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.