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Take any problem in the World and it's invariably caused ( or made worse)
by a lack of education. Too many kids hate school because it's too boring.
The aim of Genki Learning is to have all subjects in all countries taught
in a fun, engaging and effective way. There are already a few million kids
benefiting from this, and even a whole country where the government has
put it in all their schools. But there's still a long way to go!
While I'm on the road you'll hear about my travels & workshops, and
when I'm doing studio work I'll keep you up to date with ideas, updates
to the site and some of my favourite teaching resources. So if you want
to find out what's it's like behind the scenes or how & why I do what
I do or even if you're just nosey or a bit bored, have a read.
I'll update the diary as often as I can, so keep coming back. And of course
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Many ALTs have written saying how their board of education has asked them to do a workshop for the Japanese Elementary School teachers in their town. Many people have written asking for help so here’s a post I put on the forum a few weeks ago:
I’ve also put up an article on the site of the basic Teaching Teachers stuff, have a read of this first.
Here are a couple of practical tricks that work:
* To cure the fear of making mistakes:
Start off with some simple stand up, sit downs. Then tell them that they are too slow, the kids are so much faster! ( The really respond to this). Then really build up to it saying “OK, let’s go really fast!”. Do a big, slow “3, 2, 1″ countdown ( some people will stand up here which gets a laugh), then as you raise your hands in the air shout out “Sit down”. Of course some of them will stand. This is a great time to do a really shocked expression and say something like “Oh, no! You made a mistake! That’s it, were finished, oh no it’s terrible” ( Machigaeta hito iru ne? Taihen! Dou shou?). Hopefully then someone will say “No, it’s OK, it’s just a joke.” Then you can say “Yeah, but in Junior High you all learnt that making mistakes in English is bad. You all want to speak with the ALTs, but are too afraid of making mistakes, yeah?” ( Demo mina wa chugakkou de “machigae shitara dame” to naratta deshou? ALT to hanashi shitai kedo machigae shitakunai deshou?”) (nods from the crowd) “What can we do? ” (expression of desperation). This gets a lot of “naruhodos” and you can then start off with the “Making mistakes is good. People who don’t make mistakes aren’t trying hard enough” ( machigae shiteinai hito ha jyuubun gannbatte inai - you will need to say all this in Japanese!).
* To cure the “I can’t teach English” problem
Then I do a bit of a TPR style warm up, showing how you can introduce different themes ( e.g. sports, music, emotions etc.). Then if you have 20 or less teachers it’s great to put them in a circle and each one in turn shouts out a command for the group ( with a gesture of course). If they make a mistake, really make a big thing that they are the only ones who are trying hard! They’ll be able to accept that and you can correct them. That should then spur the rest of them on to try more adventurous stuff than simply “clap” or “cheer”.
The cool thing with this is that later on if they start saying “Yeah, but we can’t teach English” you can say, “You just did!”.
It’s confidence tricks like this that really make the difference.
*Where’s the story?”
It’s also good to spell out your vision of what the target is, where we are going with English lessons, in Seth Godin’s words “Where’s the story?”. If you can show them the beginning, middle, end and where they are supposed to lead up to after the 6 years of study it really helps get the pathway fixed in their minds. For example here’s what I use. From then on it’s just a case of removing any obstacles from the road.
Have a look at the basics article I wrote, and if you you need more help, you could always play the Genki English Teacher Training video, or if you really don’t want to do the workshop yourself, invite me along and I’ll have them genki and stress free in no time!
Be genki,
Richard
If you’d like to add to this post, have a look at the Genki English forum.
OK, so the aim of today’s workshop was to get the teachers able to teach on their own. The plan was quite simple:
1) Put them in groups of three or four.
2) Give them a printed copy of the curriculum in Japanese and 45 minute lesson plan and let them choose a theme to teach
3) Look on the website for the lesson plan and game explanation ( using the Songs/Themes menu at the top of the page)
4) Use the CD software to practise in their group
5) Present the demo lesson to everyone else.
So after a small warm up I got them sat down at the computers and told them to go to www.GenkiEnglish.com. To which they all had blank faces saying “eh, what do you mean?”. Apparently they had never used the internet before. These are all qualified elementary school teachers at a school with a fully equipped computer room. Ah. So after getting the computer teacher to explain where to type in URLs ( they were doing things like typing “genki” into Yahoo kids and wondering why the screen was different from mine), we eventually got them on the Genki English site. At this point I was rather worried that 3 hours maybe isn’t enough! Teachers who can’t use the internet…. Japan: the land of hi-teach?
