Fun Lesson #5

I got another for you guys!  This is awesome if you have a lesson planned that won't quite take up the entire class and you got 20-30 more minutes to burn.  Its fun and simple, and just requires that the teacher have access to the internet and a printer.

What I did was take online comics (in this case, Penny Arcade) and remove the text.  I printed them off and handed them out to my students.  I told them to look at their comic, and fill in the bubbles so it makes some sense.  I also told them to keep their writing inside the bubbles but most of them did not listen to me.

Have a look at some of the results.

Deep Crow.  

Good night...baby boy.  

Go Steelers?  

Look at them do as I commanded!

This group wanted to do more than one strip.  It was super cool.  

:D

My class!  Hard at work?

I saved the best (saddest?) for last.  This guy was definitely venting some frustration.

Good stuff,

- Andrew

My Yellow Morning

Check these out:

I woke up in the morning, and I looked out the window and everything was yellow.  I was super confused, and I was pretty sure it was dangerous to go outside, but being the adventurous adult that I am (and the fact that I had classes to teach), I went outside anyway.

I asked my students about it, and they weren't quite sure how to explain it.  My favorite explanation that I got was: "It is sand....because of Mongolia."  

I've seen Mulan, so I know that the Chinese aren't the biggest fans of the Monguls (ie: the Great Wall), so I simply nodded and accepted the explanation.  Crazy Mongolians and their horses.

Of course, the much more logical explanation is that the sand comes from storms from the Gobi Desert.  Its blown hundreds of miles into the atmosphere and eventually has to settle back down - in this case, Jilin Province in China.  Its not terribly uncommon either.  

Kind of cool and kind of scary, but its a new kind of weather for me.  I've survived a dust/sand day.  

Seriously though, everything tasted like dirt for half the day.  

Damn you, Mongolia!!

- Andrew 

Fun Lesson #4

This lesson is a lot simplier than the cooking one, and turned out to be a lot funnier than I thought it would be.  What you do is you take a bunch of strips of paper and write various roles on them.  Like 'Police Officer', 'Teacher', 'Child', 'Angry Person' etc etc.  Flip them over and put them on your desk.
Tell your students to get into groups of 2-4, than to come up (one group at a time) and pick a role.  Whatever that role is, that is what they have to be.  Give them 20 minutes or so to write a short skit where all those roles have to interact with one another.  This pushes them to be creative, increases their vocabulary and helps them work on their conversational English.  While they wrote, I walked around and helped them figure out their roles and fixed errors in their dialouges as I saw them.

In my freshmen classes (where I tried this lesson), it was like watching amateur improv comedians.
There was one group that got the roles "Barrack Obama," "Taxi Driver," and "Crazy Person."  I thought this one would be hilarious (in my American mind, it had to be) but it was kind of 'meh.'  Standard stuff.  The group that had 'Doctor' and 'Sad Person' was hilarious simply because of the amount of acting both students put into their characters.  Its pretty great when the Chinese sense of humor and the American sense of humor meet somewhere.

I took notes while watching the skits and than at the end of the skits, I briefly went over points I saw (how to improv, mistakes I saw a lot of people make etc) and by that point, class was basically over.  Fun way to spend an afternoon.

A variant of this activity is where the groups have to keep their roles a secret from other groups, and at the end of each performance, the class has to guess who had what role (there was some success in this).

Some of the role papers!

Utilizing props!  Woo!

The attentive audience!

Good times,

- Andrew

Fun Lesson #3

So, this is another lesson that turned out pretty fun but requires quite a bit of preparation (and probably funding from the teacher - ie: me/you).  It takes two and a half classes to three classes to complete.    

First class:  Talk about cooking!  Vocabulary and recipes!  Western food!  Things that you miss that you can't find in China (maybe your students can tell you where it can be found!)!  For homework, have them get into groups of four and translate a favorite Chinese recipe into English and bring it to class.


Next Class/Half Class:  Talk about everyone's recipes and have them choose their favorite.  Also, have them choose which ones would be easiest/best to make in class. Vote!  Say that everyone will cook the winning recipe in the next class.  Just make sure it isn't too complicated, relatively quick to make and the ingredients are easy to find.


Third/Second Class:  Cooking Day!  I brought in a frying pan, the ingredients and my hot plate to do all the cooking.  I opted to just buy all the ingredients myself because I could easily afford it (getting enough food to feed 30 kids cost about 100 yuan in the first class and only 50 or so in the second class. It just depends on the recipe, but it wasn't a whole lot).  I had them come up in groups to cook the recipe according to the English directions.  While one group cooked, I had the rest of the class work on an elaborate cooking vocabulary crossword puzzle that I crafted on the board.

My elaborate crossword puzzle (God, I wish my school had easily accesible copiers/printers)

The first class made Coca-Cola Wings.  Delicious!

I let them work as a class to solve my elaborate puzzle.  

The second class made xi hong shi chao ji dan, which essentially scrambled eggs and tomato (and some random spices).

It was a good class.  Preparation was a pain on my part, but the students loved it.  The lesson required them to translate reciples and than follow English directions to make food.  Everyone also got to get something to eat, which is always a winner.

Winning!

- Andrew

Moving Up In The World

A quick post.  Apparently, because of my awesome teaching abilities, the administrators at my school have seen fit to give me a class of graduate students to teach.  They couldn't quite explain to me exactly what the class was, or what I was suppose to teach them....just that they were going to England or something soon, and I had to get them ready.

I'm not sure what that means, but it bumped up my hours and now I get paid a lot more.
I'm probably just going to use the class to watch a bunch of Dr. Who.

One of my grads!  Doing a role-play exercise and looking excited!

More of my grads!  Doing a role-play exercise and looking....like they're sad or in trouble.  :-/

Fantastic,
- Andrew

My Chinese Vacation

Way too much to talk about for a blog post, so I'm just going to post pictures....because I like pictures.  I'll probably throw in some words too, just for kicks.

Great Wall of China at MuTianYu.  One world wonder down.

Suzhou.  Kind of like the Venice of China.  Sorta.

Sad Chinese zoo in Suzhou.  

If Facebook wasn't blocked in China, and China was on it, they would like KFC.  

Shanghai!  What a crazy and expensive city!  

Chinese Train.  I typically travel in hard sleepers (pictured above).  You get a bed.  Six beds to a compartment.  Occasionally, a woman comes around with a cart and tries to sell you overpriced ramen and people watch you while you sleep because you're foreign and weird.  

Final destination in our trip!  Sunny Sanya!  

A coconut a day keeps the doctor away.  

Me with some cool people.  We bought these fashionable Chinese outfits because we're so cool.  

China is a pretty fun place to travel.  Now I'm completely out of cash and I gotta get back to work!

- Andrew

Chinese New Year

I had the opportunity to be in Beijing for Chinese New Year (Feburary 2nd) and it probably made my the list of top ten most amazing things in my life.  The entire city was filled with energy and as the day turned into night, you could not walk in any direction without seeing fireworks shoot up into the sky.  At midnight, the city practically exploded with light and smoke.  Think of the grand finale at a 4th of July firework show in America and than make that 45 minutes long and all over a city the size of Beijing...that is kinda what it was like.

Here, take a look:

Chinese New Year Beijing 2011.wmv (13.98 mb)

That is Chinese New Year.

Year of the Rabbit, go!
- Andrew