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keldar · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:49 pm Post subject: classroom supplies

Hello all:
My husband and I are heading to China next week for our very first year of teaching. What classroom supplies if any, do you normally bring over from home? I know they are heavy but I would leave some clothes behind if I knew some supplies would make our lives easier.
Thanks for any suggestions.

nolefan · Joined: 14 Jan 2004 Posts: 1458 Location: on the run

2 or 3 decks of UNO cards and other board games. I know those are not your usual supplies but they do come in handy here, at leat with college students. Another handy thing to have is one of those college writing handbooks. Almost everything else is easy to find locally.

ymmv · Joined: 14 Jul 2004 Posts: 387

Sticky-Tac. Lots of it. I've never found it here.

Useful for writing class when I have students post their in class writing on the wall for group editing. For my Survey of the US and UK class, I use it to hang a map on the wall. Can't leave the map up on the classroom wall, though, or it will be gone before the end of the day. Sticky-Tac works great.

The Chinese like to use double-sided tape to hang things on the painted, concrete classroom walls. It works too good. When you try to peel your map or the students essays of the wall at the end of class, portions will remain there.

And the janitor will get mad.

So, bring Sticky-Tac and lots of it.

P.S. It also will fascinate the students for a good 10 minutes the first time you pull it out. I like to pass around a bar of it (is that the proper collective noun for it?) and let the students pull off fungible pieces and ponder them. And they will. Then I collect it all back in one giant glob. A minimalist lesson in western technology with chinese characteristics.

kev7161 · Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 5880 Location: Suzhou, China

I've discovered that most classrooms I've been in are very barren. So, I like to bring posters with me. I bought some brand new posters for only 50 cents each here in the US. My teacher friend laminated them for me. Many are grammar rules in simple english - bright and colorful. Some are just decorative and some I can use to post each unit's vocab. list. Since they are laminated, I can use a dry erase marker on them and use them over and over.