Context Sketch: English Classes for Chinese Kids

OK, so (also) for over a month now I’ve been carrying around a rough draft of a Context Sketch for the English classes we teach here in China. Given that it’s a ‘sketch’, I had a great start on it in an outline format. However, that format wasn’t entirely working for me. One of my goals with these sketches is to show that anyone, with or without ‘teacher training’, can teach. Hopefully this format will help all of us feel more confident in our efforts and help us gaina clear picture ofwhat we’re doing: what we’re doing well and the next best step(s) to take. And most importantly, I’m hoping this format will give us the piece and confidence to take those steps, to be the Learners driving our education to be great Prime Learners. (This feels a little bit like the cat chasing his tail, but hopefully you get the idea.)

So here’s my pioneering post for Context Sketches:

Context Sketch: English Classes for Chinese Kids in Shanghai, China

Learners

The students are Chinese kids who live, primarily, in my housing complex here in Shanghai, China. Their ages range from 6-9 years, and they are mostly female. Because of where they live and my experiences in the first 8 week class, I am making the following assumptions: These kids are Chinese Nationals (citizens) and are relatively well-to-do. They have been public schooled, which means lots of memorization and not so much real free play time.

Prime Learners

~The primary instructor is me, Verena. I generally hate ‘teaching’ because I see today’s definition of ‘teaching’ as overwhelmingly uninspiring and incredibly unenlightened. I gladly ‘failed’ in a private class to ‘prepare’ a 10 year old for an English test. I want things to be REAL, and I prefer quiet one-on-one time with the students. I feel stressed about meeting parental needs and requirements, although I enjoy the financial boost to the family budget as well as the connection with Chinese nationals in the complex that these classes offer the family.

~My TA is my daughter, Ema. She’s a typically inexperienced teenager who loves kids and teaching. She doesn’t like dumb ideas for teaching, and definitely has an opinion about the lesson plans. She also enjoys the opportunity to earn money.

~My assistants are my other children who choose to participate. They love playing with the students, though they are cautious around Chinese people, especially adults.

~I also include the parents here as prime learners. They also influence the Learners in addition to learning from this experience along with their children. They have a public school, conveyor belt mind set which means education is memorization and test driven.

Learning Experience Needs

I’m using ‘needs’ rather than ‘goals’ because it fits with the basic LDE Principles. I think they also help Prime Learners take a fresh look at their roles. ‘Needs’ should not be equated with ‘demands’, however.

The Primary Shared Need is to facilitate English language learning. Sub Needs are to facilitate learning to connect with and enjoy the company of friends who don’t speak the same language and come from very different cultures and to facilitate learning by connecting new ideas with personal interests and by seeking quality not conformity.

As the Prime Learner seeking to design learning experiences, my needs have been to answer the following questions:

How will students want (feel inspired) to learn English?

What activities will help them feel confident and successful as they figure out how to learn and use English?

What activities and/or contexts will help them want to learn English?

How do we optimize those activities and/or contexts?

Contexts

We teach these in the living and dining room of our home. We primarily use the resources we have as an English speaking home schooling family and our computer, the internet, and a printer. We also obtained a white board from some friends. We divide each class into 4 sections, under which I will discuss some of the activities we have used.

Welcome: We have a warm up activity which is usually tossing balloons around or blowing a ping pong ball around a table. Then we sing our Hello Song which has been modified from the LDS Primary Children’s Songbook. We also introduce each other and the target vocabulary for the day usually by allowing the Learners to express their opinions in relation to the new words by repeating some variation of “I like . . . What do you like?” and “I don’t like . . . What don’t you like?”

Singing time: We’ve used a variety of common children’s songs and also many non-religious ones from LDS Primary Children’s Songbook. We found singing to be rather exhausting, so we began limiting our singing to just 2-3 songs. Some of our favorites are “The Wheels on the Bus” (which my 6 year old son leads), “I’m a Little Tea Pot”, “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”, and “Do as I’m Doing”. These songs give the Learners a chance to hear English words, act them out, and then say them when they are ready.

Story time: Learners each choose a story for us to read. We use the children’s books we have on hand for this. We don’t have access to a library here in China. I’ve been amazed at how much the Learners appear to enjoy this despite some of their very limited English abilities. (Maybe I’m just witnessing good school training?) We do have a few students with more English abilities and this allows us to meet their needs as well. Some of the books are very simple board books (“Brown Bear, Brown Bear” by Eric Carle and “Red Hat Green Hat” by Sandra Boynton), in which case we read the book together in chorus. We tried ‘going on a bear hunt’ but we never found a version that we liked very well. We try to have some free time toward the end of class, and I’ve found some of the Learners going back to these books to look at them. The books we brought are classics for our family, and hopefully they are also inspiring our English students.

Vocabulary time: I usually put together a coloring sheet with the vocabulary words on it and a place for them to write the word. Then we try to do some sort of activity to help them remember the vocabulary words. The favorite is to assign each word a number and then we roll the dice and act out the corresponding word. For my advanced Learners, I include a place for them to use the vocabulary words in open ended sentences.

Game time: The first advice I got from others about these classes was to play Uno. We didn’t like it. Their language skills weren’t good enough. We have since successfully rotated through playing memory using I Spy cards, assembling puzzles, doing more coloring pages, and playing ‘closer and too far’ to find objects hidden in the room. Playing simple games that are very easy for them to understand feels like the best way to help them learn simple English phrases.

Next challenges:

Provide opportunities where they need to use simple English phrases.

Find ways to review vocabulary from past classes.

Figure out how to keep things fresh and interesting even though we’ve already used the most obvious vocabulary lists and most of our family’s resources for books and games.

Help the children better understand the books and songs that we’ve been using for a while.