Teaching young learners: all just fun and games?

Jill Leighton
Children sat at desks in a classroom, with one in the middle smiling with her hand up
Reading time: 5 minutes

We want lots of fun in our lessons, with a good balance of activities and games with strong educational value. But in my opinion, today’s young learners need more than just fun and games to stay motivated. Fun and games can quickly become meaningless and boring for some students.

How do we create fun and engaging lessons for young learners aged 6-14?

  • Have a strong relationship with your students. Know about their natural talents, their weaker points and where they are in their development.
  • Encourage them to be active learners and engage them in learning that is meaningful to all of them. E.g. through project work.
  • Provide opportunities for students to use technology and develop success skills. E.g. collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity and self-learning.

Most teachers agree that we have to assume the responsibility of preparing students for life as well as helping them to acquire a language – and this is what I aim to demonstrate in this blog. Using , I want to demonstrate how you can learn more about your students and care for individual needs in one classroom.

The students will also learn about themselves and their classmates. They will acquire vocabulary and language (at their level) in a dynamic way and create a project to explore their interests and demonstrate their talents. They will use technology and develop their success skills. Assessment will be fun and engaging. I hope you will be able to adapt the ideas and put them into practice with children aged 6-14.

Howard Gardner’s Model of Multiple Intelligences

prompts us to ask: How is this child intelligent? He identified eight different types of intelligence which guide the way students learn:

  • Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence (Word Smart)
  • Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (Maths Smart)
  • Spatial Intelligence (Picture Smart)
  • Musical Intelligence (Music Smart)
  • Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (Body Smart)
  • Naturalistic-Environmentalist Intelligence (Nature Smart)
  • Interpersonal Intelligence (People Smart)
  • Intrapersonal Intelligence (Self-Smart)
  • (He later went on to identify Existential Intelligence – Life Smart, and Pedagogical Intelligence -Teacher Smart)

Lesson 1: Outline the student’s learning goals

Explain to the students that they are going to learn about Howard Gardner’s Model of Multiple Intelligences and that you want them to achieve learning goals on completion of the project. Write the goals on a poster and discuss them with your students. Take a digital photo of the poster to use during the assessment.

Student learning goals – you will be able to:

  • Identify different intelligences and what they mean. Name eight different intelligences you have
  • Communicate ideas clearly through a project to demonstrate your talents and interests
  • Use your success skills more effectively.

Tip: Video parts of lesson 1, especially discussion of the learning goals, to use as part-assessment and reflection on completion of the project.

What do you know about the Multiple Intelligences? How are you smart?

  • Ask children what they know about multiple intelligences. Teach key language and vocabulary as necessary, depending on level.
  • Ask, “What does it mean be intelligent?” (They will probably say, good grades, be good at maths, English, reading, writing, computers...)
  • Tell them being intelligent or smart (get the younger children to repeat the word smart several times) isn’t only about getting good grades. Ask them to think of more ways to be smart.
  • Elicit the eight ways to be smart according to Gardner. (You may need to mime). E.g. mime playing the piano or clap a rhythm to elicit Music Smart.
  • Discuss what the different intelligences mean. (E.g. Word Smart (Linguistic Intelligence): you like reading, writing or speaking, you are probably good at languages…)
  • Teach career vocabulary associated with the different intelligences. (E.g. Word Smart: journalist, teacher, lawyer, editor, TV announcer, web editor.)

Lesson 2: Find out your smarts quiz

Tell students they are going to do a quiz to discover how they are smart. Model each stage of the activity and do the quiz with them to find out about your own strengths. Give each student a piece of paper.

  • Take your paper and show the students how to fold it into eight sections, then unfold it and draw lines along the folds to make a grid.
  • Write the different smarts in each section. (Use small handwriting to leave room to illustrate each smart with a picture).
  • Give a picture dictation to illustrate each smart. Here are some examples:

Word Smart:Draw a dictionary and children reading, writing and speaking.

Logic/Number Smart: Draw sums on a computer, a scientist with test tube.

Music Smart: Draw children singing and playing musical instruments.

Body Smart: Draw children playing a sport, dancing or cooking.

Nature Smart:Draw trees, animals, insects, child watering a plant.

Spatial/Picture Smart: Draw children drawing, painting or taking photos and a pilot in a plane.

People Smart:Draw a child helping or leading a group or a group of children holding hands.

Self-Smart: Draw children keeping a journal, researching on a computer, or meditating.

Encourage students to order their smarts from 1-8. For example, if you love music, write number 1 in the Music Smart section and continue to 8 in order of preference. (You may wish to model this first and order your smarts from 1-8 and then encourage the children to order their smarts.)

