Andrew Aigner-MuehlerChapter 8.. What to teach...Lessons 7 to 12.
January 5th 2009 12:52
Okay! Lessons seven to twelve will take you to the Spring Festival break, where you will then have a 40 day break.
I must also mention the lessons that I have told you, that I have completed with my classes are thought of myself. They are also not part of the curriculum. Most schools in China will set a curriculum for you, that they expect you to stick, but then you will get schools like my own here in Chengde, where you have to plan your own lessons. Again, this is only a suggestion.
Lesson seven for my grade two students was a debate. You can either do it two ways. If you think, you have full participation within your class, I suggest splitting the classrom down the middle ie get the first half of the classrom to turn the chairs around and face the back half of the classroom. If you do not have full participation of the class, just talk to the class on the whole, and when someone answers the question, ask them why, get a why out of the why. If you are splitting the classroom into two, you need to say some rules ie no throwing, one person talks at a time unless raising a point or arguing a point. You will need to think of some subjects or topics that you wish them to discuss before the lesson. Some topics may include Do you think the olympics were a success? Do you think the olympics were good for Beijing and China? Do you think going green is good for the environment? Do you think learning English is important? These ones I have just mentioned are good in a debate situation where one side debates the good things, and the other debate the bad things, why it is not. Some other quick firing topics may include Do you think we should be tougher on crime? Alot of students would either live on or off campus, ask them would they rather go to a mixed school or a single sex school? ask them why? ie is it better because your grades will improve? What do you think the causes of the increase in violence in our society is? Is it a advantage or disadvantage of getting married? I will say, one thing. Stay away from any politics, religion, Japan, Taiwan or Tibet or you may encounter problems. You should not even mention any of these even to adults in China. Now, to lesson seven for grade one. I did a quiz. Firstly, split the class into teams. You may have eight tables wide in the classroom, so you have 8 teams going back. Invite one student from each team to the front. They get asked four questions, and then the next team will come up. Do not make the questions too hard. This is to test their listening, understanding and reaction and even knowledge. I added one extra thing, the winning team with the most points got a chuppa chup (stick lolly). Some questions may be What is the name of this school? What is the name of this city? What is the capital of this province? What are the two colours on the Chinese flag? In words, what is 25 plus 69? If there is 55 students in this class, and each student has a chair. How many legs are there? This will get them stuck also, How many "she's" are in this room? (with that question, they will get wrong as they always call a he a she and vice versa). Just think of easy questions, which they will know. They will absolutely love that lesson. They like going up against each other.
Lesson 8 with grade one firstly, was a topic. I did a topic 'what to say and do when you go shopping' I picked a different student out of the class for each question I asked. I gave them a scenario. A couple scenarios may include, you are in a shop, you have seen something that you may want to buy, but there is no price on it. What would you say? another one may be, you are in a clothes shop, again you have found something you may want to buy, but you do not lnow if it would fit you. What would you say to the shop keeper? Just think of a dozen scenarios that when you usually go shopping, you come across, and get them to ask a question and respond to you. What I have noticed with my grade ones is they never ask a question with excuse me! and could you please.... They will usually say "How much?" Again you need to teach them the polite way of things. With grade two this week, lesson 8. I did a lesson of several games. They may include the game where you have a 3 by 3 box with 9 letters jumbled up to make a nine letter word, and they have to try to make as many 4/5/6/7 or 8 letter words as possible. I will warn you, they will probably guess the nine letter word before they think of the smaller words. Another game may be where the teacher writes a four letter word on the board, and then the student have to make another meaningful word by just changing one letter ie start with 'time' a student may say 'dime' then they say 'dive', then 'five' and then 'fire'. Another game which they will love is the multiple of four game where you get all the students to stand, and you go across the room and one students says 'one' the next 'two' , and then 'three', then the fourth or every fourth person should say 'buzz'. Allow 20 minutes for this game. If the students do not 'buzz' on the multiple of four they sit down. The students will fall fairly quick. But, they will laugh as it is played. It gets them going. It may be even good to play first up, as it motivates the students. If you have time this lesson, make sure you have a picture or two, maybe from a newspaper. Get the class monitor to choose two students who can understand and speak English really well. Get one student to stand at the blackboard, and the other to stand at their desk. The student at the desk must explain to the student at the blackboard what the picture is. The student at the blackboard has to drawer exactly what the student at the desk says. This game will get a laugh from all student.
