Lest you think I spend all my time traveling, I can assure you, my teaching duties remain constantly at the front of my mind. More so this semester, now that, in addition to my 20 weekly classes, I've begun leading a weekly "English Club."
You ask, "what is 'English Club?'" Well, every Friday during first period, aka 8:40-9:20am, Jhennan Elementary has "club time" where students can participate in various activities including music, art, and now English. Every Friday, I visit a homeroom classroom to teach 15 fourth graders from different classes basically anything English-related (and school/age appropriate, of course).
At first, I felt intimidated by the prospect of leading and designing English Club by myself. Also, the parameters of teaching "basically anything English-related," though open, seemed overwhelmingly broad. Not helping matters, there was a miscommunication over my first session of English Club; I thought I was just supposed to introduce the club and read a few English picture books, but my colleagues actually wanted me to carry out a full lesson plan. I only discovered the truth 20 minutes before the club started, which left me, at 8:30am on Friday, scrambling to figure out Plan B. In the nick of time, I scraped together a lesson involving one of the books and a drawing activity, which, while a tad awkward, more or less went fine. Still, the experience was jarring and, at that point, I wasn't feeling too hot about this English Club idea.
After that fiasco, however, I spoke to my colleagues and we brainstormed some ideas for English Club. Thus, for the second session, I came much better prepared. I decided to teach a song and play a game that I'd learned in elementary school. The song goes like this:
The music ball goes round and round
It stops at every single town
Keep it going while you sit
Hold it last and you are it
You are OUT
The students sit in a circle, singing the song and passing around a ball. Whoever holds the ball when they reach "OUT" gets booted from the circle, which becomes smaller and smaller until the last person wins. So it's basically musical chairs but with a ball.
After the less-than-ideal first English Club session, I definitely felt nervous about the second time around, but luckily, this lesson was far more successful! After I explained the song lyrics and had my students practice, I pushed aside the desks and chairs to form the circle for our game. And what a lively game it was! The fourth graders got pretty invested, not just in who was going to win, but also in who may or may not be cheating. Nobody takes cheating more seriously than elementary schoolers, haha.
The music ball goes round and round....
lehi With that more successful lesson under my belt, I started to get more in the groove of English Club planning. For starters, especially while working with fourth graders, I realized that I should do my best to incorporate movement into my lessons. Inevitably, I'd need to spend part of the lesson teaching English words or phrases and leading student practice, but I aimed to include more physical activities in the second half of the club. I didn't want the club to become just another school class, but rather stay true to its extracurricular nature.
Recently, in addition to playing games, I've also incorporated American culture lessons into my English Club routine, to some humorous results. Case in point, a few Fridays ago was April Fools' Day, which, to be honest, I'd totally forgotten about until a colleague reminded me. Hmm...how can I teach an English lesson on April Fools' Day? I thought.
After brainstorming, I came up with a three-pronged lesson:
1) Start off class with a fake quiz, oh classic of school-related April Fools' Day pranks. Taking inspiration from my own fourth grader teacher, tell the students to read all quiz instructions before starting it, and at the very end of the quiz, put an addendum, reading "Now that you've read all the instructions, you don't actually need to take this quiz."
2) Once they figure out the quiz prank, explain April Fools' Day, its background, and a few key words and phrases. And then have them complete an April Fools' Day word search except some of the words are missing.
3) At the end of class, give the students a "prize" to thank them for their cooperation.
On April 1, after initiating Phase 1 and informing my students of the pop quiz, I expected more pushback (and maybe a chorus of "Kàm án-ne?" which in Taiwanese roughly means, "It be like that?"). However, these are Taiwanese students who already take midterms, finals, and dozens of other tests every year, so they met my pronouncement with a mere shrug and a click of their pens. Well then. I passed out the "quiz" and waited for them to figure it out. But even the fastest students simply finished the test and then said, "I'm done."
"Uh....are you?" I asked. "Did you read all the instructions?" Even after I had them read out the giveaway last line, they still seemed confused. "But I finished the test," one boy repeated.
So Phase 1 might've been a bit of a bust, but once I moved on to explain April Fool's Day and why they weren't actually supposed to finish the quiz, my students seemed to pick up more understanding. Then, we got to the word search and the students realized that the assigned words "joke" and "trick" were mysteriously missing.
"What does 'trick' mean?" I prodded them. They said the definition in Mandarin and then a lightbulb went off and they cried, "Teacher tricked us again!"
As my final stroke of (evil) genius, I thanked the students for being game and handed out individually-wrapped "chocolates." Except, the night before, I'd unwrapped each one and replaced it with a grape. Unsurprisingly, my students were less than pleased when they figured this out, although I will add, my colleagues all thought it was hysterical. April Fools!
Left: My chocolates-to-grapes work station.
Right: The re-wrapped "chocolates" (pretty convincing, no)? and the real deal.
Needless to say, I am no longer her favorite teacher.
Teaching lessons like that one, I've been able to flex my creative muscles more widely with English Club than with my regular English classes. While other Fulbright ETAs may have more free rein when planning English classes, every week, I pitch all my lesson plan ideas to my LETs (Lead English Teachers) until they hear ones they like and approve them. So, it's nice having more autonomy with English Club, where I don't have to pitch my ideas and can teach a variety of English language vocab and culture. Not to mention, I don't have to prepare these students for any midterms or finals or make sure they pass certain testing standards. We're just here to have fun and learn some English in the process.
So after all my initial stress about English Club, it's actually become one of my favorite parts of teaching! This past Friday, I took the kids to a new level by teaching them the moves and refrain from the Zillenial classic, "The Cupid Shuffle," aka legendary wedding reception anthem circa 2007-2011. After practicing the dance, we hosted a little competition. Check out our winning team!
Time to boogie!
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