After the quiz

  • Encourage students to compare and discuss their results. Collect the papers and make notes about each student’s results. This will help you reach all your students when planning activities.
  • Explain that we have all the intelligences in different degrees and that all of the intelligences are equal (no intelligence is better than another). Also point out that it is important to know our strengths in order to help in all subjects. (E.g. a music smart student who finds maths challenging may want to sing multiplication tables). Remind students that we usually use several intelligences to do something and we can explore and develop all our smarts.

Tip: Video lesson 2 to use as part of assessment.

Lesson 3: Beginning the project

Encourage the students to create a project for enjoyment. Explain that you want them to collaborate in groups that share the same smarts and interests and using their creativity you want them come up with an interesting topic to explore. (Remind students to concentrate on developing their success skills when they are working with others and mention that you will also be monitoring this as part of the assessment).

Organize the students into groups of no more than five students in each. Give students time to brainstorm in their groups and come up with the best topic for the project, using their critical thinking skills. (E.g. Picture Smart students may decide to create a project about a famous artist, such as Salvador Dali).

You may wish to give each student a (Know, Want-to-know, and Learned) to complete during the project process, asking questions such as: What do you know? What do you want to know? What have you learned?

Lesson 4: Planning the project

Inform students about the timing of the project. Encourage each group to make a project mind map, which will encourage them to be more creative and organized.

Remind all the groups to keep the following questions in mind:

  • What are you going to do/make? (Presentation, PowerPoint, website, video, posters.)
  • How will you research it? (Internet, tech tools, library.)
  • How will you delegate responsibilities?
  • How will you check that your audience has understood the message of your project? What questions will you ask?

Decide on how many lessons are needed to prepare the project and how much will be done in school or at home, depending on the age groups and timing.

Encourage the students to share their work with the rest of the class (or in assembly.)

Tip: Video the different groups sharing their work.

Can assessment also be fun and engaging?

Yes, it can; here are some tips and suggestions.

  • Show the videos you have recorded and ask the students to compare and contrast their knowledge in Lesson 1 and how it developed over the lessons. Encourage them to observe and comment on their success skills.
  • Display the photo of the Student Learning Goals poster from Lesson 1. Get the students to self-assess and decide whether they have achieved the goals that were set in Lesson 1. (You may wish to give the students three small pieces of colored paper: red to represent I understand quite well, orange to represent I understand well and green to represent I understand very well). Ask: Can you identify the different intelligences and say what they mean? Encourage the students to hold up a colored piece of paper according to their understanding. (Make a mental note of all red pieces of paper to be ready to give extra help to those students). Check understanding by getting several students to answer the question.
  • Get the children to reflect on the learning experience. What have they learned about the different intelligences? How can they develop weaker points using their strengths to help them? Can they use all eight intelligences inside and outside school? Did they manage to get along well with their classmates? Did they communicate the message of their project so that the audience understood?
  • Give individual feedback to each student. E.g. congratulate them on their attitude and effort or identify areas for improvement: “You managed to use vocabulary and language effectively when you shared your project, we understood your message perfectly.” Or “You need to work on being more collaborative.” “You weren’t on task during the project.” “How do you think you can improve that?”
  • Ask students to give you feedback on the activities they enjoyed. Get them to draw happy and sad face cards. Go through all the activities and get the students to show a happy or sad face according to whether or not they liked the activity. E.g. say “Did you like the ‘Find out your smarts’ quiz?” and ask them to hold up the happy or sad face depending on whether they liked the activity or not.

Create fun lessons to engage all your students keeping this model in mind: traditional activities such as short fun activities and games + Howard Gardner’s model of Multiple Intelligences + PBL (Project Based Learning) + success skills + meaningful assessment. Enjoy the results with your students.

How the Global Scale of English can help

TheGlobal Scale of English (GSE) Learning Objectives for provides ready-made learning objectives that can help with planning curriculums and lesson and benchmarking learners’ progress. They are great for young learners because they describe language functions in a granular way, enabling educators to give their learners credit for small achievements. They also clearly show the language functions to target next in order to take learners to the next level.

Explore our GSE teaching resources

Read our blog posts 'Young learners of English deserve more' and 'Effective classroom management routines for very young learners'.

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    The ethical challenges of AI in education

    By Billie Jago
    Reading time: 5 minutes

    AI is revolutionising every industry, and language learning is no exception. AI tools can provide students with unprecedented access to things like real-time feedback, instant translation and AI-generated texts, to name but a few.

