Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi

I'm a volunteer teacher in Fushan District, Yantai, China. I've been here for about three weeks. I'm teaching senior middle school kids, grades 1 and 2 (a total of about 2000). Lessons with the younger grade are going great, but the older students are such hard work! They mostly sleep or chat through the lessons and simply refuse to get involved in games/discussions! An added difficulty is that the classes are very large (50+). This makes it impossible to move around, especially as they have all their text books stacked on their desks! They tend to hide behind them aswell! It also makes it hard to put them into teams. I don't really want to drag them through the lesson, but if anybody has any ideas for how to get them involved I'd be eternally grateful!

Chris Kelly

chriskelly wrote:Hi

I'm a volunteer teacher in Fushan District, Yantai, China. I've been here for about three weeks. I'm teaching senior middle school kids, grades 1 and 2 (a total of about 2000). Lessons with the younger grade are going great, but the older students are such hard work! They mostly sleep or chat through the lessons and simply refuse to get involved in games/discussions! An added difficulty is that the classes are very large (50+). This makes it impossible to move around, especially as they have all their text books stacked on their desks! They tend to hide behind them aswell! It also makes it hard to put them into teams. I don't really want to drag them through the lesson, but if anybody has any ideas for how to get them involved I'd be eternally grateful!

Chris Kelly

Hi Chris,

I hope you had a chance to go through some of the other posts in these Forums with the same kind of questions. It seems your situation is far from unique! There's a sticky called, "Some Advice on Large Classes" that is at the top of this Forum, that has some advice in it. Perhaps some others will add to this or that thread too.

--Lorikeet