Anyway once they’d figured it out they were quite happy reading about how to teach the song, and checking the photos of the gestures. The first three groups chose Good Morning ( really easy), colours ( again easy) and How much? ( a little tougher). And they actually did really well. Pedagogically it wasn’t the best lessons ever, but for a first attempt they did good. They quickly realised the importance of preparation ( something they said they had no time for before), and how easy it is to use the Genki English software and mini-lessons, which freed them up to do the real teacher’s job which is motivating the students. They made lots of mistakes, but I made sure the atmosphere was one where they could do that frequently ( by praising the ones who did make mistakes), and in the kanso ( feedback) time there was lots of honest criticism that was picked up by the next group and lots of “I’m glad I tried it because I would have never thought of that” or that “It was scary at first, but quite easy once you get into it”. They also noticed the need for lots of communication if you have more than one teacher. Excellent. I was also really happy that they turned out quite proficient lessons, certainly better than many of the usual demo lessons you see in elementary schools, and with practise they’ll be cool.
Then lunch.
Then in the afternoon another 4 teachers joined who were still very much in the “I know nothing” mode, so I made new groups with one new person in each group, got them to choose a new theme and they did it again, this time choosing What’s the weather like?, How did you get here?, Doctor Doctor & How are you?. They made a few more mistakes this time ( after lunch tiredness!), like missing out the mini lesson acapella step and just playing the song, hence everyone was doing the “eh? what are we supposed to do?”, but they quickly realised so went back and redid the lesson correctly and the difference was really noticeable. Lesson learned. In the warm ups they also included the precious themes as a review and they could see that not only their English, but their genkiness was getting better and better.
So a really good day. Going from terrified teachers who couldn’t use the internet to being able to do a basic Genki English lesson was really something to see. It made a huge difference doing things in the computer room as they could look on the website in groups, and having a student pack license for the CDs meant they could all use the software at the same time. Although actually even if you just had the Superpack you could do a similar thing, you’d just have to make sure that each group used a song from a different CD.
This week I was also really thinking about making printed lesson plans instead of the web based ones, as teachers had requested them. But what I found out today was that they can use the net based lesson plans ( and especially the photos are useful), but it’s actually entering URLs and finding websites that is the problem!
If you’d like to add to this post, have a look at the Genki English forum.
Another two day workshop and as this school had had a one day workshop last year covering all the important basics, I just jumped into doing more advanced teaching methods and how to improve the efficiency of the lessons.
This school has also bought student packs of all the CDs and the Kids English set. As they have the student pack license, they could put the software onto the schools server and every computer in the computer room ( and classrooms!) can access the GE software. So we also spent an hour or so going through how to use it. i.e.
1) Choose a theme
2) Give the students 3-4 minutes to play on the “words” part
3) Give them another 3-4 minutes to play on the “game” part
4) Get everyone to reset the game then start all together.
5) See who can do it the fastest.
The points here are:
1) It gets them out of the “panic because I don’t understand” mode into the “Oh, there’s a word I know” mode
2) Everyone learns at their own pace
3) It’s a computer game so it’s fun!
4) It’s a computer game so you take risks in getting the questions wrong or right.
We first of all did the games as a review. But of course the teachers already knew all the English. So then we did it the other way, where you first introduce the new English with the computer game. This works really, really well as the kids have lots & lots of exposure to the language. Then when you eventually do come to do the song in class, they already know everything! To test the teachers we did the toughest computer game “The Monkey Family”. It took a while for them to start “thinking like a kid” but after the 2nd go they really saw how quickly they had improved.
Although they did enjoy the games & songs, they weren’t into any of the discussion points or asking that many questions. This confused me a bit, because usually after my “War Speech” which I give at the end of the basics workshop, teachers all always enthused to get on with the job. It wasn’t until the evening drinking party that I realised that this was the school last year where some dodgy guy was stalking around the playground with a knife and we had to cut the workshop short! Hence no war speech. Ah, that explains a thing or two. Right, OK, looks like tomorrow I’ll have to start with the basics again, but get them into actually teaching as soon as possible.
But you’ve got to show people the destination, otherwise they are bound to get lost.
If you’d like to add to this post, have a look at the Genki English forum.
