Job Discussion Forums

[TokyoLiz]

I dropped below radar for a while there because I got placed in a new job at a junior high school, teaching OC and returnees.

The lowest of the returnee kids look like they're only slightly more profficient at speaking and listening as their regular peers. The highest are near native speakers. I've assigned them all a paragraph which I'll get from them tomorrow. I'm expecting that even the near-native speakers are high ESL writers.

The school has me scheduled for five lessons a week with these kids, and no syllabus was provided. To add an extra element of complexity, they're a split class, J2/3.

Any advice about a curriculum?

[Glenski]

Hi Liz, and welcome back.

First advice I would give is to do your best to separate the 2nd year kids from the 3rd year ones. It's early in the term, so perhaps your schedule mastering guru can arrange something. My own school is in pandemonium with its 5th consecutive year of curriculum changes, so I know what I'm talking about.

Teaching mixed levels is bad enough, and you will have to handle that as best you can, but to teach kids from two different grades is ludicrous. Your school should already have different curricula for each grade, and even though you said you didn't have a syllabus, I'm sure someone knows what they should be doing differently. If they claim they don't, force the issue because they SHOULD be working on different goals.

Since you have an OC class, you can work on listening AND speaking skills. Dictation or Dictogloss. Recorded dialogues or speeches that they must ask Q/A with a partner. Song lyrics (Hit Parade Listening is a book I'm going to try this year.) with cloze exercises and vocabulary building. Pronunciation exercises. Preparation for STEP or TOEFL tests. Idioms and phrasal verbs. Got some references for most of these ideas, so PM me if you want to chat more.

[canuck]

[Brooks]

gotta disagree with that. I have taught a few who knew English real well, including one boy who lived in America more than he lived in Japan.
Another girl had a TOEFL score of at least 600.
My school is designated a returnee school by Mombusho. Most returnees tend to live in the greater Tokyo area.

Liz, since I taught returnees at junior high I would say do activities that everyone can do (speaking and writing).
Find the book about multilevel teaching from Cambridge. The author`s name is Hess.

[Celeste]

I like the Cambridge book, Discussions A to Z (there is an intermediate one and an advanced one - you would have to decide which was more appropriate to your class).These books are spiral-bound photocopiables and they come with listening tapes(probably CDs now). I like these books because they have a good range of activities in them, including listening, speaking, readin and it has a few suggested writing assignments as well. The format of the book lends itself to lots of group work. Not all of the topics would be appropriate for junior high school students, so you would have to pre read the activity before teaching it (not that I think teachers wouldn't normally do that, but you never know...)

[canuck]

[fluffyhamster]

I haven't taught at a designated returnee school or anything, but I've met one or two returnees in most schools I've worked at, and they seem pretty indistinguishable from English native-speaker kids of around the same age (not that I've taught English kids, this is just a general impression from meeting relatives's kids etc).

Sure, there might be a few words they don't know, and there are bound to be gaps in their cultural knowledge concerning anything much before the time they stayed in the foreign country, but not enough to seriously impede comprehension either way (and explanations, when necessary, can be offered and understood easily enough in English); in fact, conversations with these kids can be more sustained and rewarding than those with some (many?) JTEs! I guess this is what Brooks is driving at.

Of course, reading and writing may be lagging a little behind, but that's often the case with native speaker children too.

[azarashi sushi]

Liz, Welcome back! I taught returnees last year.... I taught in elementary school (grades 1 - 6), however I also had some near native speakers, extremely intelligent kids and hardcore education mamas! The classes were also mixed grades but I found it was rarely a problem, except at the very lower levels. I always paired stronger students with weaker ones and the stronger ones always seemed to enjoy "teaching" weaker ones.

Classes were only once a week but there was also no curriculum. I took the approach of "learning through English" rather than actually learning English as such. I taught a series of themes (eg. geography, money, health, science, music etc) and each lesson consisted of various activities and projects related to that theme. Running dictations, information treasure hunts and information exchanges worked very well. I created many materials using the Times Kids Almanac (I think that's what it was called). It worked very well. At elementary school, we didn't need to address grammar, however their level was sufficiently high that any new words or structures were easily picked up.

[johanne]

I taught a Grade 4 returnees class years ago and 3 girls in that class could read, write and speak as well as the Grade 4 students I taught in Vancouver a couple of years ago. Those three girs has spent all their elementary school years overseas before showing up in this Grade 4 class. Two of them had to do extra kanji homework because they were lacking Japanese writing skills, so depending on the background of the students it's very possible to have "near native" speakers in a Junior High Class.

[Brooks]

well, here is an example Canuck.
I have taught returnees for over 4 years, from students who were not good at English to those who are very good and get into good universities, like International Christian University or Aoyama.
I even wrote an article about returnees that was published in my school`s journal last year.

I have taught returnees who are not good at English and/or unmotivated.
But not all of them. Some pass the Eiken pre-1 test.
Those kids better at English went to international schools overseas or were in an English speaking school (in England, Australia, the US, Germany, Holland, etc.)

