Teacher Discussion Forums

I'm like a lot of people on this forum, a teacher in China facing huge class sizes, unmotivated students, vastly differing ability levels, constantly changing foreign teachers and a stonewall attitude from the Chinese staff. In fact, this stonewall attitude has so far led to me being unpaid 2 months into my teaching, but that's an issue for another day...

I'm here to fill in til the end of term (20th June) for another teacher who left. That means I've got exactly 4 lessons to plan, grade 4 and 5 level, before I can get back to an environment where I don't want to kill myself after each lesson. However, I'm somewhat of a perfectionist and want to make these last 4 lessons as good as possible. I've read with interest the activities and games threads, but what I'm really interested in is perfect lessons, lessons that seem to work no matter how many people in the class, how great the ability range or how unmotivated the students.

While I'm posting here to take knowledge from the forum regulars, it would be rude not to give anything back. And, in the best traditions of teaching, you're going to need an example to follow! So, please post along the lines of the following 2 killer lessons:

Killer lesson 1. Title: Directions.



Engage stage - 5mins

Ask simple questions, gradually getting more complicated. Get students switched onto English and settled down.




Study stage - 10/15 mins

Give lesson title. Teach following vocab:

Turn right
Turn left
Turn around
Go straight on

Take the second right
Take the 3rd/4th/5th left/right

It's the first on the right
It's the 4th/5th/6th on the left/right

Crossroads
T-Junction

At the crossroads, turn right.
At the T-junction, turn left.

Useful methods. Turn right/left draw large arrows on the board. Take the second right etc, draw 'turn right' then add detail. Ask students if they know what it is. Add labels '1st 2nd' They're usually getting close by this stage.

T-Junction, crossroads draw on board then ask shape.




Activate stage - remainder of lesson time.

Allow students 5 mins to chat while you prepare board. Draw out all instructions on left hand side, draw a large map with buildings/roads on right.

'Welcome to my city!'

Draw figure, 'Who is this? Me? NO! This is YOU!!!'

Demonstrate game, label a building in the city A and navigate yourself to it, using pretaught directions.

Call up bright student, navigate him to B.

Call up 2nd bright student, get class to navigate him to C. By this stage you should be able to get the weaker students joining in on simple orders like 'turn right'.

Call up 3rd bright student. Ask class 'Is this easy? Yes? Let's make it harder'. Stand 3rd student in corner, cover his eyes. Draw on board buildings D to Z. Wait a moment, pretend to think, then add buildings 1-20. Class should burst out laughing. Student 3 will be wondering what's going on!

Let student 3 see the board. Send him back to the corner. Get a student to choose a direction, write it on the board but keep it hidden from 3. Let the class now navigate 3 to the correct destination.

Repeat til end of lesson.





I'll post my second killer lesson in the next post. I hope someone can share a similar lesson with me! Life in this city really is hell, but when I finish teaching the above lesson I get a great kick out of acheiving the impossible - that is getting a way overloaded, bored, disrespectful class screaming the correct answers to the problem at the board, getting out of their seats and actually learning something. Teaching these kids is tough enough without having to scrabble for ideas that will work, what would work back home simply won't work here. I hope I can pass out my final 2 weeks in a similar fashion to my previous 2.

As promised, here is my second killer lesson. I hope you guys can make good use of these. One thing that I should have noted before is that I have close to no resources here, a blackboard and my own voice. For this lesson I managed to scrounge some flashcards to use.



Killer lesson 2. Title: My Room



Engage stage - 5 mins

Ask simple questions, gradually getting more complicated. Get students switched onto English and settled down.



Study stage - 10/15 mins

Give lesson title.

'What's this???' (Guesturing around classroom) 'It's a CLASSROOM!' 'Do you like your classroom?' 'NO!!!' 'Why not?' (My students can't answer this question, so I answer it for them - because you have lessons in here!!!)

'Today I don't want to talk about your classroom, I want to talk about YOUR room, and YOUR room, and YOUR room (pointing at students)'

'Here are some things you might find in your room.'

(Teach list of household objects. I teach about 12 objects, but I make sure that 11 are just revision, TV, clock, table etc, so that I can spend as little time as possible on this stage. Use the flashcards.)

I also teach the word 'floor', you'll see why soon.

I do like to teach one new object that they'll never have seen before, 'Hairdryer'

I walk around the room (well, ok, up and down the 2 aisles that you can actually move down), showing the students the object they shout out the chinese name, I say ENGLISH!

Back at board, I say 'where do you use this???' They reply 'HAIR!' I write Hair _ _ _ _ _ on the board.

When do you use this?

When you have a shower!

When you have a shower... How is your hair?

Wet!

When your hair is wet, you want to make your hair...

DRY!

It's a HAIRDRYER!



When these words have been revised I start to draw on the board. I draw a floor, and draw a table. 'The table is ON the floor'

Using the same method I teach:

On
Under
Over
Next to
Near to
Right of
Left of

I practise all of these using classroom objects. 'The clock is over (student X) The desk is on the floor. Student X is right of Student Y)




Activate stage - remainder of lesson time.


Describe a room to students. Students must draw the room on their own paper. E.g. in the room is a floor. On the floor is a table. On the floor is a sofa. The table is left of the sofa. On the sofa is a lamp. Under the desk are 2 shoes'

Select 4 students to draw their rooms on the board, I have to choose students near the front/aisles. Allow rest of class to talk quietly while they do so. Allow 4 students only 2 mins - they like to create masterpieces!!!

Compare and correct the rooms the students draw with your instructions. You must have preprepaired your instructions - otherwise they'll be hard to remember! Choose a winner, make the rest of the class applaud him/her.






Again, I hope this 'ready to teach' lesson is of help. This is the exact kind of thing I'm looking for, a lot of the resources available on the web seem to assume managable class sizes and students that will actually attempt to complete a handout should you give one to them. Unfortunately I don't have this luxury, but still wish to teach positive lessons. If anyone can post similar lessons that follow the patterns in mine, allowing for a short teaching time followed by an exciting activate period that allows the whole of the class to join in, I'll hopefully pass off my final 2 weeks without too much bother.

I'm greatly saddened to say that this teaching experience has closed much of China to me, from now on it's more 'enlightened' teaching centers in larger cities - no more of this rural, face gaining rubbish! The way to motivate teachers to stay and teach is NOT to withhold payment, it's to provide a supportive teaching atmosphere!