[missb92]

Hi there,

I'm currently teaching for my second time in a Primary School in the south of China. I'm teaching all grades 1 through 6 which is a big challenge. I've now been asked to teach the students one new sentence every week on a Monday morning at the usual school assembly/raising of the flag outside.

The principal has suggested I use some sort of 'game' or other method to help students remember or learn the sentence, rather than just repeating it for the 3 minutes I have at the podium (students found it boring the last time). Now, how exactly do I do this??? It's not exactly like I'm going to be able to get all 1300 students to play a game so what do I do? Any advice?

Also, would there be certain sentences that may suit this other method? I was thinking maybe a question and answer phrase. Then, I could say the sentence first e.g. Could I have a box of noodles, please? Yes, sure! Then ask students to respond ie. I say the first part, they say the response and then switch it around. I don't know if this would work every week though?

Any suggestions are VERY welcome! Thank you in advance Laura

[abarboza]

Talk to your principal about the difficulty of teaching to a class of 1300 students. Then, suggest other ways to do that. For example, you should have games and activities in classroom for teaching the sentences. Adapt the activities to each group so they match their age and interests.

So, every week, all students in the school are learning the same sentence, but not at the same time.

Have your students do some sort of billboards or posters to display the sentence around the school so your principal can see you are working on it.

You could show a music video or Youtube clip.

Another week you could teach them an Idiom.

You could also do something requiring movement, like clapping their hands while chanting the line.

Another week, maybe focus on rising and falling intonation.

You could focus on 1 phoneme per week and teach them how to pronounce the letter and a tongue twister to practice all week.

You could also teach them a sentence a week using a children's nursery rhymes/song CD. Every time the singer sings the sentence, you could press a button to make the sentence appear on a powerpoint slide.

Missb92,

At the morning assembly, is your face visible on a teleprompter for the 1,300 children to see? Children need to see the way you are moving your lips and tongue when you are pronouncing English words. If not, lessons specific to phonology might have to wait until class, where they can watch how your mouth is moving and practice moving their mouth muscles in the same way. Hopefully there is a teleprompter and you can ask the videographer to zoom in on your mouth/face for the lesson.

[missb92]

I've been asked to teach one new sentence or phrase to all students in the school every Monday morning at assembly. I've also been asked to try and come up with a fun and different way to teach this to the students.

So far, we've used phrases like 'Can I have some ice-cream, please?', 'Where's the toilet?', 'Lunch is over, I'm full'.

I say the sentence and then get the students to repeat after me a few times. Then I might get different grades to repeat the sentence individually. Or, ask one grade to say the first part, and another grade to say the other part.

But I'm running out of ideas and would really appreciate any help and advice. Both with examples of sentences and new ways to teach them. It's only 2-3 minutes at the end of assembly, so it has to be short, sweet and useful to the students.

Any ideas?
Laura

[little sage]

ADMIN NOTE: A new thread was started on the same topic covered a few months ago, so I've merged the two threads together here. Hopefully the original poster can address some of the suggestions offered by members and let us know whether those ideas worked or not. New suggestions welcome, too!