    AI can be highly beneficial to language education by enhancing our students’ process of learning, rather than simply being used by students to ‘demonstrate’ a product of learning. However, this is easier said than done, and given that AI is an innovative tool in the classroom, it is crucial that educators help students to maintain authenticity in their work and prevent AI-assisted ‘cheating’. With this in mind, striking a balance between AI integration and academic integrity is critical.

    How AI impacts language learning

    Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini have made it easier than ever for students to refine and develop their writing. However, these tools also raise concerns about whether submitted texts are student-produced, and if so, to what extent. If students rely on text generation tools instead of their own skills, our understanding of our students’ abilities may not reflect their true proficiency.

    Another issue is that if students continue to use AI for a skill they are capable of doing on their own, they’re likely to eventually lose that skill or become significantly worse at it.

    These points create a significant ethical dilemma:

    • How does AI support learning, or does it (have the potential to) replace the learning process?
    • How can educators differentiate between genuine student ability and AI-assisted responses?

    AI-integration strategies

    There are many ways in which educators can integrate AI responsibly, while encouraging our learners to do so too.

    1.Redesign tasks to make them more ‘AI-resistant’

    No task can be completely ‘AI-resistant’, but there are ways in which teachers can adapt coursebook tasks or take inspiration from activities in order to make them less susceptible to being completed using AI.

    For example:

    • Adapt writing tasks to be hyperlocal or context-specific. Generative AI is less likely to be able to generate texts that are context-bound. Focus on local issues and developments, as well as school or classroom-related topics. A great example is having students write a report on current facilities in their classroom and suggestions for improving the learning environment.
    • Focus on the process of writing rather than the final product. Have students use mind maps to make plans for their writing, have them highlight notes from this that they use in their text and then reflect on the steps they took once they’ve written their piece.
    • Use multimodal learning. Begin a writing task with a class survey, debate or discussion, then have students write up their findings into a report, essay, article or other task type.
    • Design tasks with skill-building at the core. Have students use their critical thinking skills to analyse what AI produces, creatively adapt its output and problem solve by fact-checking AI-generated text.

    2.Use AI so that students understand you know how to use it

    Depending on the policies in your institution, if you can use AI in the classroom with your students, they will see that you know about different AI tools and their output. A useful idea is to generate a text as a class, and have students critically analyse the AI-generated text. What do they think was done well? What could be improved? What would they have done differently?

    You can also discuss the ethical implications of AI in education (and other industries) with your students, to understand their view on it and better see in what situations they might see AI as a help or a hindrance.

    3.Use the GSE Learning Objectives to build confidence in language abilities

    Sometimes, students might turn to AI if they don’t know where to start with a task or lack confidence in their language abilities. With this in mind, it’s important to help your students understand where their language abilities are and what they’re working towards, with tangible evidence of learning. This is where the GSE Learning Objectives can help.

    The Global Scale of English (GSE) provides detailed, skill-specific objectives at every proficiency level, from 10 to 90. These can be used to break down complex skills into achievable steps, allowing students to see exactly what they need to do to improve their language abilities at a granular level.

    • Start by sharing the GSE Learning Objectives with students at the start of class to ensure they know what the expectations and language goals are for the lesson. At the end of the lesson, you can then have students reflect on their learning and find evidence of their achievement through their in-class work and what they’ve produced or demonstrated.
    • Set short-term GSE Learning Objectives for the four key skills – speaking, listening, reading and writing. That way, students will know what they’re working towards and have a clear idea of their language progression.
  • Students sat ina library studying with laptops in front of them chatting to eachother

    Teaching engaging exam classes for teenagers

    By Billie Jago
    Reading time: 4 minutes

    Teachers all over the world know just how challenging it can be to catch their students’ interest and keep them engaged - and it’s true whether you’re teaching online or in a real-world classroom.

    Students have different learning motivations; some may be working towards their exam because they want to, and some because they have to, and the repetitiveness of going over exam tasks can often lead to boredom and a lack of interest in the lesson.

    So, what can we do to increase students’ motivation and add variation to our classes to maintain interest?

    Engage students by adding differentiation to task types

    We first need to consider the four main skills and consider how to differentiate how we deliver exam tasks and how we have students complete them.

    Speaking - A communicative, freer practice activity to encourage peer feedback.

    Put students into pairs and assign them as A and B. Set up the classroom so pairs of chairs are facing each other - if you’re teaching online, put students in individual breakaway rooms.

    Hand out (or digitally distribute) the first part of a speaking exam, which is often about ‘getting to know you’. Have student A’s act as the examiner and B’s as the candidate.

