consciousness-raising tasks, even if they are young, can help foster deeper learning objectives. An example is introducing the students to global sustainability topics such as the United Nation’s (2015) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Junior high schoolers and older would foreseeably be able to handle tasks involving the SDGs, whereas elementary school-aged children would require simplified thematic versions (Reidak, 2023). An example would be introducing public littering, via video clips from the internet, and then allowing students to draw pictures of clean public spaces. Another example would be for elementary school students to draw pictures of alternatives to motor-based transportation, such as bicycles or walking (Scott & Reidak, in press). Students can work in groups of two or more and provide a brief presentation using simple language about their posters depending on their age and L2 proficiency levels.
Sometimes, utilizing novel tasks can be challenging in classrooms with very young children (e.g., grade 1 or kindergarten students). Nevertheless, even if students draw a picture of themselves riding a bicycle and can vocalize the word bicycle, they are forming relationships between local and global issues in their L2. Creating novel tasks for groups of young learners does not need to dominate a teacher’s pedagogical repertoire. However, by including learning objectives that do not typically exist in language classrooms (e.g., Lim et al., 2023; Reidak, 2022), teachers can be seen as providing their learners with novel learning initiatives rather than sticking with the average nuts and bolts featured in many language classrooms. Teachers should promote dynamism in the classroom rather than constantly having students’ heads buried in textbooks.
Conclusion
This first part of a two-part miniseries was written to support teachers’ pre-lesson planning and overall teaching approaches. Too often, teachers are provided with training programs focused on lesson preparation and basic classroom management, but such programs generally do not address the finer points unpackaged in this article. The six pre-lesson considerations discussed relate to often overlooked nooks and crannies that, if not addressed, can become precursors to highly unproductive pedagogy. Such pre-lesson considerations can be utilized in whole or in part to improve the holistic balance of a teaching approach.
Pre-lesson considerations are an integral part of a teaching approach, but when teaching young learners, it is also critically important to incorporate a social-emotional learning framework into the lesson-planning process. In part two, the tenets of social-emotional learning will be explained as they relate to young learners’ behavior, thinking, and development. Although pre-lesson considerations and social-emotional learning may seem to be dissimilar topics, the overlap occurs in student-centeredness. Trying to achieve more balance in a teaching approach and attempting to understand young learners’ social-emotional cognitive processes better are concrete forms of student-centered pedagogy, which will be explored further in part two of this miniseries.
References
Anderson, J. (2017). A potted history of PPP with the help of ELT Journal. ELT Journal, 71(2), 218–227. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccw055
Brown, H. D. & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy (4th ed.). Pearson Education.
Carless, D. (2002). Implementing task-based learning with young learners. ELT Journal, 56(4), 389–396. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/56.4.389
Crookes, G. (2003). A practicum in TESOL: Professional development through teaching practice. Cambridge University Press.
Lim, S., Reidak, J., Chau, M. H., Zhu, C. H., Guo, Q., Brooks, T. A., Roe, J., & Jacobs, G. M. (2023). Cooperative learning and the SDGs. PeacheyPublications. https://payhip.com/b/obOwr
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Reidak, J. (2022). Operationalizing sustainability-related goals (SRGs) in Japanese elementary ESL classrooms. In A. B. Gallagher (Ed.), Trends in language teaching 2022: Post-conference proceedings (pp. 55–71). JALT Okinawa.
Reidak, J. (2023). Promoting sustainability with young learners in western Japan. In A. A. Asmawi, G. M. Jacobs, G. Qingli, & W. A. Renandya (Eds.), Stories of teacher authenticity (pp. 88–91). Peachey Publications. https://payhip.com/b/k3Oq9
Richards, C., & Soares, V. H. M. (2022). Teachers talking about teacher talk. CALR Linguistics Journal, 13, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.60149/IHCT8829
Scott, C. A., & Reidak, J. (in press). Measuring the effectiveness of sustainability-related goals in Japanese public elementary schools. Proceedings of the 23rd Temple University, Japan, Applied Linguistics Colloquium.
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Willis, J., & Willis, D. (2007). Doing task-based teaching. Oxford University Press.
Jesse Reidak hails from Toronto, Canada, and currently resides in Kansai, Japan. He teaches content-based courses at a private elementary school in Kyoto. His research interests include sustainability-related topics, cooperative learning, and task-based language teaching. He welcomes opportunities to connect with other teachers and researchers.
jesse.reidak@gmail.com