Hello everybody!

To all Filipino teachers out there, please post here some interesting ESL games and teaching strategies which you think, a great help for other Filipino teachers out there. Let us help each other to show to them that Filipinos are exceptional teachers. Kahit ano lang...

Let's see how far this topic will go and see how creative the Filipino teachers are. At sisimulan ko na po...

English Conversation
TYPE OF LEARNERS: Intermediate
TOPIC: Superlative degree of comparison
SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES: After mastering vocabulary and converstion (STRUCTURE/S: What is the biggest island in Thailand? Phuket is the biggest island in Thailand.), let the students work in a group. Give them guide questions such as "What is the most famous tourist spot in Thailand?" It depends to you how many guide questions you will give but consider the availability of time.
      The students will answer the guide questions in their group while mastering the structure and look! with an output! You can let them make a brochure on "FACTS ABOUT THAILAND" and explain it afterwards. I have used it in my class and the response is so good. I even see how the naughty students gave joke when they hear their groupmates ask, "What is the biggest mall in Thailand?" and they answer, "The biggest mall in Thailand is seven-eleven." It makes everybody laugh. SANUK-SANUK!
      How about you? Do you have something to share? I will wait for it and I hope it would help each one of us. If you have suggestions to improve the activity that I had, you can post it here para naman magamit natin sa susunod.
      Maraming salamat po at mabuhay ang mga Gurong Pinoy!
 

i have a cd of smooth songs for listening skills activity. It's like listening to a particular song and identifying the words that have been heard (it depends what your grammar focus will be)

maganda yan tee-Rex.... baka pwede kaming magpa burn...hehehhe ;D ;D ;D;D;D;D;D

kakatapos lang ni Tee ng workshop niya Josephil. I'm sure he's willing to share some of his teaching techniques here. Congratulations Sir.

To Noods,

To wala pa kami internet sa balay. The True line was stolen so it will take a week pa before I can surf at home. Just happen to pass by Fashion Island so nagcheck na lang ko diri.

Friends if you have more resources that you think can help our fellow teachers enhance their skills. Please share it with us.

CHUAY DUAY!

Up!

Josephil,
 
    'Just want to say 'Keng Mak!" to you for starting this thread.

      And by the way, I like the activity you did with your class. I'll have to rummage through my stuff so I can contribute more here.

      But for now, here are a few of the teaching principles I have learned and am practicing with good results with my kids:

      1. Draw from students' real-life experiences when teaching them language. This not only arouses interest, but would make the learning stick in their head, because they will see how whatever it is they are learning, will come in handy in real life. (That's what you've done when you let them talk and do something related to Thailand!)

      2. Always establish a purpose why you are teaching something, or why students should learn something. Students will not pay attention to that at first, but it will be part of their psyche as you go on with it, and that starts a sense of independence and proactivity in their own learning.

      ... Let's not make that too lenghty on a Friday afternoon...

      'Will definitely come back for more next time. I'm a bit rusty at this.

      Josephil, can you give us a bit of background on demographics of your classes - i.e., class size, how often do you meet them in a week, for how long, resources you have (books, etc). 'That way, maybe others can also see how, they could make use of your ideas in their own teaching. Or perhaps there are others out there who have the same situation as you, and are so hungry for some meaty and productive classroom ideas.

      'Have a nice weekend, everyone,a nd see you back soon!

I am teaching in a government school. I am teaching Grade 2, 5, and 6. I meet my students in Grade 2 once a weeks while I meet my Grade 5 and 6 students twice a week. I have an average of 45 students in my classroom. It's really a big size and you must have to design appropriate activities for them.

For my classes in Grade 2, I usually shift my activities every 10-15 minutes. I use to spend 5 minutes for drill lesson to enhance conversation skills and then another 5-10 minutes for vocabulary. The rest of the hour, I spend it playing games with them. When playing games with young learners, I advise everybody to participate actively with your students. The students are motivated if they see their teacher enjoying the game. Be active if you want your students to be active. And now I would like to share another idea which I used recently in my Grade 6 class. The students really enjoyed the game and the result is amazing for after the class they never forget the converstion lines I taught.

The PINOY version of this game is "Sexing Butiki" or "Baka-baka". I hope everybody is familiar with this cheering squad look-a-like game.
TOPIC: Going Shopping (Quantities)
SIZE OF CLASS: 15 above
HOW TO PLAY?
        Divide your class into three groups or more (it depends to the size of the class). After mastering the basic cnversation lines  ( What do you want? I want to buy a can of milk.) and vocabulary ( a bag of rice, a bottle of oil, a box of cheese, etc.), teach the students a cheer "What do you want, what do you want, what do you want, what do you want?"- you can create your own rythm for the cheer but I use the rythm of the cheer "SEXING BUTIKI, SEXING BUTIKI, SEXING BUTIKI SA TAMBOK NGA OPAW"
eXAMPLE:
Group 1: What do you want, what do you want, what do you want, what do you want? (they will point a group who will answer their qustion.... ex group 3)
Group 3: I want to bu a bag of sugar. What do you want, what do you want, what do you want, what do you want? (then they will point another group)

The group which cannot answer will lose a point.

NOTE: To ensure mastery of vocabulary, do not let the students repeat. Example, a bag of rice must be mentioned only once. If a group will mention it again, they lose a point. This way, you can make sure that everybody is listening to what the group is saying to avoid repeating it.

