They have things like making an I love you card, drawing body outlines (sounds terrible - what next, putting up Police tape?) Just kidding.
hmmm jdsmith, mind games… 
But if me all meet, you all will know who I am and that would not be good for my image.
No seriously, my biggest concern is how to apease the boss and at the same time get around the constictions.
JD asked me how many pages I have in the reading book. My problem is not with the book, my problem is that they have to memorize this book and the phonics book and the vocabulary sheets and the spelling and the weekly peom. I teach kindy. My kids don’t even go to public school yet.
I hate all this memorization. I really want a way to get around it.
Amy
Make a tape of yourself reading the story as creativelyasyou can
they will remember it better if they can read it along with you
then spend the rest of the time increasing their understanding with other activities
[quote=“Amy”]But if me all meet, you all will know who I am and that would not be good for my image.
No seriously, my biggest concern is how to apease the boss and at the same time get around the constictions.
JD asked me how many pages I have in the reading book. My problem is not with the book, my problem is that they have to memorize this book and the phonics book and the vocabulary sheets and the spelling and the weekly peom. I teach kindy. My kids don’t even go to public school yet.
I hate all this memorization. I really want a way to get around it.[/quote]
Trust me, JD will show you how to get around it and the boss will still have what he wants. They’ll remember it all and have fun doing it.
For example, my son (3yrs almost 4yrs) after being told the Lion King story (Ladybird books) for about 10 - 20 minutes could remember the key vocabulary and still remember it days later without any pressure. He wanted to play with the story. With TPR actions it came alive for him. He understood what was happening, and because of that, enjoyed it more. Now he has memorized the entire story and can tell it to my wife and I as a bedtime story. He loves books now, which makes me really happy. We are reading “Bouncing Tigger” at the moment.
I never have enough time to teach him English, but if I do, I have to bring it alive. He’s got the whole alphabet down, even able to identify letters randomly on the computer keyboard. Started being able to write a number of letters, no one asked him to do it, he did it himself because he saw us writting.
Kids are amazing, but shouldn’t be pressured into something they are not ready for. I would never have asked him to do what he does, but if he is doing it himself, I won’t stop him.
I understand the problem though. At the moment my biggest problem is to get the results that I need to get without doing things that I think are wrong.
Well, I won’t get around the memorization…it’s just called actually learning it. 
I think I need a new hat.
Im down for April 9 or the 10th. Let’s set the date and time in stone, cause Im really getting excited now… 
Turns out that the 9th is when DaJia is getting over-run with people for the Mazhu festival. May not get out of town through the traffic. Then again, there’s always a way. My junior hight students told me tonight. Man, I hate it when I have the dates wrong for these things. I feel so unTaiwanese. 
(I am a Kiwi)
That may make DaJia the ideal location though. Find a little out of the way place to meet. Then hit the streets for the biggest pilgrimage in Taiwan. See the Travel section for info.
That being said, I’ve seen it all before and there is an alternate location in Taipei county for us, or so I hear 
I’ll be chatting with another 'Mosan tomorrow, will have a final date and location up by Sunday.
How’s that?
jdsmith[quote]I can help you teach them faster.
[/quote]
I really don’t think I’m going to be able to do the hook up thing (not sure if I was ever actually invited 
) and I was so excited about getting some new ideas, or seeing ideas in action. 
You couldn’t share something in the thread jd?
Or pm me? (then I’d feel like part of the secret teaching society too) 
If you are here, taking part in this thread, and want to come, you are invited. 
Absolutely, where would you like to begin?
TPR
pre-reading
reading
phonics
vocabulary
how to make an erupting volcano with a chopstick?
Bassman[quote]If you are here, taking part in this thread, and want to come, you are invited. [/quote]
Thanks I feel loved and accepted.
There was an informative post in a nother thread on TPR.
How about Reading and pre-reading.
I’m taking a class that’s in transition from learning English in kindy, to more formal teaching. (i.e. everythings a game to we need to be a tad more serious about learning.)
Not saying it can’t be fun - I believe it should be.
