Poor Kevin (my American tutor) is back after just one week since being hit by a car, so now I can learn how to be a teacher and I can stop feeling sorry for the kids who had to put up with my awful effort of being a makeshift supply-teacher. I'm sure I'll learn a lot from him, seems like he knows what he's doing, but if he calls it soccer one more time we are going to have to have words. Luckily (for them) the students agree with me that it's football. Despite it still being too cold for comfort, I'm enjoying it more. Our weekly trip to the supermarket on a Tuesday is always a delight since I get to have a KFC, and the waitress didn't have a fit for having to serve a werstermer like the last one did. Mandarin still isn't sinking in though, I remember phrases for about half an hour before they shoot out the other ear.
Have a question for whoever is interested, this was sent by a teacher who is trying to get an activity going: I thought it may be a good idea to have a representitive from the UK, USA and Australia to highlight the differences between their respective countries and have the students debate which one they would like to live in, but please add any other ideas so I can take the credit.
i need your help to make our department an "English Zone". i need your ideas when it comes to designing our bulletin boards in the first floor. as you know, there are at least five bulletin boards and we need to at least encourage our students to read something in English there. but the questions are: how can we do that?, what are the possible things we can put there?
what Ling and I discussed, most probably we can put something like "English Trivia: Did you know that?" or put some useful phrases and expressions which normally used in England or in the US (which they can use in the future when they go toAustralia or other English Speaking countries). maybe you have some good ideas about this.....
another thing is, we're thinking to put all the students to attend a simple talk in the meeting hall to hear some stories about England or USA so they could have an idea about your countries. or somehow we can let them know some different cultures between England and USA. and this talk can be done in one of the weeks of this term on the third period in the afternoon. one of you can be the speaker.
or another thing is, some extra-curricular activities that involve English. it shouldn't be as big as the Speech or English Song contests. just something that students can enjoy to do in English.
if you have some ideas about this, please feel free to talk to me and we'll discuss it at once.
thank you very much guys! i'm looking forward for your cooperation.
I thought it may be a good idea to have a representitive from the UK, USA and Australia to highlight the differences between their respective countries and have the students debate which one they would like to live in, but please add any other ideas so I can take the credit.
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Hey Rich,
Sounds like a good idea - I wouldn't worry too much :-) Just do ya best as me mam says :-)
I assume the debate would be in the hall as they are trying to get as many pupils involved as possible, I think they just want two English speakers to ellicit some converstaion from the students, but things aren't that clear cut here, trying to find what EXACTLY is required of you can be an exercise in itself. I put forward: Maybe getting representitives from UK, USA and Australia to talk about why their respective countries are best would be a good idea (in some kind of TV talk show type format) obvioulsy it would all be in jest, adding humorous debates (the soccer/football cliche would be an obvious one) would entice students to come along and at the end they would vote who gave the best argument and why they would chose/not chose to live permanantly in that country.
They seemed to like that. But then I started thinking of the challenges of different levels i.e. not making it too difficult for the lower level students to understand but not too simple that the more advanced students would get bored. What worries I have.
Hi Rich,
Sounds like you are getting into the swing of things! You have some good ideas. How are you going to do the debates? In class or in a big hall? Debates work well if students have the time to prepare and are confident enough to express their views. If they are not then it can fall flat! When you said students will attend a talk will all of the school do this together? You may want to think about doing this in their ability levels. Also try to use lots of pictures and make it as interactive as possible. A good way to do this is ask a question - ask the audience what they think and then tell them the correct answer. Try to make it interactive. Also remember that speakers will have to tailor their language - nice, slow, easy language - if students don't understand they will switch off! It's some times nice (size of the audience providing!) to have some questions posted around the room and students walk around and discuss what they think the answers are. Then they have more of a need to listen for the answers! Do you have a Interactice White Board? Or a projector?
Bulletin board: Comparing different words sounds like a good idea. Different informal ways of saying hello in each country...I always teach 'trainers', 'sneakers' and 'runners'....perhaps you could do it as a quiz where one is missing for a country and students have to find out the missing answer - so it's more interactive and gets them thinking?
Extra curricular activities: Book clubs? Film clubs? Debate teams? Projects? Drama group (performing plays is always popular!), English games classes (playing hide and seek etc)....
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