My favorite English games

So, I'm nearly at the end of my contract here and I'm thinking about what to tell my successor. I keep noticing certain games that I reuse, so I thought I would share them.

ESOL English game - dice, vocabulary and grammar - JET programme

Hey there,
I thought I would share with you all the most successful game I made for my Japanese High School's English Conversation class. In every English lesson I have an activity or game that helps to teach the targeted English. Whenever you are teaching a foreign language it is great to get the students using it in a fun way, and make a good teaching environment. This game in particular really succeeded in waking the students up, they actually became quite excited to play it. Let me tell you how to works...

Well, I call this one "dice, vocabulary and grammar" for a reason. It is pretty much exactly that.

The goal:  Review/Practice recent grammar and vocabulary that has been taught in the classroom.
Required: Dice. I gave each team 2 dice (you can probably pick up at a 100 yen store). A set of cards (printed if you like) with vocabulary on them.
Class size, etc: I played this game in a class of about 16 students (senior high school students). I think it could be easily scaled up. You would have to have more vocab and bigger teams however. I think if you make the number of teams close to the size of teams (e.g. 5 teams with 5 in a team) then that'll work better.

How it goes: So this is how my class went down... My class had just learned about weekend activities (going to the gym, watching TV, etc), so I based it on this. I made some vocab cards from the different activities e.g. "watch T.V.". As I said, I had about 16 students. I broke them into 4 groups. Make sure that each team gets about 4-5 vocab cards (scale up/down if needed). Each team gets 2 dice.
So how it works is: 1 or 2 students from each team stay at their table and all the other students will go to other teams tables to try and take vocab cards from them. To steal a vocab card from another team a student must ask a question (based on the grammar/content you are trying to learn). For example "Did you watch TV this weekend?". If the team being asked the question has the vocab for "watch TV" then they must hand it over and say "Yes, I watched TV in the weekend". The student then takes it back to their team. However, before they are allowed to ask the question they must roll the dice. If the student who wants to ask the question win the roll, they may ask. If not, then they must continue on to another group. Whatever team has the most vocab cards in the end wins (time of this activity is decided by you).

Note: This may need translation into Japanese if the students don't understand (which is likely). Ensure you explain the game adequately to your Japanese Teacher of English (JTE).

The dice roll makes the game exciting because of the element of chance. This game works great to teach the grammar and vocab that class is currently working on. It can pretty much be adapted to any targeted grammar or vocab list.

If you ever try it, leave me a comment and let me know how it went. If it works any well, it might just be one that you can print off and save for those surprise classes you will probably receive ;)

Planning your first lesson - JET Programme

Hey there. Just finished being told that New Zealand husbands (followed by Italian) are highly sought after in Japan. Yeah! I was just thinking of making a song called "I still don't have a Japanese wife", guess there is still hope. Hold off on that song for now.

Any way, I want to tell you a little about preparing for you classes (in a Foreign English teaching environment). Just so you know, I work at a High school with both a general English course and a fishery course. So here are a few tips. I can't spell it out to the details, it is highly variable.

Firstly, perhaps most importantly, know what kind of situation you are about to teach in! Best way to do this is to talk to your predecessor about the type of preparation they did for classes. For me, I will plan a class a few days in advance (and sometime on the day). Recently, I've been sitting down with everyone that is involved (same material, different classes) and making a teaching plan. However, I heard from a friend that she just finished planning months of classes in advance. See what I mean by different situations, yeah! So figure out what your getting into.

Secondly, your predecessor should have left you a nice bunch of previous lesson plans (if they are nice people). Use these to get a general idea of how a class goes down. If not, you can always ask your Japanese English Teachers that you'll teach with.

Next, when you come around to planning that first class (and all classes) don't forget the objective. What type of class is it? Oral Communication? General? Reading? Writing? Meet your objective.

Write it down! You will probably have a bunch of classes, you can't remember it all. I just write it down on scrap paper and keep it safe. Many go full on with printed templates and things (at least that is what they tell you in seminars, realistically...?). If your you're into that, then do it that way ;)

Plan for the small things. Write them down, don't forget. I try to guess how long things take and make up a 50minute period. Try have some games you can use in the case you have time to spare.

