Teaching 2-5 year olds online

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englishlingo

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Joined
Apr 7, 2016
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English Teacher
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English
Home Country
New Zealand
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Argentina
help!

I have been teaching English online now for quite a while but have only been focusing on children age 7 years and older. Now I have been given the opportunity to teach English to younger children online but have am a little lost how I would go about doing this given their attention span would be extremely low especially via the internet and they would not have even developed their first language properly.

Does anybody out there teach to young children online? If so, please help! I would really love to know what you do to keep them engaged, what kind of activities you would do with them.

My classes with them would only be running to 30 min sessions.

Any ideas would be extremely appreciated!!!

Thanks in advance.
 
J

J&K Tutoring

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Best advice I can offer is: learn when to say, "No".

You do yourself no service by taking money when you know you can't really offer help. You definitely do not want parents to say to other parents, "My little Jimmy/Jenny has been taking lessons from englishlingo, but he/she doesn't seem to be doing better in English."

IMHO, that age group is too young for lessons- especially on-line lessons.
 
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Skrej

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May 11, 2015
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English
Home Country
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My first thought when reading the subject line was "Oh hell no, they'd have zero attention span online".

Then I read your post and saw that you had the same concern.
 

Karen E Lewis

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Apr 8, 2016
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English Teacher
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British English
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England
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Spain
I also teach kids online but my youngest student is 7. He can only manage 15 minutes at a time! I'd say little and often is the key with younger students. Speak to the parents and find out as much as you can about what gets them excited and build some lessons around this. If they are very young maybe they have a quieter time of day, before a nap for example when they could sit with mum and you could read them a story with some interesting pictures. At least they would get used to hearing the sounds of the English Language. Good luck.......it's a tough one!
 
J

J&K Tutoring

Guest
I'll expand a bit to suggest you should be bold enough to present this idea to the parents: You feel that age is too young for lessons. If parents really want lessons, make them prepay. Charge by the half hour, but YOU will be the judge of how long each lesson will go. You will know when they start to 'glaze over'. Some times, that might be 30 minutes. Most times, it will be less- maybe only 15 minutes (they still pay for 30 minutes). If the parents cannot accept that arrangement, they do not have the best interest of their child in mind, and you are better off without the hassle.

If you come to feel the lessons aren't really helping the child, then refund whatever balance with thanks and move on.
 

Renee Lambert

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Apr 27, 2016
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English Teacher
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English
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United States
Current Location
United States
It's not as far fetched as you might think.
When viewing something online a child is quickly bored when looking at an adult. However when a child is viewing another child their attention span is captivated many times over.
The following video of a girl instructing children in the alphabet recommended by our Principal causes my class to beg in unison, "play her again".

Kids Nursery rhymes ABC's https://youtu.be/RED1PFB1M7w
 
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