break's over guys
welllll tomorrow is my first day of teaching in the semester, and what a day it will be! It will start at 8:00 where I am leading a Studio Classroom discussion with Dr. Su and Peggy (and Hope, though her English really is quite good) during our ministry meeting. I spent some time tonight planning what I would do, including a fun little activity I thought up... I must say, there is a much bigger scope of activities you can do with intermediate speakers than beginners. If I didn't have a translator in my elementary and jr. high classes things would be much different, though I'll save that topic for my master's thesis (The role of students' native langauge in the ESL classroom: I've had many ponderings on this topic since I've been here) LOL.
Anyways, tomorrow afternoon we'll be teaching at Zhuo Feng elementary, which is an aboriginal school 30-40 minutes away from here. We'll be arriving by 2:50 to have a tour and meet the staff and we teach until 4:40. But that's not the end, oh no. I found out tonight at approximately 8:00 that the reading centre I'll be teaching at (which incidentally I found out about on Friday) starts TOMORROW! So from 7:30-8:30 I'll be teaching at Yuli Church. This news was rather shocking and a little stressful... after murmuring to myself for a few minutes "my reading centre starts tomorrow" I got to work, pulling out old and current lessons and piecing together a first class that I hope will work. The good thing about this being second semester is that your first day of class generally doesn't have a ton of variation, once you find activities that work well. You can repeat and modify for your needs, but there are certain tasks that need to be accomplished on the first day, such as introducing yourself, learning basic information about your students, and trying to assess how much English they know. If one is really prepared they can also establish classroom routines, but in this case since I haven't actually decided what I'll be teaching yet, I'll be satisfied with accomlishing those first 3 goals. So yeah. The new semester is here.
Prior to all of this, I had a delightful day of receiving a fabulous package from Tammy et. al. and learning how to play Tennis. Now I am drinking some Chai Tea from said package (which they actually don't have here, they're all abot the green tea and oolong neither of which are my favourites...). In Chinese Chai is called "Indu Cha (India tea). Fascinating the things you learn. Tammy also sent me a tin of English Toffee Cappuccino from TIM HORTONS :D ahhh Timmy's *sniff*
hehehe it's all good, i learned how to say "caramel macchiato" in chinese ma chi duo YUM
Anyways, tomorrow afternoon we'll be teaching at Zhuo Feng elementary, which is an aboriginal school 30-40 minutes away from here. We'll be arriving by 2:50 to have a tour and meet the staff and we teach until 4:40. But that's not the end, oh no. I found out tonight at approximately 8:00 that the reading centre I'll be teaching at (which incidentally I found out about on Friday) starts TOMORROW! So from 7:30-8:30 I'll be teaching at Yuli Church. This news was rather shocking and a little stressful... after murmuring to myself for a few minutes "my reading centre starts tomorrow" I got to work, pulling out old and current lessons and piecing together a first class that I hope will work. The good thing about this being second semester is that your first day of class generally doesn't have a ton of variation, once you find activities that work well. You can repeat and modify for your needs, but there are certain tasks that need to be accomplished on the first day, such as introducing yourself, learning basic information about your students, and trying to assess how much English they know. If one is really prepared they can also establish classroom routines, but in this case since I haven't actually decided what I'll be teaching yet, I'll be satisfied with accomlishing those first 3 goals. So yeah. The new semester is here.
Prior to all of this, I had a delightful day of receiving a fabulous package from Tammy et. al. and learning how to play Tennis. Now I am drinking some Chai Tea from said package (which they actually don't have here, they're all abot the green tea and oolong neither of which are my favourites...). In Chinese Chai is called "Indu Cha (India tea). Fascinating the things you learn. Tammy also sent me a tin of English Toffee Cappuccino from TIM HORTONS :D ahhh Timmy's *sniff*
hehehe it's all good, i learned how to say "caramel macchiato" in chinese ma chi duo YUM
Tzai Lin Jie, xie xie ni de gu li!
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