Job Discussion Forums

[vikuk]

Chris great stuff - is your classroom dressing just to do with consumer stuff (the band name logo thing).
Have you ever dressed a classroom for other topics such as family, environment etc etc ?
Would it be possible to get the students to help in the dressing process - dressing during classroom time - surely participation would be another learning motivator - or do huge classes kill that idea off from the start?

[ChineseChris]

The huge classes prevent this from happening as you totally lose control. I have another lesson which I call The End of the World. I tell them the world has ended and they are the only people left and tomorrow they are going to get on a plane and start a new country. They can only take 5 people (builders, farmers etc and 10 things with them (fire, seeds, water etc). I tell them there is nothing there when they arrive. They in groups decide who and what then we decide by voting on each item and person. Then they give the new country a new name. Then each group is given a huge piece of paper and given a special task. eg. education/schooling, health, environment, housing, government etc. In their group they have to set the rules for their topic and put it down on paper. Then the class as a whole will discuss the rules and decide if they are workable. The new words they learn are quite incredible and they get so wrapped up in this they forget they are talking english. We put up posters around the room with their working for looking at and discussing. I also give them another piece of paper to design a new flag for the country with a meaning. Great things come from this also.

[mcl sonya]

Just thought I'd drop a line to say that it's working really well, thanks for the advice. I've been teaching all of my kids a tongue twister focusing on [v] (the 60+ kids are getting it, some did it quite fast), and every week from now I'm just going to start class with a tongue twister or a nursery rhyme focusing on an English consonant they have trouble with. The proverb part didn't go over so well, everyone was confused. The song part - I tried teaching them "My Girl" by the Temptations, explaining that it's famous in America, really easy to sing, very pretty, everyone likes it, etc., but I guess it's too hard, they only sing the chorus. I've been dividing and passing out the lyrics as advised, and asking them to explain the meaning, but somehow a lot of kids don't get it - in one class, they said it was about how with diligence and hard work one has happiness. Tomorrow I'm going to try "Flying Without Wings" by Westlife for my lower level English classes, although I wonder... maybe it's not catchy enough... but it's definitely slow and easy enough to follow.

I had them play a game one of the other teachers told me about, "Scattergories", with a prize in the end (Chips Ahoy -- the kids were like, "OOOOH" the moment I showed the cookies), and the entire class got really into it. It was almost amazing how cutthroat they got over the game and the cookies, even the huge classes were hanging on to my every word as we reviewed the words and went past the end of class, and apparently my students have been communicating in my different classes (for example, a lot of students thought "Stanford" was a city earlier in the week, but in the later classes they all list it under "Famous People"...). It's a really good game - I found it under the games section here, so I guess it's kind of famous - but they just really get into it, and learn all sorts of random vocabulary and trivia (ie: Stanford).

Thanks again for all the advice, it's been helping a lot

[arioch36]

Think also about allowing some of them to sing an English song in class, even encouraging them to sponsor an english singing contest. this ain't the states. SOme boys who will never talk will sing a song in front of everyone. Don't worry about arranging the music and speakers etc. This is China, let the class leaders sweat the details


Mostly boys or girls? You can ask them to help you choose songs. I usually do one sone for at least two weks, especially if the don't know it. If you really want them to do a song well, go over it line by line. You sing/say one line, they repeat. this has been the most effective and time consuming.

Actually there is a large part of our brain, dealing with emotion and affect and the such, that is turned on when we sing and or use rhymes or topics with emotion (such as love) When we sing such a song, we use much more of our brain then when simply speaking.

Actually, the best sequence of songs I ever did

Beatles, Yesterday. Simple, slow, not to high or low, so all can easily sing But how many times can I do the song without being totally bored

Carpetners, yesterday once more .. they all know it.

Seasons in the Sun, gone over line by line, they loved it until they realized the boy is dying

Midler the Rose introduction on Metaphors

Puff the Magic Dragon .. intro to write talk about a vivid childhood experience

Mike and the Mechanics.. The Living Years A lot of boys really got choked up on this one They really don't know their fathers.

And as a grand finale ... I know an old lady who swallowed a fly (Many of your better students will make their summer money teaching kids)
Then I get criticism from true music listeners who are outraged I am not using Nirvana or metallica or U2. I do try to give a message with the songs. But it is also about them their english, and their limited life experiences, not about me.

KISS

Keep it Simple, Stupid

Make them proverbs simple, funny, Like "When Pig's fly"

[mcl sonya]

heh, that's really cute.. and good.. when pigs fly.. I'll start thinking of idioms like that. Thanks for the song ideas, I'll use them. I just listened to Seasons in the Sun for... I think the first time... man. For such a happy sounding song, it is very depressing.

So, all of my other classes having been going well, but I have to say something about this high school rejects class that I have on Wednesdays. Perhaps it's because I don't have any experience handling big classes, and all my life I've been around serious students, but I seriously can't handle it. There are about 15 kids who are good and seem to really want to learn, but the others are unmanageable. For example, I taught them a short tongue twister today asking them to focus on the consonant [v], which many pronounce as [w], and when I went around asking people to say it a good dozen simply refused, and many others didn't bother to listen to my instructions and said it as [w] and took up ages. I had written the IPA underneath the words in English, and I KNOW they all know the IPA, but still quite a few couldn't read the sentence. I would help them word by word, and they could repeat after me, but when I asked them to say it on their own they just gave up. I did this tongue twister in all my other classes, including the biggest one, and they all did it fine, some even got excited about how fast they could say it and how good their [v]s were, so I don't think I'm presenting it wrong here. When I took away their cellphones and little TVs, they came back up to my desk and took or tried to take them back. Several boys kept yelling vulgar words in English in an attempt to get my attention. At least fifteen students were 10 minutes or more late.

