A Banner Class!

Thursday, October 9. One class in the morning. Then go to the supermarket as I have literally no food in my apartment. Cynthia (another senior English teacher) asks if she can come with me. Her husband drives us there, we shop, take a taxi home, then she helps me schlep everything back to my apartment. I keep insisting I can do it but she says "I'm younger than you are." Well, that certainly is true!

I have a great class in the afternoon (Class 01, one of the higher ability classes). What is even better is that it is observed by 5 of the other senior English teachers! Here's a synopsis of my lesson plan this week:

Warm-Up: What Did You Do During Vacation? (Goal: Speaking and Listening). I started by telling students very briefly what I did during National Day week. Then I asked for "volunteers" to tell me what they did during their vacation. If they didn't volunteer, I called on them. I walked around classroom to engage individual students and to ask them questions, so it was more of a conversation rather than them just talking (e.g. if they said they went to the movies, I could ask which movie they saw). I could also do error correction (e.g. if they used present tense instead of past tense).

This Land is Your Land. (Goal: Listening) I introduced song by saying that National Day had made me think a lot about China, which made me think about the concept of "country" so I thought they might enjoy learning a song about "country." I brought a recording of This Land is Your Land by The Weavers and had them just listen to it once. Then I asked them to tell me in one or two words what the song was about. If they didn't get it immediately, I asked "Is it about China?" and then they usually figured out quickly what answer I was looking for! "United States" or "America"

While the song was playing, I handed out a copy of the lyrics with some of the words missing. Then I played the song two or three more times so they could try to fill in the blanks. I left out some easy words and some more difficult ones (like "fog" or "valley"). Then we went over the lyrics, with them telling me the ones they figured out. I also had a power point with good pictures illustrating a number of things: redwood forests; Gulf Stream waters; ribbon of highway; endless skyway, wheatfields waving; dust clouds rolling; sparkling sands; diamond deserts etc. And they had a chance to write in the words they hadn't been able to understand.

Lastly, of course, I had them all stand up to sing the song once. Then I told them that while I had been listening to the song, I realized that it could also be about China (wheatfields, valleys etc). So I rewrote the words to the chorus to be about China and had them sing it again using the revised chorus which was my last power point slide:
This land is your land, this land is my land.
From Hunan Province to Hainan Island.
From Tibetan mountains to the Gobi desert.
This land was made for you and me!
The kids loved it - and so did the teachers! It was about as perfect a class, in plan and in execution, as one could hope for. Other classes this week have gone well, but this one was over the top.

This evening, with a little help from my friends (David Joe), I manage to download some songs from iTunes onto my new iPod! I'm just so technologically competent, I amaze myself! :)