First days at a new school

Introduction

Every child starting at a new school experiences feelings of apprehension and nervousness. And of course, these feelings can be much stronger if the child is not a native-speaker of the main language of the school.

Below are some suggestions on how you can make your child's first weeks at the school as comfortable and successful as possible.

Talk with your child

@ One important way that you can help your child to prepare for the new school start is to talk with her. Tell her that feelings of anxiousness are normal and usually disappear very quickly. ~ Most teachers are experienced in helping new students settle down and feel comfortable in a short time.

Make sure they have some English

@@ It is useful if students have at least a little basic English before they arrive in school. ~~ This will help them understand some of the things that the teacher and other students say to them.

For example, your child should be able to say and write a few sentences about herself, family and interests. She should know some basic vocabulary such as the numbers, times, colours, days and months etc.

Students starting at at the school with higher levels of English should be ready to talk more extensively about themselves and their previous education. They should also be able to talk and write about books they have read or experiences they have had.

A sure way to learn some of the necessary words for getting off to a good start is to do the vocabulary exercises in the School section of the Topic-based vocabulary drop-down menu on the Vocabulary index.

Collect mother-tongue materials

It is very helpful if your child can read up about some of the subject content in his or her own language. For example, an ESL student in a grade 8 history class will find it much easier to understand the work in progress about the American Revolution if she can get background information about this period through readings in the mother tongue.

For this reason, it is good to find out what your child will be studying in the first few weeks in her new classes such as science or geography. You and your child could then read together some articles about these topics.

Wikipedia is a good source of information in the mother tongue, but other native language portals such as Naver (Korean) are good places to start a search for information.

Read more about the importance of the mother tongue.

Buy a good dictionary

@@@ It is very important that your child has a good dictionary and brings it to every lesson. ~~~ There are many excellent electronic dictionaries now available that not only give definitions and examples, but also pronounce the typed-in word. Older, more advanced students should have a good monolingual English dictionary that is kept at home.

Conclusion

I am confident that your child will soon feel happy and comfortable at her new school, and will start to make good progress in English and the other subjects. Please make it clear to her that the ESL teacher is there to help in all aspects of adjusting to school life - not just in learning English!

Here is a brief video on the same topic.