My first teaching in the new semester! (3/2)

This morning, I had my first teaching in the new semester. To be honest, I was extreme depressed when I lost my voice in the end of semester last year. Thank Alice for covering Unit 2 for me when the new semester started, I felt guilty that I didn't teach, but I needed time to have my voice back.
Luckily, when it's my turn to teach, my voice came back. However, I did feel nervous and didn't sleep well last night because I haven't taught for a long time. After knowing that 姚老師 would come to my class, I thought of returning the class to you. But I found your insist was correct, I should train myself to teach the same no matter who's sitting in the back of my classroom.
Today, the warm-activities worked smoothly. But at the very beginning, students had a hard time explaining what happened in the comic strip. I'll keep giving them chances to speak out in class because I think it's as important as the ability of writing.

12/29 Word puzzle

It's my turn to teach on stage again! Whenever I have to teach, I feel excited but also nervous because teaching on stage is the only way to examine if my activity can be put into practice or not. But I also feel nervous because I don't know if students can understand me in class. This time, I decided to change my way of teaching vocabulary. Instead of lecturing or asking students to write on what they had previewed on the blackboard, I designed a word puzzle with all new vocabulary of this unit inside. I passed the word puzzle in different timing in three classes and I found it's a good way to examine if students did their preview before class. However, I also realized some students had difficulties answering EVERY question in the word puzzle. Though it reflected that these students didn't preview or weren't concentrated enough in class, I found it may be meaningless or a waste of time for them because they didn't have the chance to do self-examination on their preview since it's the goal of this activity. Therefore, I couldn't help but wonder: how can I make my activity reach its goal in class? But I'm still searching for some efficient solutions.

1/7 Last day of lecture (5 ways to reuse paper + recycled paper + Magic Book)

After the class I found that how I use to open a class seems to decide the atmosphere of the rest of that class. For example, in class Lien, since it's the first class and I know more about them, when I realized that the students were sleepy right after entering the classroom. I told them something that had happened to me the night before instead of teaching in the beginning of the class. But I did tell them that for some purposes. During the description, I used the sentence pattern such as, "be willing to…", "Chances are that…", "consist of" and "pick up the phone" in order to remind them the important phrases learned the day before. Due to the small talk in the first 5 minutes, students seemed to wake up and get ready for class. Therefore, I kept doing the 2nd activity-ways to reuse the paper. I divided them into six groups according to their seat randomly. The reason I didn't ask them to go into the assigned group was that since it's the end of this semester, I don't think students would have time or energy to take care of another big project. The activity is small, designed to invoke their imagination and creativity and see if they can express some important points to the audience clearly in a short time. In class Lien, students are creative and always come up with excellent ideas as long as they are "awake." Their ways of reuse paper including making paper planes, expressing anger, even making the masks of Phantom. When I showed them the "recycled paper" Yu-ming made, they were so excited and tried to teach me the proper procedures of making a "normal and beautiful" recycled paper. But in the other two classes, due to the limit of time, I had to start the teaching right after going into the classroom. Therefore, students' reaction was not as good as that in our class. Also, according to my observation, students in 廉班 finish Magic Book in a short time, while students in 捷班 needed more time to finish their Magic Book. And also, I should have spared more time to solve the problems students in 捷班 may have when they write the Magic Book.

Yummy~ 

Interesting game

Interesting game!

According to the tradition, school holds a big celebration every year on 12/8 since it's the anniversary day. However, my feelings this year was very different than before. I arrived school early in the morning in order to welcome all the important guests. But of course, I had to cheer for our students in their relay race. Personally, I don't care what the result will be, I think they're the best as long as they try their best. And they DID! When the result was announced, some students couldn't help but cry. To be honest, when seeing them cry, I felt like crying as well, not for the results but for their sadness. But I held myself because I'm no longer a little girl but their teacher now. I tried to comfort them but I didn't know if my words worked or not. Then, I joined the interesting game held for teachers. It was pretty funny and I found the picture very meaningful, especially for me. Both Maggie and Alice are my teachers and mentors. I feel like being a student whenever getting along with you two! (Just see how I look in that picture~~haha)

Joy's second class (12/7)