A lot of the time you may have a book that the teachers follow (ask if you use one).That is great, it can provide guidance. However, not all are great books. Adapt the lessons to make them more interesting for the students. Think about encouraging participation and what environment you want in each class. For example, a list of vocabulary is pretty boring. Learning by repetition is not exactly fun (unless you can funk it up). The same vocab can probably be learned in more interesting ways with games, worksheets, in class examples, etc. You will be teaching for at least a year, if the method is interesting for you, it will probably be interesting for the kids.

So without any more rambling i'll let you in on how my lessons go down.

Intro: Greet the students. Ask about their weekend etc, Ask new questions, introduce a new "cool English phrase".

Warm-up: I will play a English song for the students while they fill in the blanks. Quiz them on previous classes, homework check, or some game to wake them up. I mean, not all of these, but around a 10 minute warm up.

Introducing the content: Today I did a little skit with my Japanese English Teacher. I tried to involve the students by asking random students "May I borrow your pen", "Could you open the window" (new grammar). Just someway to make the new content fun. 

I always seem to have worksheet so the students can work on the new material. This can be many things from filling in blanks to writing a letter/story. 

I usually have a game that is directly related to the new content. I love involving props and stuff. Bringing dice along to class and making up a game with them turned into one of my most enjoyable classes.

I usually like to do a range of activities in the period. If there is too much pair-work, it can get sluggish, to much monologue up the front, they'll go to sleep. Too much paper work, and it can lack interest. Try balance it all out. Think about it as cutting a class into sections of pair-work, self-work, class activity, instruction and talk from the teacher. Of course, you can't segment lessons perfectly, but you can ensure it isn't too unbalanced. 

I can probably write a whole lot more. For now, that is enough. But finally, a great tip. If you want to study Japanese (or another language) try and go along to classes, small ones are preferable. Then, steal teaching methods from your teachers ;) I went along to a free Japanese lessons once a week. A whole lot of fun, and it shows you some good teaching tips.

Ask me questions. I'll answer you directly.

Preparing your self introduction 2 - an example - JET programme

So, I just finished doing some little updates to the powerpoint presentation that is my introduction. My high school has just received this years new students, and the new school year is just kicking off. I will be doing my self introduction for each of my 1st year English classes (apparently that is about 5 classes). However, if your about to come on JET, you'll do your introduction for every class :) Don't worry it can be fun, it is all up to you. It is actually one of my favorite things to do.

Anyway, as the title says, I've got an "example" of my slide show presentation. Truth is, i'm not going to upload the powerpoint, it would be useless. Most of it is picture which aren't much use to you. However, I'll walk you through (with nice bullet points) each of my slide and videos I show the students. Hopefully this will give you some ideas.

Ok here we go, a slide per bullet point:

• First slide: My opening slide. I've put a nice green theme (good for New Zealand) for my slides. I started off with some weird picture to grab their attention and a local "Kia ora" (Hello). Generally want to get the attention at this point. You could play a small vid?
• Next slide is my personal info. All the details about me. Age, name, picture, what I studied, my job, etc. They'll probably be interested in your blood type too... I wasn't sure what mine was :S
• With the next slide I explained my life (in simple terms) before Japan with pictures. My home, job, countries I visited before Japan. Only a few pictures, don't want to go on forever about me. 
• Next slide: My country (New Zealand)! Where it is, simple layout, where the hot pools are, pictures of hot pools, volcanoes, and major cities.
  At this point I go into a tourism video about New Zealand. Try find a decent video with a good pace, coverage, music (to keep them awake - plus it can be cultural). Students generally love watching the video. But, try not make it tooo long.
• Next slide! Stats about NZ (at this point I'll remind you to get the audience involved, try not to make it a monologue. For example, ask them to translate the population size into Japanese... can be hard for them sometimes) Populations size, sheep populations size ;), how big the country is compared to Japan, the capital, pictures of the capital. 
  
• Food! This section they love! This slide I filled with all the different foods that you cannot find in Japan (and sometimes they're interested in Japanese you can find in your country!). Ice cream flavors, meat pies, meat, ridiculously sized food portions, lollies cakes, corn fritters, the whole deal. Nothing more cultural than your food!
  Actually, recently I brought some "vegemite". A Australia/New Zealand breakfast spread made from yeast extract. I use it to torture students and teachers alike. Something like that is great. Bring a sampling sticks or something (make sure you know the size of the class!).
• Famous people of New Zealand. I used Flight of the Conchords, a comedy duo. They loved the video.
  