Now to lesson nine for grade one. I played the game 'jeapardy'. You form two teams, boys versus girls is a great way, even so the girls will win, trust me. Get the class monitor again to pick a boy and a girl to come to the front. You the teacher say the rules. Each boy girl pair will answer three questions. The student with the quickest buzzer answers. The buzzers I used was to scream out boy for the boys and girl for the girls and slap the front desk. The way to play this is, you the teacher need to prepare 20 answers along with questions. When you the first question. you say the answer like in jeapardy ie what would you say if I said "good morning teacher". You hope the student would say "good mroning class?" another one may be "the nearest bathroom is over there". You hope they say the question "could you please tell me where the nearest bathroom is?" and so on. Again the students love this game, they will have a laugh. With grade two, I was going to tape and play a news service from the CBS in the United States, BBC in England, Channel nine in Australia, Global TV in Canada and RTE in Ireland, but the sound quality was not good so instead I did the lesson that I did with my grade one students at the start of the semester '30 must sentences for Beijing people'. Instead of giving them a handout each. I just said the response to them, and was getting them to give me a question to it. Mainly to get them to listen and understand and hopefully respond.
The following wek for grade two. Lesson ten. I made up a puzzle page for each student which will have a find-a-word puzzle on it where they have to find so many countries. I will let them know how many countries they need to find. I will also tell them how many letters are left over, and these letters will form a hidden message. But this lesson, I mainly concentrated on the other puzzle on the page, which was a crossword, where I read out the clues. The answers of the crosswords were capital cities. A clue may be, this city has the worlds second most heavily used train network, it also has the largest metropoltan urban area in the world, it is also the largest city in Europe. This city is home of the Kremlin. This city is the capital or Russia. Another clue may be this is Africas most populated city, it is located on the Nile river, this city has also got the pyramids , it is the capital or Cairo. As you say the clues give them a bit of a history lesson or tourism lesson as well, say a bit about that city. They will find it interesting. They will listen. For the next two weeks lessons for grade one I made up a handout with 160 questions on it. You will get through 60 to 80 questions each lesson. Get each student to read out a question and answer themselves. It is a grammar exercise with questions like which abbrevation do you use when you want to add something at the end of a letter? a)PS b)PM or c)PTO another one may be They _____me do it. a)made or b)forced. If you get stuck on finding questions to print out, you can do a search through google for grammar lessons. For grade two this week, I did a lesson on cooking and food. I started with getting the students to give me some cooking terms. A dozen will do, also say some yourself. Them tell the students how to make your favourite dish. Starting with the ingredients you need. Then how to prepare it. Then step by step tell them how to make it. Hopefully at the end of the class the students will feel comfortable in telling you how to make one of their favourite dishes.
Now to the final week. This will be around three and a half months of lessons, a weeks work may go over two weeks because you may not have any lesson one week due to exams or you have public holidays. This last week I started of with grade two by saying what did you do for new years? what is spring festival about? what are you doing for spring festival? what I am doing for my 40 days off? This lesson will also be your final week maybe of teaching them. You may have to swap around your classes with the other foreign teacher, like I had too. This was just to get them talking. Then I played chess with them using the blackboard. Draw a table with the axis on it, going horizontal write 'a' to 'h' and then vertically down '8' to '1' This will be your chess board. Make up a key ie 'p' equals pawn, 'q' equals queen, 'kn' equals knight, 'k' equals king, 'c' equals castle or rook and 'b' equals bishop. If they do not know how to play. Perfect. Even better. A chance for them to listen and understand you. Explain the rules. Say what pieces can move where, and how many spaces. Get the girls to start by saying by saying 'P7' to 'P6'. I noticed they were thinking about their moves like a real gam of chess.
I must also mention the lessons that I have told you, that I have completed with my classes are thought of myself. They are also not part of the curriculum. Most schools in China will set a curriculum for you, that they expect you to stick, but then you will get schools like my own here in Chengde, where you have to plan your own lessons. Again, this is only a suggestion.
Lesson seven for my grade two students was a debate. You can either do it two ways. If you think, you have full participation within your class, I suggest splitting the classrom down the middle ie get the first half of the classrom to turn the chairs around and face the back half of the classroom. If you do not have full participation of the class, just talk to the class on the whole, and when someone answers the question, ask them why, get a why out of the why. If you are splitting the classroom into two, you need to say some rules ie no throwing, one person talks at a time unless raising a point or arguing a point. You will need to think of some subjects or topics that you wish them to discuss before the lesson. Some topics may include Do you think the olympics were a success? Do you think the olympics were good for Beijing and China? Do you think going green is good for the environment? Do you think learning English is important? These ones I have just mentioned are good in a debate situation where one side debates the good things, and the other debate the bad things, why it is not. Some other quick firing topics may include Do you think we should be tougher on crime? Alot of students would either live on or off campus, ask them would they rather go to a mixed school or a single sex school? ask them why? ie is it better because your grades will improve? What do you think the causes of the increase in violence in our society is? Is it a advantage or disadvantage of getting married? I will say, one thing. Stay away from any politics, religion, Japan, Taiwan or Tibet or you may encounter problems. You should not even mention any of these even to adults in China. Now, to lesson seven for grade one. I did a quiz. Firstly, split the class into teams. You may have eight tables wide in the classroom, so you have 8 teams going back. Invite one student from each team to the front. They get asked four questions, and then the next team will come up. Do not make the questions too hard. This is to test their listening, understanding and reaction and even knowledge. I added one extra thing, the winning team with the most points got a chuppa chup (stick lolly). Some questions may be What is the name of this school? What is the name of this city? What is the capital of this province? What are the two colours on the Chinese flag? In words, what is 25 plus 69? If there is 55 students in this class, and each student has a chair. How many legs are there? This will get them stuck also, How many "she's" are in this room? (with that question, they will get wrong as they always call a he a she and vice versa). Just think of easy questions, which they will know. They will absolutely love that lesson. They like going up against each other.