Lately, I have been helping a girl with pronunciation. She is fluent and her TOEFL score is at least 570 I think. Every week students have a religion class which teaches them Christianity and Buddhism.
Now we are on the Book of Luke. Generally she reads well. A couple words were tough for her: sacrifice and word. With 'sacrifice' she got the stress wrong. She says word like it was ward. But if I correct her she can pronounce it like an American.
And the other thing is she can have a problem with words that end in 'D', since she doesn`t always voice them.
That is about it. Way too loosely? Nope.
Last year she went to this US as one of the representatives of her school for a global organization called Round Square. She got to meet teenagers from all over the world to discuss and learn about global problems.
She is also good at translation. In fact she was asked to write about our school`s educational philosophy in English, and tell it to the Round Square director.

One girl last year from Tokyo graduated. She lived in New York and only spent three years there. But if you could hear her, her accent is exactly like a middle-aged Jewish woman from New York. Exactly. But she is Japanese.
Don`t believe me? I used to work with a Jewish woman from New York who agreed.
She used an English name at school. The girl wanted to be American, and in fact spoke like a true New Yorker.

Another student is really into music. He likes to read stuff like Rolling Stone, Spin, etc. Doesn`t need a dictionary to do that.

Next week I will have a couple girls doing TOEFL reading exercises in class. They want to study overseas. Fine with me.

[canuck]

Thank you for the information and outlook you have.

[fluffyhamster]

Inspiring, isn't it, when you have good students LOL!

[TokyoLiz]

Wow, sorry I dropped out there again. Had to attend welcome parties, build a syllabus and the like.

Thanks for the input!

What Brooks said, Canuck.

In Tokyo, I taught English literature and composition to senior high students who are native speakers of English, all literate and fluent in Japanese. Their work was of the same quality as high achieving North American kids in their own grade, at the same age.

The reason why I asked for help is because I'm unfamiliar with age-appropriate textbooks, either ESL or literature/composition, suitable for junior high, as I've never taught so-called returnee English to middle school kids.

As it stands, I've got Crossroads 8, a Canadian literature textbook, on the way, and I'll be working from NorthStar reading and writing intermediate book. My idea is to give them some ESL oriented material and a smattering of literature in order to keep their spoken fluency on current topics and generate topics to write about.

I panicked last week because the school hadn't given me any assessment of level. I spent the entire first week, five instructional periods, getting a picture of where they're all at. The highest is, as I had suspected, capable of English writing at a grade 7 level. She can compose a short essay with no ESL errors.

So, I'm alright and they're alright.

Thanks, Celeste, of reminding me of Discussions A to Z.

Glenski, nope, I can't split 'em up. Not happening.

My only worry is about age/grade level vocabulary. I don't like the Japanese textbooks used to push English vocabulary into kids. Any suggestions there?

[Brooks]

in Tokyo I think teachers at private secondary schools can get money from the Tokyo Department of Education for books. We get 150,000 per teacher that we can use per year. At my junior high they have built up a decent library which can be used by teachers and students.
The junior high has a returnee curiculum and they tend to focus on reading and writing, but a
task-based and project -based curriculum can work well.
When I have taught returnees that have come up from our junior high, some have mentioned that they didn`t get enough speaking practice.

The problem with teaching multilevel classes is which materials to use.
So what teachers have done is to have students choose books and then write reports. The students can choose books that interest them.

Some children`s books in their library are good. They have one about the Japanese diplomat who saved the lives of many Jews in Latvia or Lithuania.
Another is about the Americans that came to Japan around 1850 (the black ships).
Also teachers have taught poetry, and that worked well.
Carl Sandburg and sonnets by Shakespeare, and poems by that women who lived alone in Massachusetts in the 19th century. My mind is like a sieve.

Short stories by Poe went over well.
I taught drama and that worked. I choose a couple plays: the Diary of Anne Frank and Our Town. I had considered the Crucible but later thought that it was too hard. Our Town was a good choice; it is simple and got them asking real philosophical questions.

Now I think only native speakers teach the returnees at our junior high, but in the past Japanese teachers would teach them once a week, in order to have them get ready for the exams they will take in the future. And to teach them grammar too.
It seemed good, since some returnees at high school level could be put in a lower level class, even though they can easily converse with me in English. But they could have a tough time with the grammar-translation exams they have to take.

[TokyoLiz]

Brooks,

I'll be teaching them primarily from NorthStar Reading and Writing for now. I supplement the ESL-type activities with literature once a week. So far, I've given them a poem from the grade 8 textbook to chew on, and later, I'll heap them up with essays.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that NorthStar has units which appeal to junior high school kids. Some unit themes are not appropriate, but most are.

What a mixed group they are - two are regular ESL, maybe low intermediate, and three are native speakers of English. All are in the same class by virtue of being so-called returneees.

To my surprise, the kids tolerate the variation in level. In fact, they help each other along a lot. High kids are helping the lower kids with spelling and grammar, and the ESL kids fill in the blanks for the native English speakers, who have been away from Japan in their formative years.

I think we're going to get along just fine, despite all the problems.

Thanks all for the advice.