    Set a visible timer according to the exam timings and have students work their way through the questions, simulating a real-life exam. Have ‘the examiners’ think of something their partner does well and something they think they could improve. You can even distribute the marking scheme and allow them to use this as a basis for their peer feedback. Once time is up, ask student B’s to move to the next ‘examiner’ for the next part of the speaking test. Continue this way, then ask students to switch roles.

    Note: If you teach online and your teaching platforms allow it, you can record the conversations and have students review their own performances. However, for privacy reasons, do not save these videos.

    Listening – A student-centered, online activity to practice listening for detail or summarising.

    Ask pairs of students to set up individual online conference call accounts on a platform like Teams or Zoom.

    Have pairs call each other without the video on and tell each other a story or a description of something that has happened for their partner to listen to. This could be a show they’ve watched, an album they’ve listened to, or a holiday they’ve been on, for example. Ask students to write a summary of what their partner has said, or get them to write specific information (numbers, or correctly spelt words) such as character or song names or stats, for example. Begin the next class by sharing what students heard. Students can also record the conversations without video for further review and reflection afterwards.

    Writing –A story-writing group activity to encourage peer learning.

    Give each student a piece of paper and have them draw a face at the top of the page. Ask them to give a name to the face, then write five adjectives about their appearance and five about their personality. You could also have them write five adjectives to describe where the story is set (place).

    Give the story’s opening sentence to the class, e.g. It was a cold, dark night and… then ask students to write their character’s name + was, and then have them finish the sentence. Pass the stories around the class so that each student can add a sentence each time, using the vocabulary at the top of the page to help them.

    Reading –A timed, keyword-based activity to help students with gist.

    Distribute a copy of a text to students. Ask them to scan the text to find specific words that you give them, related to the topic. For example, if the text is about the world of work, ask students to find as many jobs or workplace words as they can in the set amount of time. Have students raise their hands or stand up when they have their answers, award points, and have a whole class discussion on where the words are and how they relate to the comprehension questions or the understanding of the text as a whole.

    All 4 skills –A dynamic activity to get students moving.

    Set up a circuit-style activity with different ‘stations’ around the classroom, for example:

    • Listening
    • Reading
    • Writing (1 paragraph)
    • Use of English (or grammar/vocabulary).

    Set a timer for students to attempt one part from this exam paper, then have them move round to the next station. This activity can be used to introduce students to certain exam tasks, or a way to challenge students once they’ve built their confidence in certain areas.

  • A teachet stood in front of a class in front of a board, smiling at his students.

    How to assess your learners using the GSE Assessment Frameworks

    By Billie Jago
    Reading time: 4 minutes

    With language learning, assessing both the quality and the quantity of language use is crucial for accurate proficiency evaluation. While evaluating quantity (for example the number of words written or the duration of spoken production) can provide insights into a learner's fluency and engagement in a task, it doesn’t show a full picture of a learner’s language competence. For this, they would also need to be evaluated on the quality of what they produce (such as the appropriateness, accuracy and complexity of language use). The quality also considers factors such as grammatical accuracy, lexical choice, coherence and the ability to convey meaning effectively.

    In order to measure the quality of different language skills, you can use the Global Scale of English (GSE) assessment frameworks.

    Developed in collaboration with assessment experts, the GSE Assessment Frameworks are intended to be used alongside the GSE Learning Objectives to help you assess the proficiency of your learners.

    There are two GSE Assessment Frameworks: one for adults and one for young learners.

    What are the GSE Assessment Frameworks?

    • The GSE Assessment Frameworks are intended to be used alongside the GSE Learning Objectives to help teachers assess their learners’ proficiency of all four skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing).
    • The GSE Learning Objectives focus on the things a learner can do, while the GSE Assessment Frameworks focus on how well a learner can do these things.
    • It can help provide you with examples of what proficiencies your learners should be demonstrating.
    • It can help teachers pinpoint students' specific areas of strength and weakness more accurately, facilitating targeted instruction and personalized learning plans.
    • It can also help to motivate your learners, as their progress is evidenced and they can see a clear path for improvement.

    An example of the GSE Assessment Frameworks

    This example is from the Adult Assessment Framework for speaking.

    As you can see, there are sub-skills within speaking (andfor the other three main overarching skills – writing, listening and reading). Within speaking, these areproductionandfluency, spoken interaction, language range andaccuracy.

    The GSE range (and corresponding CEFR level) is shown at the top of each column, and there are descriptors that students should ideally demonstrate at that level.

    However, it is important to note that students may sit across different ranges, depending on the sub-skill. For example, your student may show evidence of GSE 43-50 production and fluency and spoken interaction, but they may need to improve their language range and accuracy, and therefore sit in a range of GSE 36-42 for these sub-skills.