Friday, November 19, 2010

Summing up

Hi,
Congratulation, people, for teaching for this long. I just wanted to post one more thing before we finish. I was thinking about how, despite the fact that I worked really hard to provide interesting lessons, the kids don't seem to have learnt much. If I had another year with these kids next year, or taught for another year, I would do the following.
Every class, learn maybe three words and a phrase. Also, almost every class, do some karaoke, and maybe a worksheet. Each 4 or five weeks, I would have them do some sort of presentation, hopefully using the vocab, like, making a recipe and then the dish.
inventing a conversation and then filming it.
The point of having a standard lesson would be so that after a fun lesson (playing hide and seek, twister, etc.), you could get them back to doing more boring things more easily.
Other things I would do is to film their introductions, if they let me, at the beginning of the year, and try and get them to make a better one at the end.
Anyway, just a few ideas. Maybe the volunteers next year can use them.
Take care, lovelies!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Snakes and ladders


So I created a snakes and ladders board (I made three, and it was enough for our classes of up to 20), with squares of four different colours, and bought some dice. Then, I made a bunch of cards, of these four different colours, with questions on them. The students play snakes and ladders, and, after they have moved, take a card, and answer a question. If they get it right, they can move forward to spaces more. I got the kids to make up some of the questions, which was fun, and the cards got more and more ridiculous, which instructions like, "dance", "sing Katie Perry´s "Hot and cold"", "pushups" and "stand on Chair".
Photo, here

Fun Activities for the summer

An outdoor game: Los paises. A game the students knew. Everyone chooses a country (this game can be easily adapted for other categories of words. We played it with fruits and colours). Everyone stands outside in a group, with one person holding the ball. He/she throw it straight up in the air, and shouts a country of another person. that person has to catch it, and everyone else runs as far away as possible. If they catch it on the full, they can throw it back up, calling out a new country. If it bounces first, they shout "stop" when they have it. Everyone has to stop running when "stop" is called. The person with the ball takes three steps and throws it at someone. The game can then restart.
This would be better, perhaps, if played with penalties, like the person who gets hit has to sing in English. We tried that for a while but it was a bit difficult.