Job Discussion Forums

[pauldowa]

I will be teaching high school students in a Shenzhen public school this fall and would appreciate advice concerning Lesson Planning. In particular, I would like to learn from experienced teachers what resources they use on a regular basis ie: books, websites.
I am especially interested in ideas for the initial 2 or 3 weeks of class.
Thank You.

[nolefan]

you didn't specify what subject you will be teaching but I'll assume it's Oral.

This website has a pretty decent collection of games, materials and other useful stuff.

about.com has a pretty decent ESL section also.

My favorite tool is wikipedia.com , a free online encyclopedia.

[Roger]

The school will most likely provide you with some material, but their textbooks often are either idiotic, or way too high for their students.
Also, Chinese students don't function the way we wish they would - you can't single out one of them to answer a question from you; they answer as a group, chorussing.

I recommend you acquire some aide of your own, for instance, I have here "101 WOrd Games" buy George P. McCallum.
This is a collection of vocabulary games, number games, spelling games, conversation games, writing games, role play and dramatics, for different levels.

In some classes, I found students cooperative enough to teach them new things by lecturing them while they took notes on climate, geography, clothing, whatever. You know, you can teach them other subjects using English as a medium of instruction; part of my lectures consisted of dictating whole paragraphs, but it was worth the effort and I enjoyed students coming up to me with their notebooks for corrections.
For instance, teaching them about the weather and climate took me over 4 two-period lessons, but at the end of that thing individual students were able to tell me a little about the most common weather phenomena in their home province.

I hope your classes are not going to be too large; up to 40 is manageable, but I had 60 last term.

You could also make the upcoming Peking Olympic games a topic of instruction and discussion. Just don't expect each and everyone to talk freely. Encourage the performers and achievers, ignore the laggards and slackers!

[yvechina]

bogglesworld.com and englishbanana.com have some great lesson ideas. If you just ask for esl websites on google or another search engine you will be inundated with choices.

[lagerlout2006]

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/job/viewtopic.php?t=11631