Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi Everyone.My name is Anna and I am teaching in China. I have kindergarten and middle school students. i am new in English classroom teaching because my experience is mostly on one on one tutorials. I wanna ask suggestions and help from other ESL teachers on what I will do with my Middle School students.They are ages 16-18 years old but because they are from remote villages their English comprehension is totally low.I was so surprised because when I ask them parts of their body, they dont know about it. they are so restless in class so on my future classes I wanna give them games and other activities that could help them with their vocabulary and also to give them a little entertainment.
About my kindergarten classes, Im quite okay with them bcoz we have action songs. I know I have more to learn from them.

If you have suggestions please email me back. Thanks so much.more Power to ESL learning.

Hi Anna
It sounds like you have the same problem as most Middle School teachers. I have found that it really doesn't matter whether it's Middle or High, the kids just don't seem to know much. There will be some excellent ones, of course, but not many.
Try things like Wheel of fortune (guess the phrase), Tic Tac Toe with words (make a sentence using the word to get the X or O) or write up a buncj of letters on the board, making sure you use a few vowels, so that they can try to make up their own new words or 3 or more letters, for points. Get girls against boys, in my experience they aren't very good at small teams. Even draw a big map of a simple town, with all the shops, and get them to tell you how to get from a to b. Hope this helps a little.