making sure everyone gets a turn

when working with young kids, it's very important that you are making sure that everyone gets a turn. there are few things worse than the look on a child's face when you're finishing up an activity and they still haven't had a turn.
often with many activities during class time, there's enough time to make sure that every child gets a turn. for example, i always make sure that each child gets a chance to count out 10 objects, or to pick a card from the stack and tell me what it is.
but i have a two activities a day where it's impossible for every child to have a turn. when we do weather, i have a little weather board and we put on a sticker that says "today is..." onto the type of weather that we're having that day. and when we sing the ABC song, i have a cute little star pointer that i use to point to the ABCs. since the song repeats, i always pass my pointer on to a child and let them be the teacher for that round of the song.
i've started keeping a little list by my lesson planner. i've got a column for weather and ABCs with a list of all of my students' names under it. as each child gets a turn doing one thing, i cross their name off. i try to plan it so that i cross off each students name in one activity, before i move on to letting them do the other activity.
this ensures that every child gets a turn to do both and i'm not just always calling on the students who are most actively saying that they want to do it. Tags: esl preschool, teaching tips

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