IF YOU HAVE IDEA/S TO IMPROVE THIS GAME, FEEL FREE TO POST IT HERE. I HOPE THAT THIS POST WILL HELP EACH ONE OF US. Sorry kung may mga mali, walang edit edit tong mga post ko. Deritso post lang. See you next time folks!

SOME TIPS IN HANDLING THAI CLASSROOM

I have been teaching in Thailand for almost eight months and with this short term of experience, I just found some things to be effective in handling Thai clasrooms. I just want to share some tips hoping that it would also help other Filipino teachers.

1. COOL KA LANG! When teaching, do not show to the students that you are angry- it's a big minus to your look. Always wear your most beautiful smile though you are angry already. Think that some students just like to wind their teachers up! Remember that you are in the "LAND OF SMILES" ang there are so many forms of smiles in Thailand including the one which shows embarassment. So when you tell something to your students because they are misbehaving and then they are smiling, do not think that they think it as a joke.
2. MAKISAMA We are in a foreign country so we have to adopt in their culture. Show to the students that you have interest in their lives- their culture, tradition, lifestyle, etc. Oftentimes, our life is also interesting to them. Example, I sometimes tell my students some facts about Filipinos like I say Filipinos speak so many languages. I tell them that I speak Visayan Language, Tagalog Language and then English Language. They show eagerness to what I have shared by asking for sample of those languages. They ask me using English and they like to explain their culture in English too. Actually, COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING" comes subconsciously.
3. MAGPAKATOTOO KA! Never break a promise! If you have rules, implement it all the time. Do not choose a time, mood or incident to implement it.
4. ISIPIN: HINDI MGA PRUDOKTO SA TINDAHAN ANG IYONG KAHARAP Never label a student either in a positive or negative way. Doing such will weaken the confidence of the students.
5. TINGNAN KUNG ANO ANG TAMA AT HUWAG LUMAGI SA MALI Oftentimes, we scold our students for misbehaving or we give negative feedbacks to their pronunciation or the way they speak. Why not focus on the positive behavior of the students? Why not praise them everytime they speak English in a clear manner? That way, other students will be motivated to behave positively and participate in the discussion actively. Ngunit huwag lang sanang sumobra because I have a student who do not listen before and he really has a poor performance in my class so everytime he do good, I praise him pero sumubra kaya ngayon sumakit na naman ang ulo ko kasi nag lelead sa klase napaklaks ng boses at mali pati yung sinasabi nya... hehhehehehe

Mag-iisip muna ako ng iba at maghahalungkat din ng pwede ko'ng ma i share sa inyo... See you next time!

I worked in a government school in Rangsit once with classes of over 50 students. I met them twice a week, and I had full control of what I wanted to teach them. (Which of course, was both good and bad. Great if you're a seasoned teacher. That's scary if you're a rookie!)

This one I'm sharing is something I recently did with my 9th graders at the International school where I teach. The class is especially designed for those learning English, but using content areas. That means we are doing the exact opposite of what bilingual classes do in the Thai school. We use content areas such as Social Studies, Science, Math and Language Arts to teach the English language. How's that done? Ask me to do a whole-day workshop! Ha, ha!

You guys out there are free to give us ideas on how this can be done in other teaching situations. I'll think of some too.

Title: Dares, Deals and Challenges

It’s been 8 days that I have not had a taste of my dear old, old friend – the soda! I was telling my kids about it when suddenly, I was struck by inspiration. And I thought to myself, why not?

That day, I offered my class a deal. If every single one of my students were to complete a dare or a challenge within 21 days, I would give them either a pizza party or a movie.

They took it, and were even pretty excited about the whole idea.

It took us several days (15 minutes each time), before everyone thought of a challenge for himself/herself, or a dare for a classmate.

The challenges all had to do with school, of course, because we had to have a way to monitor things, and the whole idea is for them to be a means of support for the goals they want to achieve by the end of the year.

Here are a few of the challenges/dares:
∑ “I will speak only English in all my classes.”
∑ “I will do all my homework in all subjects everyday.”
∑ And of course, as for myself, I should also have another challenge aside from my soda battle.
So my challenge would be to make sure I check all homework everyday, and give appropriate feedback (grades, comments or both) to students the following school day.

The rules:
∑ The whole class has to participate.
∑ Everyone is accountable to one another.
∑ If one fails to do his/her challenge, there are two choices: he/she can treat the whole class to pizza or start another 21-days cycle.
∑ Once everyone has completed one 21-days cycle successfully, I treat the class to a pizza party or to a movie of their choosing.

Why 21?
According to Stephen Covey, author of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, it takes 21 days for somebody to make or break a habit. Thus, the 21-days cycle.

Stay tuned as I bring you news about how this will turn out. I’m so positive about its results I’m getting ready with that big pizza order.

Update: Last June 6, I took my kids (students) to Emporium to watch a movie instead of that pizza party. We watched Pirates 2. Then we had early dinner at Fuji courtesy of two other kids who passed th test to go into the mainstream class. Good way to end the year and draw a close to great yeat of hard work for both the students and me!

Of course, if you have a class of 45, there's no way I would suggest you take them all to the movies, Josephil! Ha, ha!

I'll think of some way to integrate this into a setting such as yours to give other teachers some ideas to use.