All the world's a stage

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players

- Shakespeare

This is the blog I have been meaning to write for a WHILE. In this blog I wanted to look at the language my co-teachers and I use when giving directions.

One of the biggest problems I have with giving directions is timing. I am unsure of when I should give directions. I want to tell the students what to to as soon as we start an activity, but then they need to understand each piece (vocab and roles) before they can do the activity and I want to explain everything at once. 

"This is a pass the ball game. When you hear the music, you will pass the ball. When the music stops, the person holding the ball stands up." (directions)

"When the music stops the group says "Say hello to the class" The ball person says "Hi! I'm ____. I'm interested in _____" The group answers "Nice to meet you!" 

"The ball person should look a the screen. There is a picture. Say what matches the picture."

"You get points for listening and speaking. 1 point for listening, 1 for speaking."(each piece)

When all is said and done, I find that I have so much information that I need to tell the students and no simple way to give it to them. That is, until my co-teacher A took over one class and re-did my instructions.

I wish I had recorded it. (hindsight is 20-20)

For every direction she gave she had a student rephrase it for her. If they didn't understand a direction she would break the sentence apart and explain each piece until they got it. 

She used simple English that didn't dumb down the main message. One of the key things she does is gives the students a clear thing to DO at each step. 

"First, you will choose one item. How many items? Second, You will make 4 stories. What will you make? 3 lies and 1 true story. How many lies? How many truths? etc." 

The students understood what they had to do and how they could do it. 

She would use all English to explain, she is a certified TEE teacher (teaching English in English), and works on her credentials all the time. She is trying to become a master TEE teacher (one that teaches others how to teach in English). She was able to make input comprehensible without using L1, using the techniques we learned in class. It was simply amazing to see it at work.

I am always talking with her during class, changing what I will say to the students. "You said this, how about this?" We offer each other tips on what to say and how to make the classroom a more well oiled machine to help us and the students get the best out of it. (She was also the co-teacher that first approved my station work for class and let's me try more novel approaches in the classroom) Sadly I only get to teach with her once a week this year. (She was my main ct last year, 16 classes together a week)

I believe this is because I have built a rapport with her and we are able to better read each other. She understands what I want to happen in the classroom and helps me to make it a reality.

On the flipside,  I have had some strange interactions about classroom English with my co-teachers. When ever they speak English in class they seem very ashamed. They will talk to me after class and tell me that they apologize for how they spoke and that they wish they were better. This happens with every co-teacher, even co-t A who has amazing classroom English! 

This week I talked with one of my co-teachers and they told me that they want to mimic my speech exactly. They were pointing out that they have different sentences for the same meaning 

I say "Do you understand?"

She says "You got it?"

The students in her class understand BOTH phrases, so I told her there is no problem with saying it one way or another. She told me that to speak better English she should stop saying anything that is different from how I speak. 

I tried convincing her that we have different voices and that's okay, but I was unsuccessful. 

I am not sure how to build up my CTs' confidence in their English ability.

That's why I quoted this blog with Shakespeare. We are all acting and trying to build our identity as teachers. One place to really focus on is the classroom language you use and how that builds your identity and theirs.

A little light in the darkness

“Don't curse the darkness but light a candle.”
- Brother Andrew

I use this quote because this week has proved this point the hardest.
I planned to use my station work activities for my sixth grade class and see how it went, improving upon my directions and using MIC techniques, but it didn't happen.

On Monday night, I was in a lot of pain. I could barely sleep, but I still wanted to go to school the next day.
When Tuesday came, I was in no shape to go to school. I rushed myself to the hospital and texted and called my cts about my condition.
I only write that to explain what amazing things happened in my class while I was gone!

My co-teacher announce to the students that I would not be in school that day, because I was very sick.
She used the phrases from the book "Liz called me this morning. She said I have a stomachache, I can't go to school today." At first the students laughed because they thought it was one of our role plays about the lesson. (we use role plays to motivate the students and introduce new vocabulary)
Then when she said she was serious the students couldn't believe it. They looked in the hall way and the little room and when they discovered that I was not there, they were sad. ("When is she coming?" "What's wrong?" "Is she okay?")

