I’m new to ESL primary school teaching, so I have insights or “ahah!” moments that might seem super obvious. I’m going to share them anyway in case they help someone.
My job is to specialize in spoken English. I’m the one with the lovely, near-standard newsreader American accent (hint of Chicago in there, not super noticeable). Because thinking is difficult, I took this super literally and until recently did virtually no writing in class.
But that has changed; firstly because I personally cannot remember a damned thing in language acquisition unless I can see the word written down and spelled. I’m a visual learner and a student of Chinese, which is my 3rd foreign language. I can repeat a sound in the moment and be told what it is, but I won’t remember it until I write it a few times. I personally use self-created flashcards, which I’m starting to do with my students.
Quizzes– I gave my first diagnostic quiz this week and boy, was it informative. It would seem that I have about 4 kids in a given class who know the answers, and the rest kind of mumble vocalese along with, giving the impression of knowing. I decided to teach the names of the days of the week to my 3rd and 4th graders. I asked my co-teacher if she thought the 6th and 5th graders would know them; she was confident they would. Not so– 4 kids out of 11 knew them. You wouldn’t be able to tell from listening to the class, but you can totally tell who knows what when you read the words you want to find out the kids know in Chinese and see if they can write down the English. Quizzes are great because they aren’t for a grade, but they’re a much more precise way of discovering who knows what and what needs to be reviewed.
Assigning oral presentations (duh) is an idea that came to me in a fit of petty vengefulness. I have a few particularly arrogant 6th grade classes, which blows my mind, because these kids are like 4′ 8″ tall and I’m pretty sure I could kick their asses literally and figuratively in any number of pursuits. But abusing one’s students is frowned on both in the U.S. and Taiwan (fair enough). So I had the very mature mental narrative of “You get up day after day and talk to a room full of bored kids and see how you like it.” and it hit me that I can force them to do exactly that. My theory is that by putting them under pressure to speak passable English in front of their peers, they’ll gain some empathy and humility. I may even develop simple lesson assignments so they can take turns teaching each other. Reports to follow.
My last teacherly discovery this week is the chill-out bottle. It a mixture of clear glue, water and glitter poured into a clear plastic bottle with the lid glued on tight; It’s supposed to be like a snow globe that takes 5 minutes to clear. Allegedly, it works well with ADD and ADHD kids as a way for them to focus on something and return to class with a clean slate. I have a few of those, so I may be making some this weekend.
Again, I will follow up with a report on how these techniques have worked as I implement them. So far, formative vocab quizzes are a big success.
* Update 3 months later: I didn’t do the chill out bottle, so I still have loads of glitter and glue (maybe I’ll make them for my place). I did make chill out trays:
Cushion, tray, crayons– isolate the unruly and pacify them with coloring.
Yet another expat's blog about Taiwan 