Now to lesson nine for grade one. I played the game 'jeapardy'. You form two teams, boys versus girls is a great way, even so the girls will win, trust me. Get the class monitor again to pick a boy and a girl to come to the front. You the teacher say the rules. Each boy girl pair will answer three questions. The student with the quickest buzzer answers. The buzzers I used was to scream out boy for the boys and girl for the girls and slap the front desk. The way to play this is, you the teacher need to prepare 20 answers along with questions. When you the first question. you say the answer like in jeapardy ie what would you say if I said "good morning teacher". You hope the student would say "good mroning class?" another one may be "the nearest bathroom is over there". You hope they say the question "could you please tell me where the nearest bathroom is?" and so on. Again the students love this game, they will have a laugh. With grade two, I was going to tape and play a news service from the CBS in the United States, BBC in England, Channel nine in Australia, Global TV in Canada and RTE in Ireland, but the sound quality was not good so instead I did the lesson that I did with my grade one students at the start of the semester '30 must sentences for Beijing people'. Instead of giving them a handout each. I just said the response to them, and was getting them to give me a question to it. Mainly to get them to listen and understand and hopefully respond.
The following wek for grade two. Lesson ten. I made up a puzzle page for each student which will have a find-a-word puzzle on it where they have to find so many countries. I will let them know how many countries they need to find. I will also tell them how many letters are left over, and these letters will form a hidden message. But this lesson, I mainly concentrated on the other puzzle on the page, which was a crossword, where I read out the clues. The answers of the crosswords were capital cities. A clue may be, this city has the worlds second most heavily used train network, it also has the largest metropoltan urban area in the world, it is also the largest city in Europe. This city is home of the Kremlin. This city is the capital or Russia. Another clue may be this is Africas most populated city, it is located on the Nile river, this city has also got the pyramids , it is the capital or Cairo. As you say the clues give them a bit of a history lesson or tourism lesson as well, say a bit about that city. They will find it interesting. They will listen. For the next two weeks lessons for grade one I made up a handout with 160 questions on it. You will get through 60 to 80 questions each lesson. Get each student to read out a question and answer themselves. It is a grammar exercise with questions like which abbrevation do you use when you want to add something at the end of a letter? a)PS b)PM or c)PTO another one may be They _____me do it. a)made or b)forced. If you get stuck on finding questions to print out, you can do a search through google for grammar lessons. For grade two this week, I did a lesson on cooking and food. I started with getting the students to give me some cooking terms. A dozen will do, also say some yourself. Them tell the students how to make your favourite dish. Starting with the ingredients you need. Then how to prepare it. Then step by step tell them how to make it. Hopefully at the end of the class the students will feel comfortable in telling you how to make one of their favourite dishes.
Now to the final week. This will be around three and a half months of lessons, a weeks work may go over two weeks because you may not have any lesson one week due to exams or you have public holidays. This last week I started of with grade two by saying what did you do for new years? what is spring festival about? what are you doing for spring festival? what I am doing for my 40 days off? This lesson will also be your final week maybe of teaching them. You may have to swap around your classes with the other foreign teacher, like I had too. This was just to get them talking. Then I played chess with them using the blackboard. Draw a table with the axis on it, going horizontal write 'a' to 'h' and then vertically down '8' to '1' This will be your chess board. Make up a key ie 'p' equals pawn, 'q' equals queen, 'kn' equals knight, 'k' equals king, 'c' equals castle or rook and 'b' equals bishop. If they do not know how to play. Perfect. Even better. A chance for them to listen and understand you. Explain the rules. Say what pieces can move where, and how many spaces. Get the girls to start by saying by saying 'P7' to 'P6'. I noticed they were thinking about their moves like a real gam of chess.
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