What we need to keep in mind to teach teens productively

Teaching teens can be challenging because they step into the awkward age, teens’ social life matters for them more than their education, and teens’ attention span is still not as long as adults’ is. However, there are recommendations that can help any teacher make their lessons with teens more effective.

What can we, as teachers, do to make the lessons with teens more productive?

• First and foremost, learn about teens’ psychological peculiarities and take them into account during lessons planning. Adolescence is the period of puberty. They strive to become adults and do not want to be treated as children. Excitability of the nervous system, instability, and inconsistency of emotions, increased anxiety associated with communication with peers is typical of teenagers. At the age of 12-17, the cognitive processes are completed, the theoretical thinking appears. Thus, ‘childish’ games, songs, and activities, TRP cannot be applied to teaching teenagers. On the other hand, discussions, brainstorms, projects, and activities that require different roles can be used.  In order to deepen your knowledge in the psychology of education of teenagers, we recommend to read the books  The Power of the Adolescent Brain, Teaching Adolescents and Educational Psychology.
• Create fair rules and follow them. It means that teacher should be strict but fair, as Marry Poppins ☺ We discussed the foundations of class management at school in our article.
• Attention grabbers are a great way to stop a mess in the class and attract the students’ attention. My favourites are:

T: One, two, three, look at me. S: One, two, look at you.

T: Hands on the top, everybody, stop. (Students put hands on their heads).

T: Clap once! (Ss clap 1 time), clap twice! (Ss clap 2 times), clap three times!… (The teacher continues until all students stop talking and clap their hands).

• Get to know teenagers’ interests and build the lessons correspondingly. In case the students behave well at the lesson and do all the tasks, you may analyze and listen to their favourite song as in this Skyeng video. Of course, the students should know in advance that their good work at the lesson will be appreciated at the end of it. Moreover, if the majority of the students are interested in playing certain computer game (e.g. Minecraft, Fortnight), you may study specific vocabulary using part of the game (e.g. part of the house using Minecraft, or how to give directions using Fortnight – see the picture) and children can play the game (they can do this even in class) describing what part they are currently building.
  

  

Include exciting speaking and mingling activities. As we have already mentioned, take into account students’ interests and also their abilities. You can find effective mingling activities here and read about effective teen collaboration.

• Create short-term goals. Most teenagers, in contrast to adults, do not plan their life for many years ahead and one year at school lasts extremely long for them. Therefore, to show students that they move forward and improve their language skills it is vital to create short-term goals (for a month or a quarter of the year). You may use projects to demonstrate that students have mastered certain topic during the time of project development.
• Use humour. For teenagers, it is crucial to know that their teacher is not a robot. Some jokes can even help you to deeper understand a certain grammatical topic. For example, this joke can build a deeper understanding of the verb ‘to be’ in Present Simple.
  

Teacher: Tell me a sentence that starts with an «I».

Student: “I” is the…

Teacher: Stop! Never put ‘is’ after an «I». Always put ‘am’ after an «I».

Student: OK. “I” am the ninth letter of the alphabet.