3 – day 1 procedures and new students

The induction for all staff showed you how Day 1 of courses works in general.  If you need to refresh your memory of that section click here.  The page will open in a new window so simply close it to come back.

The first day of courses is always the busiest but students arrive later in the course and not necessarily all on the same day or at the same time.

It is important that new students are made to feel welcome in your class and they get the same attention and information that you gave to the new class on day 1 of your teaching contract.

This page is designed to help you do that.

Testing

Essentially, we have a two-part testing procedure and you will be involved in it at some time – probably more than once.

A grammar and lexis test.  This is a traditional pencil and paper test.  It takes about an hour to do and we have transparent overlays to check the answers and record a score for each student.  It is, naturally, very important that this scoring is done accurately.

An oral interaction test. While the students are doing the written test, you will administer and score this.  You conduct the test with pairs of students sharing your attention equally.  The test consists of a set of questions to put to the kids which gradually rise in difficulty.  When communication breaks down at, e.g., Level B2, you record the student's level as Level B1. This is a very abbreviated sample of the test.  In reality, each section has 10 or so suggested questions.  Don't use them all!

The levels on the right are familiar to you if you have been paying attention during the last section of this induction process.  Check the syllabus you downloaded there for more information.  Briefly, the levels for the test mean this:

You don't need to remember all this because it will be on your instruction sheets.

Most of our students fall into the range from A2 to C1 but you shouldn't be afraid to use all the grades if you think that's appropriate.

What happens to arrivals outside main changeover days?

In most centres, there are predictable days when lots of students leave and lots arrive.  That's probably when you'll get involved in testing.

From time to time, however, small groups (or not so small ones) will arrive at other times and someone else will have done the testing.  These students will be allocated to appropriate classes so you'll need to be prepared for newcomers.

Make sure you make these students welcome.

Consider the following:

	Where to place them in the class – make sure they are not left out on the edge just because those are the only available seats
	Who you place them next to in terms of working relationships – when you are doing pairwork, are their partners going to be supportive?
	Whether a recap of some of the things you have done recently would be helpful, especially if it will inform work to come – get the other students to tell the new arrivals about the work covered, this will be excellent revision for them
	In your questioning involve the new arrivals as soon as you can – offer up a few easy questions for them to break the ice – avoid involving them immediately with a question that they may actually not know the answer to
	You may well have had name holders on the desk for everyone to get to know each other at the start of the class – put them back
	Perhaps you could get all of the students to introduce somebody else in the class (the person on their right?) briefly
	Find time at the end of the lesson to have a word with new students and check that they feel comfortable in the class.  Find out a bit about them, reassure them and make sure that they are involved with other students in the class at the end of their teaching day and know where to go next.

There's no test for this section in itself (but it will be included in the next one) but you should be sure you've absorbed the most important information.

	Do you know what's in the placement tests?
	Do you know what your role is on Day 1 of a new course?
	Do you know how to treat newcomers to your classes?

If you are feeling up to it, and think you need it for reference, you can download the whole oral test sheet as a PDF document here.  You don't have to.

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