I'm a young teacher just come to China and I need help!
The school hasn't told me what to teach. (Well I know what to teach but yeah) They haven't given me a syllabus or told me what level the students are on or what they already know!
The resources are extremely limited here. No printer/computers/video/CDs/stereos/textbooks/flashcards or etc.
I will be teaching grades 1 and 2 of middle school (11-16yr olds) and really need help! Can someone point me in the direction of free resources that I can use that I don't have to print out and give me some ideas on what to teach them as well as how to do it since I have basically nothing?
A basic guideline of what they should be learning would be really helpful, thanks!
Syllabus?
Moderators: Dimitris, maneki neko2, Lorikeet, Enrico Palazzo, superpeach, cecil2, Mr. Kalgukshi2
-
Sheila Collins
- Posts: 46
- Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 6:20 pm
Try dividing your class into 1/3 reading, 1/3 writing, and 1/3 grammar. Get library books for reading (Greek mythology is a hit with Chinese kids this age, or you might get Magic Tree House books for the younger ones). For writing, start small (sentences, postcards). The grammar will depend on the problems each individual class has. Verb tenses and masculine/feminine pronouns are likely to be a problem for many of the students. Have a look at the BBC website to get a general idea of what they need to know: http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/grammar/
Chinese parents want their children to have a perfect American accent; this can take up a lot of time. I usually work on this while reading. You may have to correct a lot of small words (rice, the, next).
Chinese parents also like the idea of their child memorising things. You can try some classic poetry (the parents like the poem from the Statue of Liberty) or some songs (the kids like The Beatles).
Usable conversation is good. Have them discuss ordinary things, like what they did that day or what they're learning in other classes. Have them discuss not-so-ordinary things, like ghost stories.
Chinese parents want their children to have a perfect American accent; this can take up a lot of time. I usually work on this while reading. You may have to correct a lot of small words (rice, the, next).
Chinese parents also like the idea of their child memorising things. You can try some classic poetry (the parents like the poem from the Statue of Liberty) or some songs (the kids like The Beatles).
Usable conversation is good. Have them discuss ordinary things, like what they did that day or what they're learning in other classes. Have them discuss not-so-ordinary things, like ghost stories.
-
Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
Great practical ideas Sheila.
You could also ask your supervisor for the exam they will take, how often they will take it and so on and them work backwards from old copies of the exam. The exams usually cover predictable problems and categories.
I used to put the syllabus on a long banner along the wall near the door so the kids could walk by and check out what we had covered and decide if they were able to remember and do the old activities (which were in an envelope under the description for people who were away or wanted to do better). I also had a revision of what we did every week or so at the beginning and gradually did it every two weeks because kids are sick or miss school for some reason. I didn't do the same activities for the revision but pointed out the similarities with the first activities that we did and where it was on the syllabus and why we needed to know it.
Since you don't have a syllabus you could just have a blank banner and add what you are doing each day. But you can put in holidays you want to celebrate.
In any class you will get various levels so it doesn't really help to have the school tell what level they should be. Some kids will have visited English speaking countries or taken extra classes after school or just are good at languages so they will be ahead and some will never have heard English or never let themselves hear English. There are some great ideas in the Sticky (that post at the top of this forum) on large classes and what to do. Dividing them into groups of a good speaker, two medium and one poor was always my favourite. I made them into teams with a name, logo and team chant (in English of course) and they helped each other through the year.
Get one class to make activities for the next.
Have competitions for an English cup (I had a tea cup for the prize.)
Ask them to bring in the books they have in English.
There are really cheap books at Sunday markets sometimes.
Go to any conference they allow you to go to and wait until the last day and last minute when the book publishers practically give away their copies so they don't have to carry them home.
Tear the books apart and put them in envelopes and label them Acitivity 1 2, etc. and then each team can do an activity. You will find that the publishers are pretty much the same with how they lay out a syllabus and if you get 5 different level 1 books, you will have 5 different activities for approximately the same skills and vocabulary.
Teach them different ways to study - making a bingo game of vocabulary, making a snakes and ladder type game with vocabulary on the steps of the ladder, dominoes matching vocabulary words, a crossword, a small dialogue and on and on. Then the teams can make a game to go in the envelope for the next team.
Get out your digital camera and take lots and lots of pictures and get the kids to pose for story lines after they have made up the story. They make really great books.
We did a dictionary in Greenland with 20 words on each page with lines to the appropriate thing in the picture eg. nose --- <
We made categories that we had to cover - Body Parts, Home, Transportation. At the bottom of the page we added a few words that would help the children make a sentence eg. for body parts we had a picture of a girl and put the words "She has" at the bottom. Then they could make up sentences like, "She has a nose." The kids loved it and they knew everyone in the pictures or where the picture was taken. (There are only 56,000 Greenlanders.) It gave us a basic vocabulary of 1000 words but was a starting point for so much more.
You could also ask your supervisor for the exam they will take, how often they will take it and so on and them work backwards from old copies of the exam. The exams usually cover predictable problems and categories.
I used to put the syllabus on a long banner along the wall near the door so the kids could walk by and check out what we had covered and decide if they were able to remember and do the old activities (which were in an envelope under the description for people who were away or wanted to do better). I also had a revision of what we did every week or so at the beginning and gradually did it every two weeks because kids are sick or miss school for some reason. I didn't do the same activities for the revision but pointed out the similarities with the first activities that we did and where it was on the syllabus and why we needed to know it.
Since you don't have a syllabus you could just have a blank banner and add what you are doing each day. But you can put in holidays you want to celebrate.
In any class you will get various levels so it doesn't really help to have the school tell what level they should be. Some kids will have visited English speaking countries or taken extra classes after school or just are good at languages so they will be ahead and some will never have heard English or never let themselves hear English. There are some great ideas in the Sticky (that post at the top of this forum) on large classes and what to do. Dividing them into groups of a good speaker, two medium and one poor was always my favourite. I made them into teams with a name, logo and team chant (in English of course) and they helped each other through the year.
Get one class to make activities for the next.
Have competitions for an English cup (I had a tea cup for the prize.)
Ask them to bring in the books they have in English.
There are really cheap books at Sunday markets sometimes.
Go to any conference they allow you to go to and wait until the last day and last minute when the book publishers practically give away their copies so they don't have to carry them home.
Tear the books apart and put them in envelopes and label them Acitivity 1 2, etc. and then each team can do an activity. You will find that the publishers are pretty much the same with how they lay out a syllabus and if you get 5 different level 1 books, you will have 5 different activities for approximately the same skills and vocabulary.
Teach them different ways to study - making a bingo game of vocabulary, making a snakes and ladder type game with vocabulary on the steps of the ladder, dominoes matching vocabulary words, a crossword, a small dialogue and on and on. Then the teams can make a game to go in the envelope for the next team.
Get out your digital camera and take lots and lots of pictures and get the kids to pose for story lines after they have made up the story. They make really great books.
We did a dictionary in Greenland with 20 words on each page with lines to the appropriate thing in the picture eg. nose --- <
We made categories that we had to cover - Body Parts, Home, Transportation. At the bottom of the page we added a few words that would help the children make a sentence eg. for body parts we had a picture of a girl and put the words "She has" at the bottom. Then they could make up sentences like, "She has a nose." The kids loved it and they knew everyone in the pictures or where the picture was taken. (There are only 56,000 Greenlanders.) It gave us a basic vocabulary of 1000 words but was a starting point for so much more.