i work for an anchingban that isn’t even breaking even.
every summer there is a summer program offered. last year was a nightmare because they gave little thought to students who have never studied english before. i was expected to come up with a different topic each week and base two hours of class time around it. i had two two hour classes that were a mixed level. some students had been studying for years and some didn’t even know their abc’s yet… and i had to do an entire unit on the Olympics and arctic animals and various other things that really were a pain in the arse.
anyway, it’s time to start getting ready, and my boss wants me to pick 8 weeks worth of topics but doesn’t give a rat’s ass if there are students who have never studied english before in these classes.
my question is this: what do most schools offer for summer classes? we were in tiny tots today and she had all sorts of grandiose ideas like teaching the kids how to make robots, the 8 wonders (or is it 7?) of the world, human anatomy… etc… i kept pushing for something more structured like a beginning grammar class…
i need some ideas and some help because i can see it being just as disaterous as last year… :help:
At least if you do science experiments there is some physical interaction demanded. Maybe they won’t understand what “vinegar” and “baking soda” are, but when you mix them together in a clay volcano it’s kind of fun.
I hope you are paid an aweful lot for your efforts. Usually, where I’ve worked, I’ve been paid to teach only. If there were no program in place, and the school wanted me to make one for them, I’d charge an aweful lot more than what I’d expect for teaching alone.
You know, Toasty, real teachers write their own lesson plans.
Anyway, bushibanned, I’d take Mianbao’s advice. I’m surprised someone who seems as educationally clueless as your laoban actually knows that Tiny Tots even exists.
my question is this: what do most schools offer for summer classes? we were in tiny tots today and she had all sorts of grandiose ideas like teaching the kids how to make robots, the 8 wonders (or is it 7?) of the world, human anatomy… etc… i kept pushing for something more structured like a beginning grammar class…
I need some ideas and some help because I can see it being just as disaterous as last year… :help:[/quote] I see the robot idea being a whole lot more practical, not to mention fun than a grammar class, if it’s done right. How the heck do you teach kids grammar at that age?
The school I work for does speech competitions during the summer break. The kids can memorize the whole thing but ask them a question about the subject they’ve talked about there’s no way they can give an answer in English.
I kind of like your boss’ ideas. Maybe the presentation needs a little rethinking… for example, one week (would that be 4 hours’ teaching time) is not really much for a topic, you could suggest 3 topics for 3 weeks, or one a month. Within the topic, break it down - vocabulary, dialog, experiment, art activity… Within the art activity, have language goals. The robot sounds fun. You can teach useful things like household objects (recycling boxes etc), verbs (how does one go about making a robot?), do the activity, have kids work in groups to write their instructions, making “robot instruction guides”, photocopy them and send them home with a nice digital pic of the robots on the front, parents might like that… you could ask your boss to help out by writing a homework activity in Chinese where kids have to go around their home finding what things use batteries, and make sentences like “My police car needs batteries.” You can have an auction to see which robot kids would most like to buy, have them practice counting money in English. So, your summer topic could be “Toys” or “Electricity” or “Technology”, depending on the age of your kids.
Parents like their kids to do fun stuff in the summer, and to learn some English, too. Topics that kids can enjoy and activities they can “get into” will have them going home and telling parents how much they enjoy the class, and if you present your language goals using these activities, I think kids will be more motivated to use the language.
BTW, you can ask your boss to help you get online and borrow English books from the library if there is no book budget. Give your boss the topics and ask her to search and pick them up for you. Then, you can have a reading club, too, based on the topics. Kids can keep a tally of books they read, or do group book study. (Even very low level kids can do something like word searches or rewriting a story from the pictures.) Or, you can ask kids to borrow or bring from home.
Well, don’t know how much of that was useful… I miss teaching summer classes!