OK, first things first, I’m going to be back in Okinawa twice next year! In June we’re planning a mini-tour, so if you would like a workshop at your elementary school or for your group of teachers, get in touch now and we’ll get you on the list. Next year my elementary school workshops will probably have a presentation fee, but for Okinawa they’ll still be free and as my travel expenses will be paid for to get to Naha, it’ll only be the travel expenses to get to your school and hotel accommodation that I’ll need. It’s a great chance. If you need any materials to persuade your head teachers, have a look at the workshop details in Japanese and my self intro in Japanese. As usual, go straight to the head teacher, not via the Board of Education ( that will take forever!)
Then on August 20th 2007 I’ll have another three day workshop as part of the J-Shine two week certification course. This year that course cost around 80,000 yen, but included some materials and next year will probably include some Genki English materials as well. If you’re interested, again get in touch.
I’m actually writing this blog entry after doing 6 hours of workshops and flying back up to Japan, and I think I already miss Okinawa! I don’t know if it’s the weather, the sense of space, the way people dress and are less stressed, or maybe that everyone was so nice or that I really got to help the teachers with a full set of workshops instead of a 90 minute “warm up” and stayed in a really nice hotel??? It’s also a lot less humid down in Okinawa!
Anyway today’s workshops were again great, going through how to chop up the themes and re-use the language in other ways, e.g. to combine Where are you going?, Where are you from? + How did you get here? into a massive I like pink fish game where the answers were things like “I’m going to school in Australia by mountain bike”. We also did things like using “Do you have …?” from the pets song and using it with the transport mini cards in the Do you have game? ( Of course you can also do it the other way and use “I came here by ” + animal for a fun alternative!) And after yesterday going through how the GE curriculum is made ( by actually listening to what the kids say), we pretty much worked our way through it. The students were also up teaching the new themes using the computer for the pronunciation and they did really well. There’s so much material now on GE that it pretty much covers everything, the only thing missing is one-page printable lesson plans, which I’ll get to work on as soon as I can!
The list of the activities we did is here: Okinawa 2006 ( In Japanese)
If you’d like to add to this post, have a look at the Genki English forum.
Today was billed as “songs and games”, and as we covered all the important theory and motivation bits yesterday, that’s what we did all morning. In fact the first hour we spent doing the the full “Left & Right” lesson in real time, just to show what sort of speed a class would go ( i.e. about half the speed of the usual workshop speed).
The only thing I was concerned about was that the students were afraid of asking questions in front of the teachers, and the teachers were afraid of asking questions in front of the students. So in the afternoon I split them up and got them to make lists of all the problems they have with elementary school, so we could solve them one by one. And pretty amazingly they all came up with basically the same things. Everything was fairly easy to clear up ( except for the ALTs favourite problem of what to do with awkward classroom teachers) so we ended on some more games and songs, which brought smiles to all their faces, and it was the end of another very genki and eye opening day.
I’ve been looking forward to this workshop for a while now, instead of a 1 hour “sales pitch” or 3 hour introduction, I have three full days of professional development workshops which is itself part of a 2 week long programme. About half the participants were elementary school teachers and about half were student teachers. And wow was I surprised at how shy the students were! Teachers are usually no problem once you get them warmed up, but the students were pretty much near the beginning of learning to be teachers and were very unsure of themselves. Mind you the TV cameras might not have helped! But after a few activities they started warming up. Usually with workshops it’s the talking bits that get all the “oohs” and “aaahs” with Elementary school teachers as we go through curing their problems, but with the students it was more of case of actually teaching them using Genki English, rather than explaining things. ( The How are you? Monster Game bombed, but the bargaining game rocked!)
In fact in the afternoon I started off with the Hip Hop songs, which they really got into ( I was quite surprised!).
The great thing about having 3 days is that you can introduce bad games that a lot of schools use, and as they are actually playing them ( instead of teaching them ) , they realise how ineffective some things can be. For example we did the basic karuta, where the teacher just says a word, and the kids take a card ( we were all sat in a circle with the cards between us). They quickly twigged on that they weren’t talking, and that only using words without any context was pretty useless practice. So they started asking me “What’s your favourite food?” and I answered and they slapped the card. That then led them into seeing that it’s not much of an improvement as they could be speaking completely nonsense words and it wouldn’t matter. So then we did the best variation where each person asks me in turn “Do you like …?” + one of the foods. I either answer yes or no. They quickly saw how this helps especially the shy kids as everyone has to listen really carefully, but then off course explode into action when the answer is “Yes”.
And we finished off with the exchange projects for 5,6th grades and the importance of teaching what we do.
So it was tough, and not the easy ride it would have been if everyone had actually taught in elementary school and had some teaching experience, but things sort of worked out towards the end.
Then a quick rest ( and check to see the TV report) and out for a very nice steak dinner!
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