[quote=“Amy”]I would like to see my kids 5-7 yr/old read one book every two weeks. The more they read the better. Currently my kids have to memorize the book. I get through two pages a week. There are only three sentences on the page. I love teaching reading. I have had my greatest successes teaching reading. The kids love to read. They like to talk about what they read. I feel expanding reading programs even for younger students would be a big benefit.
I stuggle with the misuse and over reliance on workbooks. Too many books in a class leaves less time for actually learning and using what they learn. Every book has to be used because “the parents paid for it”. It often becomes busy work to fill in the blanks.[/quote]
Amy, I agree with you wholeheartedly. Reading provides the student with the opportunity to actually hear themselves speaking perfectly. But please note my use of the verb “to hear” in the last sentence. Silent reading, IME, is useless. But reading aloud is incredibly effective. Reading a passage over and over again, builds a database of perfectly spoken English that the student may reflect their spoken (and written) English against. They will learn to recognize their own errors and eventually, self-correct.
Think of it as the way an actor learns his/her lines.
I’m porbably interested, but would like a little clarification.
What exactly is the purpose of this get-together?
How is it going to be run?
Are we going to:
Network with like-minded teachers?
Talk about teaching all day and share ideas?
Do little demos or presentations?
Have a teacher-training day where everyone does some training?
Brian
[quote=“Amy”]I would like to see my kids 5-7 yr/old read one book every two weeks. The more they read the better. Currently my kids have to memorize the book. I get through two pages a week. There are only three sentences on the page. I love teaching reading. I have had my greatest successes teaching reading. The kids love to read. They like to talk about what they read. I feel expanding reading programs even for younger students would be a big benefit.
I stuggle with the misuse and over reliance on workbooks. Too many books in a class leaves less time for actually learning and using what they learn. Every book has to be used because “the parents paid for it”. It often becomes busy work to fill in the blanks.[/quote]
Amy, it is so sad to hear reports like yours. Not that it is your fault (I certainly hope not!) Any later kinder or first grader should be able to devour the next book on sight, with only a few bobbles on new words.
What I usually do before a new book is to be introduced is to start to spoonfeed them the new words found in the next book in daily sentences that I write on the whiteboard. After about a week of surreptously shoving this down their little gullets, when they see the new book and the new vocabulary is encountered, their faces light up with glee when they quickly finish the book in nothing flat. Front to back as fast as they can go! Then I get a lot of smug looks that say, “Ha, ha, ha!” They know they are the best! When I follow the required routine, they groan and moan when I tell them to get out X book. Can you believe that they actually prefer a test?!
Maybe your laoban insists that they stay in sequence with the other classes. If that is the case (as it has often been mine), I supplant the time allocated for “required” reading with a lot of my short stories. These are one, two, or three paragraph situations using the students as characters.
On Friday, I give then a short 10 question test about the story I have given them. The situations I give them are a hell of a lot more practical than Popo or Mary and her Basket and other ilk. Not that they are bad, it’s just that they are boring for Taiwanese students. End results? 80% to 100% in a class of 15-20 students.
PM me, and I’ll be glad to send you a couple of examples and you can run from there with the idea.
Be forewarned that I have had the opportunity to spoonfeed all of my students from day one. Consequently, there are not a lot of learned errors that I have to correct. Most of those come from mothers who try to out-teach me. I will never understand some of them pay me money so they can correct me. Actually it only happened two times in five or so years.
Anyway, YOU be the teacher and they WILL learn to read!
First get together. This will be a meeting of like minds. I don’t think that any of us will be experts in everything, although I am sure that we all do a great job at what we do. It is to share some ideas and be mutually supportive as most of us probably don’t get much of that where we are. Hopefully we will all come away with something new.
[quote]Are we going to:
Network with like-minded teachers?[/quote]
Yes, I hope so. So far from a connection of three all of us have seen some benefits that have spilled over into our working lives.
[quote]Talk about teaching all day and share ideas?
Do little demos or presentations?[/quote]
I hope that everyone will come prepared to share. 10 minutes. Jdsmith has got TPR and reading as something that he can share. Although we may have to set a timer for him as once he gets going…
Next time there will be more of that once we know what everyone can bring to the table.
Date: April 9
Time: 2 PM
Location: Taipei County - exact location by PM. It’s at a friends school so I won’t post the address.
Oh, and this isn’t purely a foreigner thing, but it will be in English. Local and foreign alike can come.
