HELP!/Ideas for teaching a large number of students
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mitchinchina
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- Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2005 5:31 am
- Location: Guangzhou. PRC
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HELP!/Ideas for teaching a large number of students
Greetings everyone, I am new to this forum and new to teaching English as well. I am currently teaching 1st-6th grade in China, and in need of help. Some of my classes are only 40-50 kids, book based, with desks and materials, so I have no worries about developing lesson plans and games for this. However half the time I am shipped to their satellite school, which is a different story. Upon finding out that they could not get/would not get another native English teacher, they have decided to lump two classes into one, with no desks, materials, or anything else of use. I now am in a lecture hall, with a semi-circle of chairs, trying to teach English to 90+ students at one time. I have access to a computer, dvd player, overhead projector and screen, so something can be done to make the students time with me enjoyable and educational. I am strictly teaching conversational English if that helps. Any ideas on how to do mass instruction would be helpful, hopefully something modular that I can change to suite my needs, but at this point anything would be better than what I am currently attempting. Extreme thanks in advance to anybody that can be of help.
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joshua2004
- Posts: 264
- Joined: Sat Nov 20, 2004 7:08 pm
- Location: Torreon, Mexico
Hi fear not, there are many people that come to this forum asking that question. Likewise there are many teachers that have answers for you. Please do a search for "large classes" or big classes or anything to that effect. I know there are many posts with the word "large" in them. There you will find a lot of advice. The best advice I saw (I don't teacher large classes 50+ here in Mexico) was to take control of the class. Which is good advice for any class, you are the teacher! I imagine it is extremely important in a large class such as the ones in China.
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englishrescue.com
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- Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:21 am
- Location: Japan
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Its not as bad as you think
Teaching a large group is not as difficult as you may think. Many activities for 30-40 students can be done just as well with 80-90 students.
Games and activities that involve groups are often very good. 10 students in each group etc.
Game 1: Relay game
Groups of ten - line them up. Have first student of each line come to the front. Tell the student a phrase/word/sentence. Student then goes back to their own team and tells the next person. That person then tells the person behind them. This continues to the last person. Once the last person gets the message they would run to the teacher and tell them them the phrase. First team to correctly answers wins.
Game 2: Using Picture Cards
There are many alternatives to this. If you are in a room, throw up picture cards around the room. Same deal, as the first game, though this time the student has to find the picture card!
Game 3: English Scarecrow
This is more of a PE style game. If you have lots of students you may want to break up the students into smaller teams or you can have one HUGE game. Basically some students are for every 5 student having 1 tagger is fairly good.
Anyway the students are placed into a room / larges square / gymnasium. When the teacher says go, the taggers go running about and tries to tag people. Once a person stops they freeze. To unfreeze, another non tagger must ask you a question in English. If they successfully answer they can move again.
You can use this game to practice any phrase/expressions/sentence you like.
If you require teaching resources like flashcards, games, ideas visit our teaching resource website at www.englishrescue.com
Best of luck
Games and activities that involve groups are often very good. 10 students in each group etc.
Game 1: Relay game
Groups of ten - line them up. Have first student of each line come to the front. Tell the student a phrase/word/sentence. Student then goes back to their own team and tells the next person. That person then tells the person behind them. This continues to the last person. Once the last person gets the message they would run to the teacher and tell them them the phrase. First team to correctly answers wins.
Game 2: Using Picture Cards
There are many alternatives to this. If you are in a room, throw up picture cards around the room. Same deal, as the first game, though this time the student has to find the picture card!
Game 3: English Scarecrow
This is more of a PE style game. If you have lots of students you may want to break up the students into smaller teams or you can have one HUGE game. Basically some students are for every 5 student having 1 tagger is fairly good.
Anyway the students are placed into a room / larges square / gymnasium. When the teacher says go, the taggers go running about and tries to tag people. Once a person stops they freeze. To unfreeze, another non tagger must ask you a question in English. If they successfully answer they can move again.
You can use this game to practice any phrase/expressions/sentence you like.
If you require teaching resources like flashcards, games, ideas visit our teaching resource website at www.englishrescue.com
Best of luck