A New Direction

I've been offered some summer work at an English camp here in Mae Rim which begins at the end of this month. As it stands I am likely to be one of two teachers and so will be doing 10 90-minute sessions over one week. If more students sign up, then I will be teaching two different ability groups over two weeks. Either I will be teaching the beginner group in the first week and the pre-intermediate group in the second week, or vice versa when I will swap over with a TEFL teacher from America (I'm from the UK).

Bearing in mind that I may have to teach learners at two very different levels who may or may not be in the same class, I have decided to start planning for these lessons now.

Another new development is that I have been offered the chance to start an English program for the Thai farmers at the farm where I have been volunteering on my Fridays off and where I am currently WWOOFing full time as this school year's kindergarten course has ended.

These will most likely be two very different experiences, but in the last lesson of the week, or of both weeks if more students sign up, I was hoping to build in some crossover. Namely I want to spend one of Friday's lessons on the farm.

I am at the beginning of putting together a Thai-English vocab sheet of words and phrases that I think might come in useful to the farmers in interacting with the WWOOF volunteers (WWOOFers), and to the English-speaking children who visit the farm from other schools.

In a little under three weeks from now, the kindergarten children from the international school where I live will be doing some healthy-eating-themed activities on the farm which I would like to help with. I think this will follow the idea of finding certain colours of vegetables on the farm. A scavenger hunt in other words.

A slightly more complicated scavenger hunt would be one possible way of making use of the vocabulary the older children from the camp will be learning.

Telling a story

This one's defeating me a little. I have looked at the Teaching English Games site and am considering buying this author's e-book. I have subscribed to her emails for now to see what a sample of the material is like.

Moving away from throwing money at the problem, my first instincts were to keep the story simple and base it around vocabulary I have already covered. I could review the relevant flashcards at the beginning of the lesson, and then change tack to start the story.

I mentioned in my last post my Thursday K3 class' love of zombies. I have been teaching vocabulary (since the toys topic last month) with an alternative zombie version of the mime or action that goes with the word, so it goes without saying that zombies will be featuring in the story. I don't have a flashcard for zombies as I think that would be a little too scary. I just act as a zombie or get the children to act out being a zombie.

List of past topics and words from which to choose for story (in bold any ones I think promising for a story):

Clothes (dress, skirt, trousers, shorts, tie)

Rooms in a house (living room, dining room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom)

Things in a house (toilet, bed, TV, computer, wardrobe, toys)

Shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangle, star)

Vegetables (cauliflower, carrot, cabbage, cucumber, (baby) corn)

Sports (football, basketball, tennis, swimming)

Vehicles (train, plane, bus, bicycle, boat, car)

Adjective (rich, poor, fast, slow)

What's the time, Mr Wolf?

Toys (doll, teddy bear)

Simple Command (make a line, make a circle, hop, jump, hold hands, hold shoulders)

Sign - Symbol (No Smoking, Fire Exit, Pharmacy, Hospital, Rest Room)

Number (Add-minus) (plus, minus, equals, 1-12)

Numbers (add and minus)

Before:

Well I've got two more kindergarten lessons to plan before Songkran. The first of these is for this Monday: Numbers (add and minus).

You may remember that when the topic was "Playing a Game," I bought a clock and used this to play "What's the time, Mr Wolf?" Well Eve suggested that I use this to help with the numbers lesson. I could initiate the game to practise the numbers 1-12.

I had thought that learning some bigger numbers would be useful: 1-12 (via the clock), 100, 1000, 10,000, and 1,000,000. But bigger numbers can't be counted out in a fun way by steps.

Instead I think I will use flash cards, including the numbers 1-12, a + symbol, and a - symbol to vary the number of steps the children take. I think I will bring extra cards for larger groups of children so there are enough to count the entire group. Then the number could decide the number of children making a circle, or making a train.

That will do for now. Next week's topic is Telling a story, so more on that later.

After: The lesson was a success with most of the groups. I made up a set of large dominoes on paper which I stuck to cardboard based on the those I found at this website: http://www.first-school.ws/theme/printables/dominoes-math.htm I also made three extra dominoe sized pieces of paper with a "+," a "-," and an "=." I photocopied worksheets copied from this site and then took them in on Monday.

