2. Attention span
One of the most salient differences between adults and children is attention span. First, it is important to understand what attention span means. Put children in front of a TV with a favorite cartoon show on and they will stay riveted to their seats for the duration. So, you cannot make a sweeping claim that children have short attention spans! The short attention spans come up only when you present stuff that to them is boring, useless, or too difficult. Since language lessons can at times be difficult for children, your job then is one of making them interesting, lively, and fun. How do you do that?
•Because children are focused on the immediate here and now, activities should be designed to capture their immediate interest.
•A lesson needs to have a variety of activities to keep interest and attention alive.
•A teacher needs to be animated, lively, and enthusiastic about the subject matter. Consider the classroom a stage in which you are the lead actor; your energy will be infectious to others. While you may think that you're overdoing it, children need this exaggeration to keep spirits buoyed and minds alert.
•A sense of humor will go a long way to keep children laughing and learning. Since children's humor is quite different from adults', remember to put yourself in their shoes.

•Children have a lot of natural curiosity. Make sure you tap into that curiosity whenever possible and you will thereby help to maintain attention and focus.
3. Sensory input
Children need to have all five senses stimulated. Your activities should strive to go well beyond the visual and auditory modes that we usually feel are sufficient for a classroom.
oPepper your lessons with physical activity, such as having students act out things (role play), play games, or do Total Physical Response activities.
oProjects and other hands-on activities will go a long way toward helping children to internalize language. Small group science projects, for example, are excellent ways to get them to learn words and structures and to practice meaningful language.
oSensory aids here and there will help children to internalize concepts. The smell of flowers, the touch of plants and fruits, the taste of foods, liberal doses of audio-visual aids like videos, pictures, tapes, music-all these are important elements in children's language teaching.
oRemember that your own nonverbal language is important as children will indeed attend very sensitively to your facial features, gestures, and touching.

4. Affective factors
A common myth is that children are relatively unaffected by the inhibitions that adults find to be such a block to learning. Not so! Children are often innovative in language forms but still have a great many inhibitions. They are extremely sensitive, especially to peers: What do others think of me? What will so-and-so think when I speak in English? Children are in many ways much more fragile than adults. Their egos are still being shaped, and therefore the slightest nuances of communication can be negatively interpreted. Teachers need to help them to overcome such potential barriers to learning.
oHelp your students to laugh with each other at various mistakes that they all make.
oBe patient and supportive, to build self-esteem, yet at the same time be firm in your expectations of students.
oElicit as much oral participation as possible from students, especially the quieter ones, to give them plenty of opportunities for trying things out.
5. Authentic, meaningful language

Children are focused on what this new language can actually be used for right here and now. They are less willing to put up with language that doesn't hold immediate rewards for them. Your classes can ill afford to have an overload of language that is neither authentic nor meaningful.
oChildren are good at sensing language that is not authentic; therefore, "canned" or stilted language will simply not be accepted.
oLanguage needs to be firmly context embedded. Story lines familiar situations and characters, real-life conversations, meaningful purposes in using language-these will establish a context within which language can be received and sent and thereby improve attention and retention. Context reduced language in abstract, isolated, unconnected sentences will be much less readily tolerated by children's minds.
oA whole language approach is essential. Don't break up language into too many bits and pieces or students won't see the relationship to the whole. And stress the interrelationships among the various skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), otherwise they won't see important connections.
It takes a very special person to be able to teach children effectively. Along with all these guidelines, there is a certain intuition that an elementary school teacher develops with increasing months and years of experience. If you don t have the experience, you will, in due course of time. Meanwhile, you must begin somewhere, and these rules of thumb will help.