Thursday, October 30, 2025
If you’ve ever heard anyone say that teaching adults it much more difficult than teaching children and teenagers, then you’ll know the feeling of rage that builds up inside you when you know this just isn’t true. Very often, newly qualified teachers are given classes of youngers learners to ‘ease them in’ before moving onto classes of older students and higher levels. This approach, however, is often misguided and new teachers can get overwhelmed very easily when having to deal with teaching and the fact that kids and teens can be unpredictable at times. On many teaching training courses, such as CELTA or university courses, you either teach extremely well-behaved adults, or you are supervised teaching younger learners with their own teacher present. It’s only when you enter the classroom for the first time by yourself that you realise it’s down to you to manage the class and teach them what they need to know.
Teaching kids and teens needn’t be anything to be afraid of, but it is something that requires careful thought and planning on the teacher’s part throughout the school year, especially if you are not used to it. In this post, we are going to highlight ten ways that teaching kids and teens is different from teaching adults, and how to go about dealing with these differences in a positive way.
Kids have a shorter concentration span than adults and this means that you really need to consider your lesson stages well at planning stage. Make sure you look at your material and think about how long each activity is going to take and how you are going to break up longer activities so that your students remain engaged and motivated. This doesn’t mean that you have to include lots of short activities throughout the lesson, what it does mean is that you might need to change up the way you are doing a task, or include a part in which the ss get out of their chairs to do an activity. The extra material that comes with the coursebook is great for this, use those flashcards, interactive digital activities, picture books, word toys and soft toys to your advantage and keep the ss on their toes.
If you don’t have a good routine with kids, it doesn’t matter how good your lesson plan or material are, you are going to have a tough time during the class. Kids thrive on routines and they react very well to the familiarity of the classroom environment and the tasks that they have to do on a regular basis. For every lesson that you teach, make sure you follow the same structure and include elements that ss have done before, so that they know how to do them and feel comfortable at these stages. The key to a good routine is consistency, you can’t start with one routine and then mix it up the next week by changing things around. Stick to what you have implemented at the beginning and make sure that ss know what they need to do at each stage of the lesson.
Everyone learns better with strong visual stimuli, but kids really benefit from having a visually engaging lesson which motivates them and keeps them interested in the content. You cannot have kids sitting there with the book open on their table and hope that they are going to pay attention just because. They need things to look at, to touch, to listen to; and this is something that you need to consider when planning your lessons. Think flashcards, posters, images and videos- all of these elements that go with the language you are learning will aid retention and will also keep ss engaged. Coursebooks often come with very visually strong pages, including characters and exciting images for ss to explore. Make the most of these and think about how you can make your lessons as bright and colourful as possible.
When you work with kids, you are a professional, but also a person. Kids look up to you in a way that maybe older ss don’t and you need to be aware of this when it comes to how you act around them and react to what they say. Working with kids also means being silly at times and laughing with them- you cannot do this if you feel uncomfortable and awkward at the front of the class. Much like a clown employs lots of physical humour to keep kids entertained, you need to think about how you use your body and voice and make sure that you are using them effectively. If you look remotely embarrassed about singing or dancing with the kids, they also might feel reluctant to join in. You must be the model that you want ss to follow, and many times, this means leaving any shame you may be feeling at the door.
Pace is very important in kids’ classes, and in order to make sure the pace is appropriate, you need to make sure you are fully present in class. Yes, you may have 100 things to think about and after a long day, it’s hard to look energetic and motivated, but your students need you to be present. What you cannot expect is to sit down behind your desk waiting patiently for ss to finish whilst you have a little rest. You need to put yourself physically amongst the ss so that they know you are there and paying attention and you need to be completely aware of what is going on at all times so you can react accordingly.
If a new teacher were to ask us what our number one tip for teaching teens is, this would be it. Teens really need to feel like you are on their team and one of the most important things you can do at the beginning of the year is to get everyone on side. If they want to be there and they want to do well because of you, then you will have a much easier time throughout the school year. How can you do this? React naturally to what they say, show a genuine interest in what they tell you, ask them questions about their lives, share a little bit of your life with them, say something funny, make references to teen pop culture, the list goes on. Time dedicated to this in each class, builds up trust and a positive relationship little by little, which will make your life so much easier in your lessons.
Teenagers are going through some tough times- they have lots of work to do at school, they have to think seriously about their futures and they are gradually becoming adults and finding out who they are. All of this can mean that you are not always going to get the same amount of energy or the same attitude from your students every lesson. So, you have one day in which a particular student or a whole group of students is a nightmare, and you can’t get anything done. Do you hold that against them in the next lesson and start in the same way you left off in the previous lesson? No, because you are not giving anyone (most importantly, yourself) the chance to move on and get back to where you were before. Grudges don’t get you far in teaching and often end up making you feel bad every time you step into the classroom. So, forgiving and forgetting, especially with volatile teenagers, is advisable.
You may have planned a fantastic lesson for your teens and you’re standing there with blank faces and not much interest on the other side of the room. What do you do? Do you plod on with a lesson that nobody’s enjoying or do you try and salvage it in some way by being flexible? In the case of teenagers, the second option is probably going to be in everyone’s best interests. This doesn’t mean that you have to change everything completely, but it might be worthwhile focussing more on speaking that lesson, or relating the topic to something more engaging for the ss in that moment. Whilst you cannot completely abandon the plan in every lesson you teach, sometimes you can just see that ss are not willing to play ball and a certain amount of flexibility on the teacher’s part is going to help get ss back on track.
This is important for both kids and teens, but one thing’s for sure, you are not going to enjoy your lessons with teens if you don’t let yourself have fun. Some of them come out with great comments and you would be silly not to roll with these and react to them naturally. Not only does this help build a positive environment in the classroom, it also relieves tension and allows for those little ‘human’ moments in class that make us all feel better. If we were all 100% serious, 100% of the time, life would be extremely boring.
Most coursebooks are extremely interesting and it’s worth noting that everything you read in a coursebook is true, so you can really learn a lot. Some teens, however, might disagree with this and you might anticipate that certain parts of the coursebook are not going to be well received by your ss. When you are planning your lessons, pay attention to the topics and consider how you might want to adapt or supplement some of the activities so that they are more relevant to ss. Can you find a video related to the topic that will get them interested? Can you come up with examples using the target language that relate to a topic that interests ss? Can you create questions using the vocabulary that ss really want to ask each other? This doesn’t mean using different material, it means using what you have in the coursebook and personalising it as much as possible to suit your ss’ needs and interests.
There is so much more that we could say about teaching kids and teenagers, and in fact we have said it in our comprehensive online course on this very topic. The YLs Course, is a 24-week online course that has been created by teachers for teachers. Throughout the 20 modules, you will observe real teachers teaching real classes and also hear from industry experts and authors who have a wealth of experience in the field of teaching young learners. If you are interested in the course, you can try the first module for free on our online learning platform.
If it’s something that you are interested in learning more about, then we are offering teachers who have read this blog post 5% discount on the whole course. If you’d like to benefit from this offer, just enter the code BLOGPOST25 when you get to the payment page.
Happy teaching!
