Party!

I get to throw a party! Granted, it’s not a fun adult drinking party and the guests can only say a few things that I can understand. But a party is a party and it should be fun, right?

I’m having a ‘party’ in my little kid classes at the training center. One day, maybe the last day of the class, we hope to have an actual party and let the students introduce themselves and get to know their classmates better.

Okay, so they’ll just ask and answer the same questions that they’ve already asked and answered a hundred times by then, but I hope to stop telling them what to say.

For the first party, we knew the kids weren’t ready to be off on their own as they were still learning the questions and their answers, things like “What’s your name?”, “How old are you?”, and “Where are you from?”.

And we also had to design the class to give the students their best chance for success, limit their ability to fail, and give them something fun to do.

That’s a tall order when you have two classes of 8 rambunctious 4 and 5 year olds (with a couple 6 and one 3 year old). But we had a lot of things, experience, others to offer help and advice, and the internet. We knew we could come up with something.

Eventually, after batting around several ideas, acting them out, and revising. We came up with a couple kids would be ‘little teacher’ and be given popsicle stick rewards to give out. To earn this reward, the other kids would have to answer the first kid’s question correctly and ask the same question back. The kids would switch who was giving out the rewards as necessary, usually when they had asked everyone else their question.

To me, when creating the idea, it didn’t sound all that fun and I was worried that the kids wouldn’t like it or understand what they were supposed to do. I also knew that I would have to work with them so they would understand they needed to line up and how to do the tasks and practice with them several times with all the kids asking, answering, and giving/getting the popsicle stick reward.

It took about 40 minutes (half of class) for the kids to review the sentences and learn how to do the party but they were able to have the party for the other half of class.

They really enjoyed it and loved giving out and getting the popsicle sticks! My Chinese teacher was a little upset that they managed to play with them so much the character fell off of a lot of the popsicle sticks. She spent a lot of time taping them back on!

That One Kid

One of the students, who thankfully missed the party, still doesn’t know the numbers 1-5. He did a make up class in the afternoon. For a make up, I’m supposed to teach the same things just a little quicker (in an hour instead of hour and a half). But, there’s only one or two students so they don’t have to wait on their classmates’ turns.

As I was practicing the sentences and vocabulary with him, he was having a lot of issues remembering the words and pronouncing them correctly. For example, “five” became “fi”, only half the word. Many other words were also shortened or otherwise missing sounds. In a few instances, he would just say random sounds when he should repeat a sentence.

The usual vocabulary drills that most other students do well with, even if they are boring, he couldn’t do. He couldn’t remember the words!

Instead of beating my head against a wall trying to shove some English in his, I decided to play with a stuffed die and try to get him to learn the numbers. He competed against my Chinese teacher. It was hard for her to let him win, he got so many answers wrong!

I got very good at throwing it up and catching it on the number I wanted it to show. I showed the number 4 three times in a row, and, the first two times I showed it, he said 3!

How does that even work? How are you not able to remember something for even 5 seconds?

After about 20 minutes of playing with the die, he could usually get the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5 right, even if he couldn’t pronounce half of them correctly (“five” was still “fi”). And he was almost up to guessing 50% correctly for number 4.

Afterwards, I was talking about him with my Chinese teacher. We were wondering what to do about him and if he even understood that he was learning a different language. She mentioned that when they were playing, he said “I guessed wrong”. He guessed. He didn’t forget or not remember, he guessed. He wasn’t putting the word with the picture/concept. So, he wasn’t learning.

How can we have a student that doesn’t understand enough to learn?

But that is a question for another time. I had to prepare for a couple of demo classes. Demos are different from make up as we are trying to figure out if the student should be in a certain level with a certain teacher. And they are usually used to get students (via their parents) to sign up for the classes. They need to be fun, more than informational.

And Some Demos

The first demo I had was for the same Level 1 class as those that just had a party. As I was greeting the kids, I said “Hello!” to one potential student and they instantly burst into tears! Apparently, I wasn’t the first teacher that made this kid cry by saying, “Hi”.

While playing a game with the students that made it in the door without crying, a student was messing around and not listening to me or the Chinese teacher, bumped his head, and more tears. But, overall, the class had fun. Which was the whole point of the class.

The other demo was with, thankfully older kids. They had fun trying to write words from the phonics sounds, which seems like it would be the most boring part and, I’ve been told, most students don’t like it. After class, 2 of the 3 kids gave me notes, in misspelled Chinese, and chased me down the street with swords and then stole my coat and hid it somewhere in the center!

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My Chinese teacher yelled at the kids and got my coat back. One of the other Chinese teachers translated their notes for me – “I love teacher”! They still attacked me with their plastic swords as I walked down the block.

After a week of being told what a terrible teacher I am, these notes made my month!