We are getting very close to the end of the semester - and end of the schooling year for the students of China. It's weird to think it ends here, as the end of the school year in my mind remains firmly in December - but we're not complaining. We are on our second week of 3 day weeks, and next week should be our last week teaching for a whopping 2 months! We suspect we won't have many more classes period, as the students are about to enter an exam phase, but at this point we don't really care.
The weather of late has been a mixed bag. After going through an almost straight week of China downpour, it's back into disgustingly muggy. Today was one of those days that was around 27 degrees - though due to the humidity felt around 41(according to the website forcast). I had four classes today and while they were quite nicely air-conditioned, I have had a sheen of sweat on my back and legs practically all day. Sometimes, we just cant get back to the apartment and it's air-con fast enough. The walk to down the road and back for dinner was bad enough - the heat just saps your energy.
Over the past few weeks we decided to try some games with the senior students in class and they worked really well. It's a little awkward at this point in the semester as we have been running pretty dry classes to date(ie no games), but they really enjoyed it. If we get new students next semester, we will definitely add a lot more games in. Not only does it break the ice between teacher and student but they enjoy it and in turn participate more. The only problem is finding games that can involve 55ish kids!
The internet is full of ESL games for the classroom, but not all of them are appropriate to classes of that size. With the juniors, we've been playing things such as hangman(to the point that some kids are as over it as we are), an advanced team form of hangman, Simon Says, I Spy, Bingo, a race where they had to draw clock faces etc.
Courtney put together a really good game which we tried with the senior students. She put a lot of time and effort into creating some huge cardboard dice which worked an absolute treat. As soon as we revealed what they were from the bag they were hidden in, the whole class basically cheered. They LOVE dice.
They're a little beat up - they've been to hell and back!
The game involved four teams and four empty bodies on the blackboard(just a circle on top of an oval). They would they roll the dice, and do things such as 1 - nose, 2 - mouth, 3- arm x 1, 4 - leg x 1 etc etc right down to 6 - ears x 2. Once rolled, the student would then answer a simple trivia question which we put together, ranging from 'What is the capital of France?' to 'Who is the tallest person in your class?' - these they also enjoyed. If answered correctly they could then draw that part of the body. We encouraged them to use as much creativity as possible, and basically have fun.
The weather of late has been a mixed bag. After going through an almost straight week of China downpour, it's back into disgustingly muggy. Today was one of those days that was around 27 degrees - though due to the humidity felt around 41(according to the website forcast). I had four classes today and while they were quite nicely air-conditioned, I have had a sheen of sweat on my back and legs practically all day. Sometimes, we just cant get back to the apartment and it's air-con fast enough. The walk to down the road and back for dinner was bad enough - the heat just saps your energy.
Over the past few weeks we decided to try some games with the senior students in class and they worked really well. It's a little awkward at this point in the semester as we have been running pretty dry classes to date(ie no games), but they really enjoyed it. If we get new students next semester, we will definitely add a lot more games in. Not only does it break the ice between teacher and student but they enjoy it and in turn participate more. The only problem is finding games that can involve 55ish kids!
The internet is full of ESL games for the classroom, but not all of them are appropriate to classes of that size. With the juniors, we've been playing things such as hangman(to the point that some kids are as over it as we are), an advanced team form of hangman, Simon Says, I Spy, Bingo, a race where they had to draw clock faces etc.
Courtney put together a really good game which we tried with the senior students. She put a lot of time and effort into creating some huge cardboard dice which worked an absolute treat. As soon as we revealed what they were from the bag they were hidden in, the whole class basically cheered. They LOVE dice.
They're a little beat up - they've been to hell and back!The game involved four teams and four empty bodies on the blackboard(just a circle on top of an oval). They would they roll the dice, and do things such as 1 - nose, 2 - mouth, 3- arm x 1, 4 - leg x 1 etc etc right down to 6 - ears x 2. Once rolled, the student would then answer a simple trivia question which we put together, ranging from 'What is the capital of France?' to 'Who is the tallest person in your class?' - these they also enjoyed. If answered correctly they could then draw that part of the body. We encouraged them to use as much creativity as possible, and basically have fun.
It really worked well. Like always by the end of the week we were over doing the same class umpteen times, but the kids enjoyed it, and we enjoyed running it - hell felt like a bit of a gameshow host there!
'ENZA' is what they call one of their Chinese male teachers. Note the mobile at the hip and the stocking'd foot. They're not overly different from western kids sometimes... Team 'I Think' comes from the teacher Enza always saying, "I think.." or, "Do you think this is right?" They're all over the various little teacher mannerisms. I have to watch what I do in class as they mimic my gestures all the time.
Case in point - here he is using his arm to hide the...boobies :) 
I don't know what the hell it is, but any time we say 'Yeti', they all piss their pants and love it. Naturally this class had 'Team Yeti Hunter," "Team Yeti Killer," "Team Yeti Farmer" and "Team Yeti."
This was the effort of class no.1. No.1 & 2 are the senior 'gifted' classes - ie all the very damned smart kids.
And in an unrelated note - above is my weekly escort. I teach two Junior gifted(ie smart kids) classes, Courtney teaches one; something I think she's actually a little jealous about! I have talked about them numerous times, but I love these kids - they are just so awesome fun to teach and I swear I am going to bring at least half of them home with me. Above is my 'escort'. Every week before class no.1, 3 kids come and meet me halfway to class. It started with just the one kid named Taylor, but now there's three, Taylor, Paddy(heh!) and Parker. In our weekly conversations on the way to class, I learnt that Parker had actually changed his name - he was originally called...Gordon. Above is Taylor and Paddy - note the umbrella - they come to me rain hail sleet or shine. This was taken two weeks ago.
This was taken this past Tuesday. I couldn't believe they came to greet me as it was ABSOLUTELY PISSING DOWN!!! Initially all three were crowded under the one umbrella - when they saw me, two broke rank and charged me shouting, 'SOS! SOS!" We actually taught the senior class idioms today and 'raining cats and dogs' was on the agenda. I was inclined to teach them 'pissing down' but refrained. Actually it wouldn't have surprised me if they already knew it, as one of the junior gifted students said to me a few classes ago, "Teacher, may I be excused, I need to take a leak."
And of course in utterly no relation to the above post, we went out for dinner to a Pizza restaurant with Matt and Abby on I think it was Tuesday night. It actually wasn't bad and very reasonably priced. The pizza I ate was a hawaiian and in what was a pizza first for me, it had slices of banana on the pizza along with the hawaiian. While the pizza tasted great, it sent my guts to hell and I was happy to get out of there and home lickedy split to my old friend the toilet. This was one of the menu items and definitely massive in appeal, ice-cream chicken salad, mmm mmmh.
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