I found that the children were managing only a plus and a minus sum in the time available so the next day I cut the sheets in half. I also decided to give all the children the same domino to copy. Finally today I realized that it would help if I filled out a sheet myself to give as an example for the children to copy from.

Other things I learnt were that holding three dominoes at once is difficult so as soon as I could I taught the children to make the "+," "-," and "=" signs with their fingers. Children were also very good at counting in order up to 10 but most had not gone beyond this number. I encouraged them to say the number of fingers I held up. I made this more fun by allowing the first child to get the correct answer (or repeat the correct answer) to come up and stand by me and be a zombie (Thursday K3 lesson kids love zombies since I introduced them to them at Halloween).

Kindergarten: Simple commands

Next week the topic is Simple commands. The only way I can think of doing this so far is by playing Simon says. In my class, I often get children to follow instructions, but often rely on the Thai assistant teacher to explain what I want of the children. What I could do would be to make use of games I've already introduced but this time give the instructions in English and only English.

Common instructions I use:

Hold hands.

Make a line.

This is the instruction for the "What's the time Mr Wolf?" game but on its own could be used for making a queue to shoot at the goal for football in the sports lesson.

Face the whiteboard.

Face the wall.

Make a circle

I've used this in the shapes lesson and generally when the children hold hands they make a circle - try to use this with hold hands.

Stand up, please

I don't use this as often since the children are mostly already standing up.

Sit down, please

The constant refrain of both me and the Thai assistant in the classroom

Hold shoulders

I've used this to get children to make a train but "train" is quicker.

Go

Ready

Stop

These three are from the traffic lights game and I started the lesson with them last week.

Spin

I've demonstrated this for tie and for (spinning) top

Hop

I've demonstrated this for "What's the time Mr Wolf?"

Props I'll need:

Clock from "What's the time Mr Wolf?"

Circle from the shapes lesson

A piece of string to symbolise the line

Spinning top from the toys lesson.

Train from the transport lesson or kite from the toys lesson

Red, yellow and green traffic lights from the traffic signs lesson.

Pre-entry level writing

Finally, I would like to help a friend to begin to learn to write in English -- the best book for this in my opinion will be the ESOL Activities Pre-Entry sections on reading and writing as it is aimed at adults.

Jeopardy for my private student

The other thing I've been trying to get around to doing is to re-organise the Jeopardy game Eve had from her previous job when she used to teach EFL.

I have been using ESOL Activities Entry 2 with my student who is at an intermediate level and I think the game is really for elementary level students. Another possiblility is that I change around the "Who want's to be a TEFLaire?" powerpoint using multiple choice questions from the self-study exercises I have not yet given to my student.

Planning for tomorrow

I've noticed that I'm quite prolific on the computer and that I'm quite procrastinatory off it. So here's hoping I can sit down and prepare on my blog if nowhere else.

Tomorrow the topic is Toys.

My flash cards are:

A doll;

A teddy bear;

A kite;

A skateboard;

Four different types of balls - basketball, (soccer) football, baseball and tennis ball;

A spinning top;

A drum;

and, last but definitely not least, a robot.

I have a sense that tomorrow will be much as usual -- I will go into the class with an idea that I'll get the children to repeat the name of the object after me and then get them to perform an action related to the object after me.

For the doll -- cradling like a baby.

The teddy bear -- begin by cuddling it and then pretend to be a real bear and walk roaring towards the children with arms outstretched like a zombie.

The kite -- take out the flashcard with it's still attached strip of futureboard and pretend to be fly it and then be pulled about by it laughing whenever the wind catches the kite, as in laughter yoga with the dog on the lead.

The skateboard -- pretend to ride it around the room and do ollies on it, falling off a couple of times for the children's amusement.

Four balls - can use the basketball to recap "sports" using futureboard as racquets again and bring along hoop.

For the spinning top -- spin around quickly and then slow down and start swinging in broader arc before falling to the floor.

Drum -- use tummy as an impromptu drum and get children to repeat rhythms you beat out.

Robot -- walk around like a robot all around class room getting children to follow you and perhaps turning to walk towards children in bad robot mode.

This is all I have for the moment but I'll give it some more thought and perhaps come and re-edit this post some time in the next hour.