Job Discussion Forums

[vikuk]

[Ping Jing]

After much thought and recollection, I hereby resign. It's not worth my time or energy. I enjoy still being asleep at 10am. Under the right circumstances, of course, my opinion may change.

I appreciate everyone's input. I do know this - I'm not a scab.

Scab = someone who will take a job no one else wants

Strike = I'll leave that up to your imagination monkeys

Bread & Butter

Which came first, the bread or the butter?

[tw]

[Sonnet]

There's some very good advice on this thread - maybe worth pinning to the top of the forum? Would be nice to have some practical teaching-related threads here in addition to all the moaning

I agree with the previous posters who mentioned that repetition of TL, variation of activities & routine (starting & ending class with the same song/activity every lesson, using games which have become familiar to the students) are key with early learners.

Couple of other (possibly) useful activities:

- sit the kids in a circle, and pass a flashcard/item of realia around the circle. When each kid gets the object, they say its name in English, and pass it on. You can eventually end up with two or three different objects going around the circle in opposite directions. It's funny, and a nice change from drilling.

- if the students have vocab cards included in their course material, great! If not, make/steal your own. You can then play "Go fish" in small groups - it's a nice way to practise some simple question/answer forms, too.

- bring in a hula-hoop & set it on the floor. If you call "in", the student has to jump inside the circle. "Out" means they jump out. In-out-in-out-in-out-in-IN! is almost guaranteed to end up with them falling over You can then use multiple hoops & have students play in pairs; one calling, one jumping, and reversing roles once a mistake is made. You could use this to review vocab (especially minimal pairs) later on - with, say, a picture of a ship inside the circle, and a picture of a sheep outside it.


Guess that's enough trade secrets for now - let's keep the suggestions flowing, though, rather than let a very useful thread degenerate.

[mandu]

I teach kindergarten children
I teach parents and baby class,k1,k2 and k3.

I teach from a book called Dr Bird,and i feel its much easier to teach from a book than makeing up your own lesson.

I pretty much keep my lessons the same from k1 through to k3 but the content i teach is different in each level.

i start off with a
hello song
then i sing songs with the children
we do the days of the week,months of the year,the weather everyday
i think when teaching kindergarten its all about routine.
we also do tpr in the class eg touch the window,touch the door touch the wall etc.
I vary my classes a little depending on what level iam teaching.I never get angry with my classes but i get dissapointed if they dont try.
I colour pictuers related to the topic i teach,play with play dough.
use the vcd for the songs they have to learn.

Iam not only a teacher i feel that when teaching kindergarten you have to be a brother,father,care giver,friend and teacher all rolled into one.
I have also been teaching kindergarten children for almost 6 years here in shenzhen.

if there you want to ask me some questions i will do my best to answer them.its hard to explain how i teach and what i do in class.one thing is to have fun dont pressure on the children to speak,if the classes are fun and happy then the children will want to learn.

[InTime]

Sonnet wrote:

[sunrisekiwi09]

This website has some good ideas for teaching ESL to kindy kids:
http://www.teach-esl-to-kids.com/index.html

It depends a lot on the class - their age, their level of English, the size of the class - but a few games that I have found go down well with my kindy kids are:
Secret Whispers - two or three teams pass a whispered word along and then the last person has to run and get the correct object/flashcard/target language on the whiteboard (everyone gets to practice saying the target language in a non-threatening way)
Find the word - One student doesn't look while a flashcard is hidden behind another student. They student looking for the flashcard goes up to each student and if they don't have the flashcard they say the word, but if they do have it they keep quiet (once again it gives speaking practice in a non-threatening way)
Hammers - I use squeaky plastic hammers to have 2 students competing to hit the correct word and the kids love it

Little kids need a lot of drilling in order to learn the target language, but this can obviously get a bit boring. It's amazing how much my 3 year old classes love it when I alternate between having them whisper and then shout the words. I hold a flashcard down low for the whisper and then up high for the shout and cover my ears and pull a funny face when they shout loud. They get so excited anticipating the shout but still stay under control and then laugh at me covering my ears.

Hope you have fun with your classes

[InTime]

Key Premise...is NOT universally accepted in the TESOL etc. fields.

[vikuk]

well done Intime
kid drilling = the start of the English nightmare = the road to rejection of English.
After all how many of you guys out there learnt to like eating cabbage through your parents "drilling" you to eat it????
By the way for small kids drilling = rote = sentence learning = 1 way communication.
Kindies love it - since any monkey can teach this way (a tape machine can teach this way - but it don't look so nice as an FT and hasn't got the same cash-cow potential) - they love it 'cause little wang can go home and sing old Mc's farm for mamma wang. But ask him the simplest question about Mc and he'll be expecting a hamburger!!!!!!
This kind of song and teaching can actually be of benefit in the ESL environment (small kids learning English in English language environments/speaking countries) since they have the chance to match the words up to other communication they hear and have the chance to "self learn" the meaning of song or memorised phrase. But in an EFL environment - where English is drowned out by the L1 - they just stay as sounds that rarely evolve into spontaneous communication!!!

[ispeakgoodenglish]

I use a squeaky hammer and give the new kiddies a light tap on the knee. at least one of them will start laughing and then others will usually lighten up a little. Keep doing it for a few mins (within reason) and see how many you can get to laugh. It is easy with the older kids (5-6) but works equally well with the little ones too (2-5).... yeah I get the odd 2 year old....

Chanting game is perfect for drilling. Vary the ending to keep the game fresh .

If the class is small make a train and have them follow you. For some reason the youngest ones love this one. Keep stopping and saying "hello" or clapping or jumping. They will love you more if you make them laugh and have fun..... something they don't get a lot of from their local teachers. You can use this for drilling too.

We use the Hello Teddy books advertised on CCTV, they are not too bad and have plenty of songs and vocab. Luckily we have all the picture cards as well.... would be much more work without them.

KEV7161 had the perfect answer, once the kids know the games the lessons go much more smoothly...

[Ping Jing]

Loved Ones,

Thanks. War Gan Gee.

Hopefully all is well and you are having a nice day.

Steve