In this article, we'll cover what content we offer and teaching strategies we suggest for young learners.
Generally, Off2Class is designed for adolescents and above, that being said, it is quite an expansive tool and you can likely find a good fit for using it with your young learners. Here's what we would recommend:
- Consider using our Placement test (the grammar portion only)
- Consider setting the student interface language into the student's home language (when setting up the student)
- Student and teacher should be synchronous prior to the student kicking off on the Placement test
- The teacher should reinforce the 'do not guess on the test' guidance to the student. Tell them to select 'I don't know' if they don't know the answer - this will shorten the test and make the results more meaningful (see # 2 below)
- Provide homework and lessons based on the student's Gap Analysis in #1
- Don't overload the student (5-10 assignments is plenty)
- Student and teacher should be synchronous prior to the student kicking off a session of activities (at least for the first one or two attempts)
- Reinforce the need to use the 'Lesson Slides' button in the HW and review the grammar point before kicking off AND show how to use the right-click 'Google Translate' function on the slides
- Reinforce to the student that even though it's asynchronous, they are 'there for them' as a coach if they need help while going through the activity
- Here is a list of Young Learner-friendly thematic lessons focusing on the Speaking Activities, Reading Activities, Vocabulary and Functional Language that can be drawn upon for traditional O2C format 'synchronous lesson followed by HW' or flipped approach 'straight to HW' which is especially useful for the Speaking Activities and Reading Activities.