All this reminds me of when I was a head teacher in Japan. We had 2 hour meetings,once a month, where I would have several different topics discussed by teachers,such as displine in the classroom, new games, listening techniques, etc. Then we would also discuss how to improve our relationships with the Japanese, or how to understand their ideas/customs on work,etc. Q&A on every day things in life that we needed help with, many of the things we cover on this board. I think maybe some of these topics could be discussed if we are open to it…I especially would like informative answer on the taiwanese’s approach to education, because there are somethings that I need a cultural understanding for when teaching in my classes…
Namahottie
This is a litle of topic, but in regards to culture and learning, I came across this interesting research recently
"Play approach hinders some Asian pupils
Ethnic minority children may lose out when they join reception classes because the school’s values are so different from those of their homes, according to research.
Bangladeshi children arrive at school expecting to work, but some fail to make progress because they think their teachers want them to play. Liz Brooker, a lecturer at London university’s Institute of Education, found that teachers unwittingly discriminated against Bangladeshi children by assuming that child-centred lessons based on play were suitable for all. But some Bangladeshi children found them confusing. Her book, Starting school - young children and learning cultures, found evidence of institutional racism from the day children started school.
She followed 16 four-year-olds through their first year at school. All the families lived in the same poor urban neighbourhood with no obvious differences in income. Eight children were from Bangladeshi families, the rest were “Anglo” children, five white and three African/Caribbean/English mixed race.
When she asked the three Bangladeshi children who seemed least interested in learning why they went to school, they surprised her by saying that they were there to study. Four months later all three had concluded that they were at school to “play”. She found they no longer accepted their parents’ message that school was about work. They believed that teachers wanted them to play and had not absorbed the unspoken message that the aim was to learn through play.
In contrast, the three children who did best were Anglo pupils whose mother were aware of how children learnt through play and provided similar experiences at home. Dr Brooker found the staff were aware that differences between home and school would affect children, but believed that the play-based classroom would help to compensate by giving all children the same chances.
She said that this belief assumed that parents and teachers both valued the same abilities in children - such as telling a teacher which toy they wanted to play with, rather than waiting to be told what to do. Children who had not been brought up with those values could end up losing out.
Starting school - young children and learning cultures,
Oh
I forgot to tell my favorite Taiwan teaching student memory
As part of the course we take them to early childhood centres.
At one of these a group of them were seen to surround some poor child with shrieks of concern. Seems they had never seen children doing real carpentry in an early childhood setting, and was worried the child was about to attack another child wit the hammer
What they really DID love was the absence of desks, and structure, and the use of teachable moments - and the teacher’s use of the environment the children played/lived in to learn. I know many of my students have returned to Taiwan to try and replicate some of these principles (with the exception of carpentry which they consider generally to be too crazy by half )
[quote=“The Gumper”]Think of it as the way an actor learns his/her lines.[/quote]Acquiring a language is very little like an actor learning his/her lines. Especially with kids, not much should be through conscious memorisation, which is laborious, inflexible and often results in only short-term retention. It should be about internalization of believable, comprehended language through actions, stories and other activities. The results of this are flexible (language items can be understood and used creatively in novel combinations) and retained for a long time.
[quote=“The Gumper”]Silent reading, IME, is useless.[/quote]Then you are at odds with a great many in the wider teaching community.
Read this article and try to follow up the excellent bibliography;
Is In-School Free Reading Good for Children? Why the National Reading Panel Report is (Still) Wrong – by Stephen Krashen
sdkrashen.com/articles/in-sc … index.html
Also Google “Sustained Silent Reading”;
google.com/search?q=sustained+silent+reading
WEI!
No one needs to know this until they get there!
I can set one thing up, but give me 10-15 minutes
Getting set for an in-class reading, How to TPR key vocabulary.
As for the secret location, give me a PM with your phone number.
Let’s just say that there won’t be any Earth-shatteringly new things here. Let’s not get our hopes up. I hope to feed off the intellects of others. It’s easier to think better when surrounded by like minded people.
Let’s try to do this like an “open mic” night: bring what you bring. (no booing please) But let it be know here what you want to do so that we can get some kind of order (as in a sense of order )