I'm not sure about how the first goal turned out, by I know the second one was accomplished
Right after class started, I had them watch a K-Fee commercial -German coffee company
It wasn't quite as effective as it was in America's Funniest Home Videos when unsuspecting parents watch this video on their computer, but it still produced quite a loud shreik
After I gave the kids that short video, it was time to actually teach them something
I originally wanted them to answer the question “Are you afraid of X?”
and have them reply with “Yes, I’m afraid of X” or “No, I’m not afraid of X”
but man oh man did they have a problem with that
I knew my first graders who’ve barely mastered how to say “book” and
“ruler” weren’t going to be able to say it, but even my fifth graders had
trouble with it
So at the end of the day I just turned it into a listening skills
exercise:
“If you are afraid of pimps,
stand up”
I loved this one because there
would always be a boy who would stand up and I would ask him, “Oh, are you
afraid a pimp is going to make you his boyfriend?” and then he would sit down
and say “no, no, no, no”.
I even let my fourth and fifth graders say sentences out loud that the class would have to follow
"If you're afraid of butter, stand up" was probably my favorite
Even though my original lesson plan failed miserably, it was still a good experience
Here are some of the slides I used
This one really got a lot of kids to jump out of their seats
And this was the first time I used GIFs in my presentation too
My school is awesome
Ecological beauty pageant
There was an "ecological" beauty pageant where students got to make
clothes out of garbage and the best outfits won an award
We also had a traditional Chinese opera troupe come to our school for an afternoon (so I only had to teach 1/2 of a class that afternoon!)
It was a hassle trying to get all of the students to get out on the
playground with their chair (watching the first graders trying to move chairs
that were as big as they were was hilarious and entertainment enough)
but other than that it went pretty smoothly
One teacher summed it up pretty nicely saying “the longer they take
to set up, the better because by then the students will be tired, they won’t be
running around, and they’ll just sit down and watch the show”
Oh, I won an award
If you see this blog often, you've seen that I sometimes make students cry
Even though I make some students cry, I was still given a "My Favorite Class" award (students get to vote for this award and the teachers receiving the most votes wins)
Plus I got a 100 RMB Shenzhen Bookstore Gift Card which bought a lot of postcards and was awesome
That's me ruining the photo in the khakis and the blue button-down t-shirt towards the right of the group.
After a nice restful National Day holiday, I finally got a chance to hand out awards for the previous week's Oral English Competition
Every student that I gave an award to smiled except the 5 or 6 who I accidentally misspelled their names on the certificate
1 was directly my fault because the character in her name was 佳 but I wrote 家 because they sound the same, but the other 4 or 5 I'm blaming the students because they wrote their names like celebrities sign autographs
Of course, I should have checked with the student before I printed the certificate which is my fault but luckily it only takes 10 minutes to print another one
Got to make kids laugh
This week I taught sports terms and how to reply to "Do you like to play (insert sport)?"
Most kids in 4th and 5th grade caught on pretty quick. At least I corrected them from saying "Yes, I like" to "Yes, I like to play (insert sport)" or "No, I don't like to play (insert sport)"
3rd and 2nd graders were alright, at first their eyes were a little glazed over but after one or two quick shouts to attention, they were focused and got through it
The 1st graders forgot most of the words 2 minutes after I taught them but they've only been in a real school for a little over 1 month so I can understand
My teaching style is trying to make kids laugh and learn
I'm not going to teach them songs because I sound like a dying cow when I sing, so I'm going to at least try to teach them grammar and make them laugh
Yes kids, American basketball is played by gorillas jumping through flaming hoops
Don't worry, I also so pictures of the sport being played in its actual form too
So every month this year, I plan on holding an oral English competition because it gives me a chance to test my students oral English abilities in a one-on-one fashion and I get to give out awards which makes me feel happy
Basically, the competition involves reading out loud 3 words and 3 sentences written on a piece of paper and answering 3 questions that I orally ask them such as "How are you?", "What color is my t-shirt?" What's the square root of 81?", etc.
What I do is pull students out of the classroom one at a time out into the hallway (the ones who are willing to participate that is, about half of my kids aren't in the upper grades) and the rest of my students can sit in the classroom, watch a movie, do homework, read a book, do tarot readings, etc.
Then the next time I'm in front of my computer at work, I put the top 5 students' names in a template, print out the awards, and then hand them to the students in front of their classmates the next week.
I was thinking of having one class where I teach kids how to do touchdown dances so that once they receive one of my awards they can rub it in the other kids' faces but then I thought their parents' might not enjoy watching their little child try to chest bump grandma
National Day
So everyone in China get 8 days off for National Day and that turns it into the absolute worst time to do any form of tourism to major tourist spots
Just imagine what a nation of 1.4 billion people taking their one of three big chances to go travel to a major historic site would be like
There was a story for this park called Jiuzhaigou which is kind of like the Yellowstone of China and there were so many tourists that tickets for the park sold out in the first couple of hours every single day and that hundreds of people were left stranded inside the park for hours because there weren't enough buses inside the park to transport them all
Luckily, Shirley and I went to Foshan and a beach that's far, far away and barely had any people there
It was nice because I guess all the people that live in Foshan, Guangdong went somewhere else for vacation
I have pictures to prove I was there, but my cell phone currently doesn't want to connect to my computer so you'll just have to take my word for it.
And this was the first time I used GIFs in my presentation too
