Hello, my dear colleagues! In this post, I will summarize my reflections after teaching six public webinar-based lessons for children on Preply. I was proud to be one of the few tutors selected to do these webinars among 4000+ tutors who are teaching English on Preply. The lessons were free for the children, but the tutors were paid, despite the fact that we all applied to teach for free, as volunteers. Preply decided to pay for the lessons, probably as a reward for our desire to give back to children who are in need of learning opportunities at the moment. This specific group lesson covers the weather and seasons with young learners.
Read more about the webinars in general in the link below
How was the obligatory lesson material supplemented to have a more interactive lesson?
The lesson materials were supplied by Preply, and there were around 60 students present. To make the lesson more interactive, I used flashcards connected to weather, seasons, and months of the year. First, I asked the students questions, and then I read their answers and stick the appropriate flashcard on the calendar.
The daily calendar
We started the webinar with a daily calendar ritual, used to review dates, numbers, weather, day of the week, and seasons. These concepts are sometimes very hard for the children to learn, so it takes a lot of word recycling and reviewing daily. They enjoyed the calendar very much and they were competing who will answer my questions first. I made this calendar out of a giant pizza box, so go wild and craft a calendar of your own from recyclable materials!
Webinar-Based Group Lessons for Children Aged 8-10: Recordings, Methods & Reflection
The lesson flow & class moderation
The lesson was based on communication, specifically using written communication, as in all webinar-based lessons.
When it comes to classroom management, it is important to acknowledge the presence of all students in the webinar. This is accomplished by reading their answers from the chatbox frequently, praising them, and reading their names. The students are extremely active, and I get around 100 messages per minute! If this happens in your large group lesson, make sure to praise the students by their name equally so that you do not forget anyone.
The presentations are interactive, and I am connecting the pictures with the words, filling the gaps on the presentation as they answer in the chatbox, dramatizing the reading sections, and revealing the correct answers on the review pages (true/false questions).
We did the following things in the lesson:
- Started by completing the daily calendar;
- Continued with sharing the weather and the seasons in their countries and understanding that some children can experience winter while some experience spring at the same time;
- Discussed their favorite weather and elicited more vocabulary;
- Practiced present simple in conversation;
- Unscrambled the names of the seasons;
- Learned about hemispheres;
- Learned about months;
- Sharing their birthdays and grouping them by months;
- Learned about the weather;
- Learned about temperatures;
- Talked about the 4 seasons while reading 4 texts about children who enjoy different seasons;
- Reading comprehension (TRUE/FALSE) about the 4 seasons and discussing which child we are like the most when it comes to seasons and weather;
- Finally, we had the weather report challenge which was spread to a homework task and an activity they can do with their parents.
Activity examples – Screenshots of some pages in the presentation
What do you think about the webinar-based lessons with large groups? Do you have some interesting classroom management tips? What do you think about this group lesson with young learners and the weather and seasons activities? Please write down in the comments or via the contact page. I would love to know your opinion!
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