My co-teacher went on with the lesson, but then when they got to the song in the book, the "Get well song" one of the students suggested that they should practice it and video tape it. And send the video to me while I was at home being sick. Out of seven classes, 2 classes agreed made a video of themselves singing the "Get well Song" with a whole class "GET WELL SOON LIZ TEACHER!" at the end.

My co-teacher sent me the videos from the classes and I watched them from my home. In the video the students were trying to hard, and many of the students who never sang before were singing the song.
I understand why they were doing this, but it still made me happy to see how motivated they were to sing English so that I could hear them.

When I came back today, many students who never speak English were very excited to see me. I got asked all the questions we had been teaching in the book "What's wrong?" "Are you okay?" "What's the matter?". I also got many of the phrases we had been teaching for medical advice. "You have to rest." "Take this medicine" (luckily none of them gave me any medication...) and the best one of the day: "You look bad! Get some rest."

It was very refreshing to be able to speak to the students about my absence and have them listen intently  and understand what I was saying.
I brought in some treats the next day to thank them for their well wishes and I thanked them all for helping me to feel better.

One big thing that really hit me when writing this is the eagerness to use the language they have learned. They all said something, even if it had been said many times before.
It seemed like they were so eager to use the language because they finally had something they felt mattered to the conversation. They genuinely wanted to wish me well, and they genuinely wanted to know what was wrong with me, so they used the English they learned to speak.

The students were my little light when I was feeling sick this week. :)

I know this is more of what we have been reviewing in class with making listening and speaking meaningful, but it was just such a stark contrast to the regular classroom English, while still using it, that I felt I should write it down.

I want to attach the video, but I think my school has a policy against video that is directly of the students' faces (my classes are a more muddy area, that its not the students that are the focus...)

New start to a New day

“I promise you nothing is as chaotic as it seems. Nothing is worth diminishing your health. Nothing is worth poisoning yourself into stress, anxiety, and fear.”
― Steve Maraboli

This is my second attempt at writing a blog. I have a two page draft of another blog written up and saved, but I feel it was too full of negatives about the administration for me to post in good faith. So, let's hope I get this done with more efficiency this time.

This week I tried a new activity in my regular classes, station work. It was a review lesson of all the material. We had 4 stations set out across the room, with 4 groups of students. Red group would start at station 1 and blue group at station 2, etc... After 5 minutes the groups would switch to the next station.
At each station the student would use a different set of skills. In station 1 it was spelling. How do you spell math? (prompt written in Korean), with key vocabulary used in spelling. The second station was to use pictures to make three sentences. The pictures were all about key expressions or words from the lesson. The third was a sentence ordering game, the students would look at the scrambled sentences and rearrange them in the correct order. Station four was a create your own sentence station. There were no pictures, just three questions that the students had to answer in their notebooks.

All but 2 or 3 students per class completed this activity. I was very happy with how much the students worked together at each station. As I walked around the room I overhead student's spelling difficult words for each other and identifying words for the picture cards. All of the students were eager to do the activity too! Some students who don't usually respond during normal text book time were very engaged with the hands on parts of this activity.
They loved touching the picture cards and moving them around to make a sentence. They would move some of the cards around, open their book to check and then move some more cards around until they were satisfied with the sentence they made.

One thing I have to change is how I set up stations. My room is in desperate need of more tables. Over the years, through use and movement, we have lost over 5 tables. So there is barely enough tables to seat every child. I will need to contact the music room or the computer room to get extra tables and chairs if I want to do a station lesson again.
The students were very flexible about not having a chair to sit at for some of the stations, but I saw some of them were uncomfortable with not having a place to sit down and do the work.

 Another problem I had was the explanation of directions. It was very difficult explaining the concept to the students of having each group start in different places and move every 5 minutes to the next place. It took about 8-10 minutes to fully explain it. If I do this lesson again I think the students will have a easier time understanding the concept, but it was just so difficult this week and I felt really lost when explaining.

My co-teacher seemed very happy about this too. She requested some more materials that would be similar to this lesson. I am hoping to get approved for more of these types of lessons in the future.  That is a huge barrier that is hopefully over come.