Job Discussion Forums

[CDRIVER]

I am currently teaching at 3 different schools....I find I have no problem at all with coming up with exciting ways to teach the material for the younger kids 10-13 and 14-17 but .....my older kids ...man o man they are 18-22 and the stuff I have to teach is really boring...lots of Vocab and I can't figure out how to plan classes using info from the text book they have. I know that if I don't keep up the energy and have fun in the class I will dread going to class MORE than I already do....please help if you have any ideas..I would be greatly appreciative....thankx

[tarzaninchina]

I, too, am looking for killer classes that could last the whole year for this age group. These are six I've found are very good.

- useless and unimportant inventions
- pregnancy (not including sex or lactation)
- western style debate (with more than two sides)
- rules in sports
- discussing outrageous movies
- discussing books (if they're into that, which some of my students are)

[Roger]

It might be helpful to know your job description. You said you are teaching them a lot of vocab; why is that? Do you teach vocables?
That should not have to be the case. They should be able at this age to read a text and identify new lexical units, then check in their dictionaries or, perhaps, guess at their meanings.

[Girl Scout]

I teach idioms and metaphors to my older students and adults. The lesson usually take about half and hour. I break them down into 15 minute segments and teach them on different days. They find it interesting. I usually teach some boring stuff first then the interesting lesson and I finish with a review elaboration of the boring stuff.

[wonderd]

I've got quite a bit of teaching background in different countries and ages. But when I first came to Shanghai, this was the only age group that I didn't have experience with. And this was the age group I was assigned to.

Fortunately, there was another foreign teacher at my school who helped me out a lot. Some of the things that worked really well in the classes were;

- taking them outside with a basketball and a blindfold. In groups they would be guided by each other on where to throw the ball to get a basket.
- in class, the ongoing story. Write the first sentence on the board and then pick students to make the next line, and keep continuing. They were fun. For the girls, you can write "Today I saw a handsome boy, he smiled at me..." and have them continue it one by one. Usually the boy ends up killing them or being killed (don't ask me, it's culture, I guess). Do the same thing with the boys "a pretty girl"
- have them draw three things, anything, on a piece of paper. Take the papers from them and hand them out to other students. They have to tell you a story about the picture

Just some games that worked in the class. I too had many struggles with this age group, but many successes as well.