Great question! The key with teaching children is that they have to see the work laid out for them as anything but; it should be fun for them to get through each step as they progress. Each child is different. While one may prefer working from paper books, another may find a tablet more engaging and this is something you will know best and if not then go ahead and observe to find out!
Once you are sure about this, you can think about the resources themselves. Whether it’s paper books or a digital medium, imagery and stories are what help children stay engaged and keep at what they start. You will also want to keep grading in mind; that is material with language which is appropriate to the level of the learner. This makes taking in and keeping up with the information easier and also acts as an indicator of progress over time.
As a starting point, the BBC Learning English app has a dedicated ‘Teaching children’ section with ready-made material which includes a transcript. The ‘Learn with Drama’ section is also appropriate for children. You can find these in the programmes area. You could for example play a clip once and then ask a few questions about the story itself to help with comprehension. Then you could let them listen again to fill in any gaps in understanding. You could then focus on vocabulary and ask them about the vocabulary that comes up in the clip. Again, you would play this once more for them to listen for and hear this vocabulary. You could then do the same for grammar. When using the pre-made materials be careful not to jump ahead too fast as that might be discouraging for them. The grammar section of the same app for example is geared towards higher levels and may not be suitable just yet.
Something to keep in mind is repetition. So if you for example completed a clip at the beginning of the week, the rest of the week would be spent making references to the topic, vocabulary and grammar from that episode in areas other than English learning. Also, something more that you could do is to come back to the material altogether. So if after four months you completed the ‘Teaching children’ section , you could revisit this again and if not the whole section then the key lessons you saw the most value in. This would consolidate their learning and further give them confidence to use what they’d learnt.
By the way, talking your children through the parts they find hard will help build a mental habit and help them see the tougher areas in their studies as a normal part of growth as opposed to barriers. This will further build up their confidence and be foundational to the way they approach their studies in the long term. Also, why not keep a note of the areas of difficulty so that you can test them at a later stage to see if they’ve truly grasped the main concepts?
