Another video from the Fukuoka workshop about teaching with Genki English. It’s in Japanese but I’ve added subtitles. The topics we cover are:
* Multiple Intelligences (i.e. different people learn in different ways, but teachers are usually driven by reading and writing)
*Accents (use computers to get the kids good),
*L +1 (don’t rabbit on in English, use language that is the kids’ level plus a little bit)
*Meanings (you must teach the meanings of the words in a way that the kids understand i.e. in this case Japanese)
then we go into one of the Genki English songs “Eat! Drink! Dance!”
https://genkienglish.net/eatdrinkdance…
Plus a cool trick to calm down the over genki kids!
And just look at the reaction this got from the students on the Youtube page – they love it!
P.S. for those of you on email, here’s the online video if it doesn’t show up above!
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Thanks for this. I started at a new school this September, in addition to teaching at my usual school. I decided to speak English all the time! That was 3 weeks ago. Now I’m explaining things in German and then letting the kids get on with it. It is working out much better for all of us.
I tried out the STOP! then counting down from 20 to zero today. It worked out very well indeed.
Re. discipline in the classroom: Something happened to me this week that I know has happened to a few Native English speaker colleagues but never to me until this week. Again it was at the new school, which happens to be an elite private elementary school – the ivy league of elementary schools in our area if you believe all the publicity. I was teaching a class of 3rd years (8-9 yr olds. 15 boys and 5 girls). Their teacher decided to go out to the staff room for the remainder of the lesson.
As soon as she had closed the door the kids exploded! As I was writing something on the board one girl stood behind me trying to stuff paper down the back of my jeans. I directed her back to her seat. I was informed later that she has “respecting personal space” issues!
The rest of the class ripped up their worksheets, made paper planes out of them and so on. Chaos. I remained calm and just stood at the board writing their names down. Eventually they noticed what I was doing and why, and they calmed down. I got about 20 mins of English lesson out of them. All the naughty ones came up to apologise to me before their teacher came back in, but as I’d made an arrangement with them at the beginning of the lesson that we would finish a bit earlier if they behaved (which they didn’t) I did indeed tell their teacher about what had happened. She had all the naughty ones outside and gave them a good talking to and then told them they could explain their behaviour to the Fr. Direktorin.
The kids were seeing how far they could go with me when their teacher was no longer in the room. I’ve dealt with many difficult classes and student before but I’ve never experienced anything like this, and I was very surprised at how immediate it was.
I teach 3rd and 4th years only at this school and I get on fine with all the other classes. I took over this position with only about 2 days notice after term had already started, so I am new to the school and to the teachers and kids. They use an OUP course book which I’m slowly relegating to the bookshelves!
Has anyone else ever experienced this kind of thing before.
Liza, sounds like you handled the class perfectly! Luckily I have not run into a situation that bad before. If I do, I hope that I can remain calm like you did! Thanks for sharing.
Hi Gumby, thanks for the reply. I’m not particularly pleased or proud that I resorted to the “name and shame” game, but I had literally tried everything else I could (and had already practiced with the class) – power teaching. STOP! and counting down from 20 to zero e al. Nothing got their attention.
It was like Alistair Sim at St. Tinians and The Lord of the Flies rolled together into in a condensed version which lasted about 20 mins!
I’ve never experienced anything like it before in the classroom. So, now I look forward to the next lesson with them.
I believe there is something to be learned from all that we go through. Here I learned to keep my energy down and to keep calm! After that lesson I taught a class of 4th years and it was one of the best lessons I’ve ever had with a class! So, I try think only of the positive and take that feeling with me into our next lesson.
Follow up comment: I had the class again today. Both I and the teacher asked them what they wanted from English lessons, what they liked, disliked etc. The one girl said that she’d been having English lessons since kindergarten, and now she was in the 3rd year elementary and she was still having lessons about colours and that she was bored stiff with the lessons.
What we managed to find out is that they find the books boring. They are not challenged in any way by the English in them, or cannot relate to it. (I’m bored teaching them so goodness only knows what the kids are going through. In today’s lesson I gave up on the book completely and moved on to “my” stuff).
They told me what they would like to do and I told them what I would do and what my expectations of them as a class are. Now I’m working with the teacher to see how much I can get away with not using the books.
The lesson today was much, much better. I spent a lot of time speaking German but I feel it was worth it.
Sounds like the children really needed to be heard. Kudos to you for recognizing this and taking the time to adjust the expectations of both student and teacher! Good luck. I hope that you are given the freedom to teach in a way that is rewarding for all!
Rather than just working with the teacher to get rid of the textbooks, I’d also work with the kids. It sounds like they know what they want, and getting them to come up with the language they want to learn would be fantastic for them. It’d be easy to do in a game, just get them to list all the German that they’d like to be able to say in English!
They voted on more mathematics in English, more reading and writing, and more games. In that order.
Next week I will ask them to come up with suggestions about what they would like to be able to do/say in English and keep a list on the board. Then see how to apply it.
Thanks again for all your suggestions. It’s nice for me to be “heard” too!
I just loved watching this video…so helpful, even though it was in Japanese 🙂 how do you do the subtitles on videos? I teach preschoolers in Chile, really little ones up to 5 year olds and I have felt that I should be teaching all in English or I guess I felt the pressure to do that, but am confirmed by your teaching that that shouldn´t be done because they won´t and don´t understand. I love the level +1 idea. You have an amazing gift for teaching and it is so inspiring. I am saving up to buy the teachers kit because I know that it will help so much. thank you for sharing your wisdom.