Hello, everybody!
My name is Sherrey and I have recently acquired a job in Spain, where I currently live, as an ESL teacher for very young kids, most of them are between five and six years old. My problem is that I have zero experience teaching kids. I have extensive experience in taking care of children, but never with an educational purpose. I often get lost in the classroom and sometimes it feels like they´re running things, not me, the teacher. I suppose my real question is; Can anybody help me? Maybe with some online resources, or just personal experience. I really don´t want to feel like I am the only one who´s felt lost as a first-time teacher.

Thanks

Sherrey - Welcome to the forums!

Don't worry. It's pretty common to just be thrown into this (teaching ESL/EFL.) However, there are a lot of resources on the Web to help. I have an ESL curriculum you can follow or just use as a reference. There are some podcasts on teaching ESL that you can listen to online or download and listen to on a music player. They are a little like talk radio where another teacher and I discuss various topics like teaching children vs teaching adults and teaching phonics for example.

In the forums here, there are a lot of ideas, but if you can post what you plan to do (what you are going to teach and what you want the students to learn,) we can offer you more concrete advice for that lesson plan. For example "I plan to teach animals and I want the students to be able to ask and say, 'What's this?' 'It's a rabbit.' Does anyone have a good activity to help them practice this? The class is for a group of 6-8 beginner children in Spain, 5-6 year old." It's good to add the students' ages and the number of students. Activities will vary depending on the student's age, class size, and level.