Engage Older Kids in Online Learning: Listen and Let them Lead
The best online classroom rewards for older kids encourage students to feel involved in their learning and direct their learning.
Teens, preteens, and older children need to be deeply engaged and self-motivated. They must be invested in their own progress so you must build lesson plans that make this a priority and continue to nurture this throughout.
Engage an Older Kid in Online Classes by really listening
You need to find out the older students’ interests. You need to find out their motivation for learning English.
Is their motivation extrinsic or intrinsic? Are their parents making them like English or do they like to watch English on TV? Is it because they want an A in their school’s English class? Find out.
Older kids have their favorite TV shows, favorite books, and so on. Teens (sometimes) have career paths chosen and already find themselves interested in their identity and how it relates to the wider world.
Think about yourself as a teen. Did you have some nascent political views? Did you work towards your college applications? I know I did. I also know some teens feel lost or overwhelmed and deal with these feelings by “checking out” (think video games or risky behavior). Either way, teens are dealing with a lot of oncoming adult issues and your lessons should reflect this.
Don’t pander to teens. Find out what they want from their classes and then deliver.
Having said all that, here are some successful rewards and activities that I have used with preteen and teen students
The Best Online Classroom Rewards for Older Kids
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
Doodle Journal
Keeping a sketch journal
Draw 3D Tricks of the Eye
Draw an impossible triangle (or draw any complex 3D shape or).
Draw a trompe l’oeil illustration
Vision Board
Make a vision board
Exquisite Corpse Drawing
Make exquisite corpses with an interactive whiteboard
Switch Roles
Flip the script: They are the teacher for the day. They must teach you something you don’t already know.
Origami
Make an origami fortune teller (great for vocabulary such as the seasons)
Dots and Boxes Game
Dots and boxes is a fun cool-down game for older kids. You can take a screenshot of a grid and pull it up on AWW App so you can both draw on the same grid. Every 5 boxes, tell the student they need to make up a new username in the chatbox. It is lots of fun and students are often very creative. My recent student dubbed himself “a block of bread” and “mashed potatoes with fried carrots” at one point.
Would You Rather
Play “Would You Rather“
Two Truths and a Lie
Play “Two truths and a lie” but keep it PG.
Choose your Own Adventure Story
Online Choose your Own Adventure Story
Trivia
There are many online trivia generators. I like using the “Random Trivia Generator.” If you use camera software like Manycam during your class, you can use these websites to compete in fun trivia games for your students.
Tongues Twisters
Time yourself saying tongue twisters.
Silly Expressions
Teach funny English expressions. Teach the kids silly expressions like “raining cats ad dogs”, “piece of cake”, “when pigs fly”, “the apple of my eye”, and so on. Ask your student to explain some funny expressions to you from their native language too. Draw them for even more fun!
Money
This has lots of possibilities. They earn amounts throughout the class.
Would You Rather
Play Would You Rather (the G rated version!) or Roll the Dice with my more advanced students.
Or play a guessing game, like “3 clues.” One person gives three hints about an object and then the student guesses what you are thinking of or looking at.
Hangman
You can play hangman, or a less ghoulish “spaceman” with them. Let them choose a word and I try to guess their word. Also, we sometimes will do crosswords.
Mad libs
Mad libs are great because they help teach grammar and you can adjust them, for any content. It will help students learn nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
In addition, let the pre-teen or teen lead their own learning
With Pre-teens and teens you can have days long projects.
A project can span many days. You could create a pop-up book, for example. You could add one page each class. You could have an *ultimate* tic tac toe game. This is much more complex than a regular tic-tac-toe game. They can last weeks!
An older student may enjoy keeping a journal. Ask them about their day and listen. It is very important to listen to teens. Ask them what they hope their journal could become. Ask them to imagine how it could relate to their every day life.
Interactive Games and Activities
Here are some games you can use for teens in your online classrooms.
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
Use a Web Whiteboard
You can use a shared virtual whiteboard to play Pictionary, hangman, draw collaborative drawings (think corpse), and more. I like to use the AWW APP: Online Whiteboard for Realtime Visual Collaboration
The best way to engage an older student in online learning is to listen and let them lead (when appropriate).
Bottom Line: Teaching teens requires unique approaches for rewards. Find ways to let your student express themselves through the class or reward and show sincere interest in learning about their motivation for learning English, as well as their wider hopes and dreams and future plans. And, remember, if you don’t know what your teenage student likes, you can just ask them!
