First Class Anxiety

The first class. A lot of people, when moving abroad to teach English, get really excited about their new location. You might dream of all of the day trips and weekend travel that you’ll be able to do. But what makes a lot of new teachers nervous is thinking about that first class. What will the school be like? What will they expect from me? And the kids? Rest assured, these feelings are normal.

There is no one answer to all of these questions. Each school, administration, and group of students will be different. When you get there, you will be able to start answering these questions as you figure out your role in the classroom. But until then, what do you do?

Start planning your first class. You can do this without knowing much about your school, because the first class will be about you. What you will need to know about your school, is the age range. From there, you can create something adaptable to each level.

First Class Introductions

The biggest asset for your first class will be your students’ curiosity. They don’t know you, but they’re forming opinions in their minds. Use that. Rather than spending that first class talking about your students, you can engage their curiosity. Don’t tell them about yourself. Ask them what they think.  It’s a great way to assess what they already know.

Countries and Nationalities

Lets take a look at a few slides from my first class presentation. I have used this with every level of ESO and Bachiller. I like to start with an image of flags from different English speaking countries:

Point at the first flag and ask “What country is this?” Do the same for each flag. After they have named each flag, ask them “Where do you think I’m from?” Have students raise their hands to answer. If they say Canada, you can say “No, I’m not Canadian” or “Yes, I’m Canadian.”

This first slide will test for prior knowledge about countries and flags. Your response will review nationality. Finding out where you’re from will satisfy their curiosity.

Cardinal Directions

The second slide is even more fun. Once they learn that I’m from the United States, I show them a map of my country:

I ask them: “How many states are there in my country?” If they know, they’ll answer immediately. If not, they might start counting, which will take longer, but is OK.

“Good, there are 50 states. Which state do you think is MY state?” It is important to have them raise their hands, if you don’t want to hear 10 states called out at once. The first guess is usually California.

“No, I’m not from California. My state is EAST of California. What way is east?” Draw a compass rose on the board and put “east” on the right. Ask if they know the other directions and put the answers on the board. Then continue the game of narrowing down which state is yours.

EDIT: Extension Idea – If they guess your state right away, it’s less fun. What you can do is turn it into a game of Mystery State. You say “I’m thinking of a state,” and they ask you questions, narrowing it down until they guess the right one. You can even call a student up to lead Mystery State after you have finished your example.

Descriptions and Comparisons

When they finally land on “Michigan,” I ask them what they know about Michigan. Usually it’s nothing. I will tell them “We’re going to watch a video about Michigan in the Autumn. See if it is similar to the Basque Country, or if it is very different.”

After the video, I’ll ask for examples of what they saw, and write them on the board. Then I will have them compare it to their region.

I really love this series of videos by Pure Michigan, and I’ve used videos from other seasons for different lessons throughout the year.

Reading Maps

By now, they should have a pretty good idea that Michigan has a lot of water, so I’ll show them a close up map:

Next I’ll ask if anyone knows why these lakes are important. They may or may not know what the Great Lakes are, and you can decide how much background to give, according to their level. If you want to keep it simple, you can just say that it means we have a lot of beaches.

After that, I’ll hold up my hands in the shape of the map, and tell them that people in Michigan often say where they’re from by using their hands:

Referring back to the map, I’ll say “Detroit is HERE. Lansing is HERE. Where is Kalamazoo? Show me with your hands. Good. Where is Marquette?” You can do this s long as they’re interested. To change it up, you can point somewhere on your hand and say “Where is this?” and have them search for the city on the map.

Next, I’ll show them where I’m from on my hand. “I’m from here. It is called Kinde, but you don’t see it on the map. Why do you think it isn’t on the map?” Here, you should be trying to elicit the answer “Because it’s small.” Then I’ll ask them how many people they think live in Kinde, and say “higher” or “lower” until someone gets it right.

Spoiler: there are 448 people in Kinde, Michigan.

Finding Clues in an Image

With this slide, I like to ask them what they see in Kinde. The first thing they usually say is “a restaurant” and I’ll ask how they know. The clue is that it’s called The Pasta House, and pasta is a food. I might tell them a bit about how I used to work there in high school. It’s not as common for high school students to have after school jobs here, so that might be of interest.

Further Discussion

My one regret is that I did not take my own photos of my hometown before moving to Spain. I ended up using images of Detroit as a time filler, because there is not much online about my town. I did, however, recently find a fantastic Instagram account that posts on the beauty of Michigan. If you find yourself lacking pictures for your presentation, you could pull up something similar and have students describe what they see.



Here are a couple of fun slides included for Detroit:

These are just a few ideas for how to plan your first class. If you have younger students, it might be a good idea to use a lot more images of things like family members and pets. For older students, however, your first class is a good way to use their natural curiosity to help you gauge what they already know. Seeing what you’re working with will help you make any new plans going forward.

What are some other things you could include in a first class introduction presentation that will help assess and engage students?