Due to my request, I went to Joy's class again. Since students already had background knowledge, the teacher first played two songs from the Phantom of the Opera and moved right to the reading of unit 10. Again, PPT was used during the class. According to my observation, besides the frequency of using PPT, the most different part was that Joy taught the vocabulary, grammar along with the reading text, but I prefer to teach them separately. After going to her class twice, I found that her teaching style is very different from mine. However, I don't think I'll follow her way. One of the main reasons is that I don't have the skill to do that fancy powerpoint. And the other is that though I've never learned the TESOL theory formally, in my opinion, computer should play an "assisted role" in CAI but not the main part of teaching. So to me, I'd spare most of my time creating some extension activities or small games to give students more opportunities to explore themselves. But I think it's great to have the chance to listen to other teachers' class as well as Alice's class. I'm also thinking to record myself when I teach again in Jan because that's the most direct and efficient way for me to know where my flaws are. I believe that as a teacher, I can teach my students something more at the same time when I teach them English. I've always been thinking what I can give my students and I know it will take a long time for me to get a definite and clear answer! But that's the experience I must have before knowing what kind of teacher I want to be, right? :)

Words from a teacher in Chiayi...(12/1)

About two weeks ago, I went back to Hsinchu for the regular monthly meeting. This time, the school invited some former students who are teachers now to share their experience with us. During lunch time, the English teacher from Chiayi kept reminding us the importance of computer-assisted teaching. More specifically, she told us that there are some useful tools attached with the textbook. She recommended us to make good use of the powerpoint of San-Min version. I was so excited and said that I know the teacher who came up with so many creative extension activities. She was surprised and asked, "You mean Alice Chiu? You know Alice Chiu?" I replied, "Yes, because she's my advisor." She asked me to bring her words back to Taipei and tell you that, "Thanks for providing us such useful tools. We've benefited a lot from them." Though the compliments were not on me, I felt EXTREMELY proud and excited!! Hahaha~~~:)

Joy's class - introduction of a new unit (12/6)

I got a chance to go to Joy's class on Monday. In the beginning of the class, Joy said hello to students and reminded them that there was a guest. However, due to the disfunction of the projector, the class was delayed for about 5 minutes. Then, the teacher started to play the PPT of unit 10. The PPT introduced the musical, Phantom of the Opera, with pictures, mp3 files and even with some film clips. After students had a general picture of what the story was about, the teacher played a game. She asked 10 questions about the musical, and students were really excited because according to the rule, the one who stood up last had to answer the question. In the very end of that class, several open questions were given to students for group discussion, like "What would you do in the end if you were Christine? Would you kiss the Phantom?" "Why did the phantom release Christine and Raoul finally?" Students' answers were creative and out of my expectation.
After attending this class, the first question was how much time did it cost for Joy to make the powerpoint. And also, when we teachers want to give a brief introduction to students in the first class of a new unit, to what level should we introduce? As a personal habit, I used to give brief introduction in the beginning, and I like to lead students to a more detail and innovative extension activity in the end of the whole unit. It reminds me that there are still plenty of alternatives to introduce a new unit. Also, I'm looking forward to see how Joy teaches the vocabulary and reading text in the next class.

The Canadian Visiter (11/19)

Last Friday, a visiter from Canada came to our school to observe Alice's teaching, and I was fortunate to be the "short-term" receptionist for about 15 minutes. Before I guided her to class 勤, we had a walk at campus. I introduced Yi-sun Building, Maple Walk, Sunshine Walk and our playground. The visiter, Jana, especially liked the shades. In addition, I introduced briefly the high school system in Taiwan. Then we went to Zhongshan building. To my surprise, students in class 勤 didn't act shy in front of the guest, perhaps because they had a really good time playing Monopoly. And I was happy to find that students asked me questions about the rules in English! Though it's nothing big or important, but I was really happy about it. :)

Relay Race (11/18)

Relay Race

The relay race was postponed from Tue to Thu due to the bad weather. Though the students didn't speak out, I could tell how much they want to win from their W.J. Alice got other things trapped and couldn't come to the race on that day. To be honest, I was a little bit panic because I had no idea what to say if they had lost the race. It was a competitive race, at first, our class was the first, however, in the middle of the race, we were exceeded by other two classes and became the third place. And in the last round, we became the second place. All of students almost burst into tears, and I was so touched! I felt like giving them a big hug~ however, I'm always the kind of person who don't know how to express my feelings face to face. Therefore, all I could do was taking pictures for them and with them. Some of the girls even got too excited to have lunch. I felt really proud of them and posting this paragraph in memory of the relay race~:P