In a tough situation
 

Need some help here for this one! Anyone, please post any ideas you have. I am a fairly new esl teacher in China. There is a company I ´m working for. The boss is someone my wife knows quite well, so the relationship is quite good. Anyway he has opened an ESL training center here and has scheduled an open class where parents and children that I have never met before will come and listen to me teach. The objective is to make them satisfied enough to register with this training center.
So I have got the task to do this open class.
There will be 100 students of varying levels from Grade 1 - 6 and my task is to make them talk. The DURATION is 45 minuets. The topic will have to be fairly easy because there are grade 1 esl students there as well.

Please post your ideas in regards to what kind of topic I could choose for this occasion or what kind of activities should be done. Some kids wont even understand. This is an open class for the public to come and see to see whether they want to register with this company.

Thanks guys

Re: In a tough situation
 

Hi Mdan,

I'm sorry I didn't get back to you sooner!
You have quite a complex situation here. Do you have any ideas at all as to how you want to do this?

I think that the best scenario would be to divide children up into levels to start off with. One idea would be to plan different games where children have to speak in English (even minimally) to play. Most games can be adapted to suit different language levels. Then, to make sure they don't become bored, it might be a good idea to rotate groups around the games. For example: you could have one group playing Duck, duck, goose to practise the alphabet and another playing Twister to practise colours and body parts for 10 minutes until you clap your hands or blow a whistle. All groups stand up and rotate to their right until they've done all the games.

Granted, this is just an idea as to how to organise such a large group of children with different levels BUT I take it you will be the only teacher there? So, more thought needs to be put into how you're going to explain each game to each group, drill the vocabulary beforehand and how you're going to organise the level of the game to suit each group as you can't be in more than one place at a time obviously.

This is just a basic idea. Let me know if you have any questions! I'll get back to you quicker this time, I promise!

Louanne

Re: In a tough situation
 

An easier activity to organise and control might be a giant Bingo. But, you have stated that your task is to make the children talk. Games, as I posted above, are ideal for speaking whereas Bingo is more of a listening activity. With a little bit of creative thinking, it might be possible to turn it into a listening and speaking activity.

Then, if you can sit the children down in rows or at desks, you can also play relay races or broken telephone. You could put the more experienced children as group leaders and this type of game would give you the opportunity to drill vocabulary as a huge group beforehand.

Again, these are just some ideas to think about. If any of them interest you then we can get into more detail on how to go about them and organise them.

I've put more detail in this article on ESL Games and Activities for Large Classes.

I hope this helps.

Re: In a tough situation
 

:DNo questions!
What a GREAT idea. Ill adapt it to my students. Thanks sooooo much Louanne, you are a big help.:D:):D:)

Re: In a tough situation
 

My pleasure! Let us know how it went.