Teacher Discussion Forums

Hello everyone!

I am a recent college graduate who is currently teaching English at a secondary school in northern Thailand. I am teaching 6 different grades of students (12 classes total), so I am continually looking for new ideas for activities and games to keep the students interested.

However, I've come across a problem. The school that I'm working at is very open (meaning all of the classrooms have open windows and doors, and they are all very close to each other), and sound carries very easily. I was told last week that one of my games (which got the kids shouting because they were excited) was too loud. If the kids shout at all, pretty much the whole school hears it, and it disrupts other classs. I've been told I can take classes out to the football (soccer) field to do louder games, but sometimes I need the blackboard or something else in the classroom.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to keep kids from getting to loud, for games that can be done in the classroom that get kids speaking but not too loudly, or for how I can most effectively include outdoor games in my lessons sometimes?

Thanks so much!

Hmm.. how about some kind of charades where the students have to write the answers on paper? Still its fun cause students will have to act, but you can control the noise, actually there won't be any noise. Just make a time limit for the actor, have a list of actors, and then at the end of ten actors, check all the students answers in class.

What a wonderful opportunity to spend time outdoors and still be learning. Just get a portable board - white or black or buy some blackboard paint and paint a board you and the children can carry around. It comes in all colours now. Or just get large pieces of paper and felt pens on some kind of portable stand or write in the sand or dirt. If I were there I would be out in the football field every day I could. There are plenty of large muscle games that you could adapt to learn English - see the Scout or Guide pages on the Internet. You can hide words around the field, put parts of stories or sentences that they have to gather or copy around different places, write the alphabet on a path in the dirt and have them hop, walk, jump, the alphabet, line up with alphabet cards, number cards, spell words with cards, learning names of clothes doing a team racing game where they have to dress up in funny clothes, take them off and run back to their team. You just make sure that they say the names of the items as well as put them on and take them off. They can play circle games and parachute games, the list is endless. You just have to make sure they are always using their words to say what they are doing. And you can shout and chant - chants are so much fun, sing too.If you need them to sit you could get carpet pieces or small pillows.

On days you have to be in the classroom, just explain the problem. When the noise gets too high, stop the game. Once or twice doing that and they will learn to use "indoor" voices and still have lots of fun.

Sounds like they are lucky to have such an enthusiastic teacher.