I just wrote a letter to school saying that next class I'm going to tell them in Chinese that if, by that class break, they don't all prove to me they want to be in my class and learn, they can just get out, and I'll base the remaining 70% of their grade on the final exam, and that I will kick out whoever distracts the class every week, and once they're off my list I won't check their attendance and I won't give them a grade for anything. They may, however, come and attend lectures if they will sit in the back and be quiet, and if they want to participate with the other groups of students they have to be really good so that I remember them when it comes time to grade the finals and will grade them more generously. I'm seriously so sick of it. If it was a smaller class I could maybe work with students like this, because I would have time to work with them individually and control them better, but in such a big and rowdy group they hide behind their friends. They don't want to learn, and I feel that the handful of students who do want to should not have their time wasted for two hours. I still can't believe students were telling me, "Teacher, I don't want to say it" in Chinese. Since when did they have the option?! How dare they come up to my desk during lecture and try to take back their cellphones! I can't believe this class! Not to mention in all the other classes I've caught my stride, but I feel like it's incredible that they didn't give this one to one of the experienced teachers (all the others are experienced) when they know how terrible it is and they know it's my first time teaching English. Anyway, I don't know what else to do. It will either scare them into obeying, or it will get rid of all the dead weight.

[mcl sonya]

OH! not to mention, I also sold my soul and tried to teach them a Westlife song - the girls were excited about it enough, and listened attentively when I explained the lyrics and we read through them, but the boys kept chatting through it and noo one would sing along.

[jwbhomer]

Try camp songs and children's songs, with simple tunes and lyrics. Modern pop music (forgive the oxymoron) is not easy to sing. But you can have a lot of fun with something like "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain" or "Head and Shoulders".

When I did a "summer camp" for Chinese middle school ESL teachers, I was appalled to find that some of them didn't know the names of some of the parts of the body, so a song like "Head and Shoulders" can actually teach some vocabulary.

[kev7161]

Here's the thing about the "bad" classes. Most schools don't care! It doesn't matter if it's a government school or a private one. Chinese teachers have their hands full with their two lessons a day to even want to step in and help you with crowd control. Management is too busy with their 27 meetings a day (and long lunches and "rest times" and whatever else fills their days) to bother dropping by from time to time to see how things are going. All they do is rely on some class monitor and student evaluations to see if you're a good teacher or not. If you win over your kids, odds are you'll get good feedback and everyone will be happy. If you can't manage a class of 60 noisy, sleepy, text-messaging brats, you must obviously be a bad teacher who doesn't know what he/she is doing. Oh, by the way, most schools don't allow you to kick kids out or even mete out most any sort of real punishment. This holds especially true for private schools were money is all that matters. If you kick a kid out of class and mama and baba get wind of it (and they will, mark my words), you're toast.

[arioch36]

[mcl sonya]

Success- at least for now?

The class was a lot better today. Apparently their other teacher yelled at them for me, then shuffled the seating order around, and by the time I got there they were very quiet and semi-scared. The school told them about the angry email I had written, so everyone knew I had been furious. One of the students told me that it was a first, the other foreign teachers never cared and just let them fool around.

Then I read out an incredibly long dictation of class rules in Chinese and English, and they were as quiet as mice and wrote everything down. One student tried to crack a joke with me in Chinese and I gave him an icy look, and after that no one tried to speak to me in Chinese. That same student had kept pressing the point that I should teach them slang over lunch, so I tried to teach them how to say "---ed out" and they got mostly confused, though a couple got the idea (ie: chickened out, weirded out, freaked out), and I also taught the phrase "when pigs fly" which they found amusing. Some were starting to chat a bit because they were confused by what the others were saying, beached out, mcdonald'd out, etc., so I switched to playing a guess who game, where they describe a fellow classmate and we try to guess who it is. They liked that, though some of them were quite mean! they would describe a fellow boy as "fat" or "a bit ugly." The meanest part was after one guy stood up and said, "He is very ugly and he is wearing a blue jacket," everyone turned to this one loner kid. Man. But, otherwise, they were fairly well behaved.

[arioch36]

[mcl sonya]

I wonder... At least, people in China seem to be a whole lot less PC/sensitive. Sometimes, well, on the school bus, I hear women tell friends that they look less fat than usual wearing a certain outfit... not "You look nice" but literally "You look less fat." Seems more like a barbed compliment to me, but they say it all the time.

[mcl sonya]

btw Arioch, thanks so much for your advice. it's all been golden. I'm really kind of learning how to teach as I go along here, and your advice has helped me so much. For example, I couldn't believe how much my kids loved "Yesterday." They got excited the moment I asked them if they knew who the Beatles were, and as we went over the meaning of the lyrics their faces had a look of dawning enlightenment, and after class some of the girls were singing it together in the bathroom. I never would have guessed they would like to sing an old song. One boy (sort of) volunteered to sing it on his own in one class and sang like a rockstar. Later on, in another class, I asked people what kinds of English songs they like, and one boy piped up with "Yesterday once more." I had never even heard of this song before you mentioned it. Man. China's a continuous mind trip.

[arioch36]

Making it bout the students, and not us. Certainly before coming to China I did not listen to "westlife" I also try to introduce them to music I think is "good", while "meeting them where they are"

See if every week you can get one student (or group of students) to sing a song. You go girl (I guess that's out of date by now)

[Loop]

mcl sonya wrote: