Teaching Tips: Resuming Classes After a Break

Breaks are an important part of the learning process as they offer a chance for both students and teachers to rest and recharge. It is normal after a break for it to take some time to become familiar again with words and structures that you and your student(s) had been working on before the break. One great way to incorporate meaningful review and also see where your student is after a break is to – talk about the break!

Below are some questions/prompts you can use to talk about the break. This will be a fluency-based activity, however, you may also want to write down what your student says so that they can visually become familiar with the language again. You can either write down what they say word-for-word and then come back after the fluency activity to encourage them to self-correct any significant mistakes with grammar structures. Or, you can make this more of a modeling activity and write down the ideas they express but with the correct grammar structures. Another option would be to make this a purely fluency-based activity and just take your own notes about which structures your student will need to spend time reviewing in the near future.

Be sure that you also answer the questions and model the correct structures, too, so that your student can find out about your break as well! You can also encourage your student to ask you questions in order to get more practice with question structures.

This type of activity has several goals:

• Help students feel more comfortable and confident listening to and using conversational English after a period of time when they may not have used it as much
• Give you an idea of what kinds of structures and vocabulary your student may need to review before moving on in the material
• Allow you and your student to share relevant information about your lives in English and get to know each other better

Questions or prompts to use after a break:

• What did you do during the break?
• Did you practice any English over the break?
• (After the holidays) Did you and your family celebrate any holidays? How did you celebrate?
• What was your favorite part of the break?