• This next slide I made into a quiz. I broke the class into teams quickly and asked them to tell me what NZ is famous for (sheep, rugby, sports teams, zorb, bungee jumping, etc etc). I went through slides with pictures from Lord of the Rings, King Kong (remake), Sir Edmund Hillary, Last Samurai (filmed in NZ), etc etc.
• Things to do in NZ slide. About everything you can do in New Zealand. E.g. ride in a zorb (big ball thing), Bungee jump, sky dive, jet boat (Hamilton jet invented in NZ), camping, tramping, canoeing, visiting all those sheep. Of course, this is all with picture.
• Now I introduce some of the culture. This slide I introduce the "Haka". A traditional dance usually done before a rugby game by the All Blacks. I showed them a video of this. They loved it! (esp the adidas logo at the end). Sometimes they want to watch it again. Feel free to spread your cultural propaganda ;) It is part of our job.
• More culture and interesting NZ fact. I did a slide about the Maori (the NZ natives) and there buildings, food, etc.
• This slide is all about NZ animals. NZ famous animals (Moko the friendly dolphin), weird animals (giant weta), and just common animals, etc. If you have a cute video i'm sure it'll go down well (reminds me of that cat and dolphin video I saw recently)
      
• Ok, this last part I reserved for some ridiculous/amazing fact they probably wouldn't know. I introduced 2 extinct birds: the Moa (think huge emu), and the Haasts Eagle (eats the moa). Did some comparisons to the leg height of a Moa to a human (think giant KFC chicken leg).
• The last few slides I ended by doing a quiz of the things we had been over. See if anyone can remember the capital of NZ (so far 1 or 2 students haha... suppose it is a hard name).
  

So yeah, that is how my powerpoint goes. Hope you get some ideas for your own. You will probably have a lot of time to work on this during the school summer break, so don't worry to much. Get some pictures, info, and stuff before you leave your country, if it makes it easier. 

Preparing your self introduction - JET programme

So before you even leave Japan you will surely be told that you have to do a self introduction to each of your classes. Hearing this I was pretty nervous... how do you do an introduction for 50minutes to High school students! Ahhh.

But, honestly, this will be even easier than your actual classes you face later on (not that they are hard either). It really is up to you.

So, I did all my introductions with Powerpoint (check with your supervisor if this is available to you) in a Audio/Visual classroom. You'll have a long time to prepare because of the Summer break, so here are a few pointers I thought the students found interesting (beer in mind....hahaha... that I was presenting this to high schoolers).

• The students love looking at picture of your countries strange food. I come from NZ so it is nothing extraordinary, but they loved it. I made a slide full of interesting foods. Ice cream flavors not available here, pies, etc etc.
• A slide of all the things my country is famous for (I made them guess for points). Gives a good overview of the country.
• I used my countries tourism video. It was about 5 minutes with a great overview of culture and scenery. 
• Pop-culture from my country. Comedians, movies, songs, etc. I included a video from Flight of the Conchords (very funny), a tralier from Lord of the Rings (while pointing out that it was all in NZ).
• Things in your country that are slightly different from Japanese things. Saying there was Onsen in NZ, wow! Hotpools, boiling mud, etc, was very interesting to them. Point out some similar things between Japan and your country then destroy that similarity by telling all the differences. Yes, we wear swimsuits in our Hotpools!
• Things which are so different in your country that they're alien. 
• Brief history of something interesting in your country. I did some extinct birds. The Moa. I compared the size of a human to a drum stick (englarged KFC) to a human. Wow, it is the same size as a fully grown man! Then, tell them that some giant eagles (Haasts Eagle) used to eat these other birds. What! The other bird was already soooo big!
• Cultural dances, songs, sports. I included a video of the All Blacks (NZ rugby team) performing the Haka (cultural dance... I guess). They loved it, and knew about it. Amazingly some girls really got into it and asked for it to be played a second time. They loved the big Adidas logo at the end.
• I built a few quiz into my powerpoint to make sure they were listening.

Of course, after all of this, you still have to introduce yourself. Make sure they know a little about you, who you are. The above are just a few examples of what I did, but you know, craft something for your students interests. Think of the 50minutes as 10 5minute slots (although you may use 5 minutes due to greetings and other unknowns, and another 5 for questions already). What 10 categories (or just interesting things) can you share about your country, yourself? 

Ok, last thing. Also, for your first time, prepare something in case you have extra time: a 5 min video, small game, country quiz, speech, whatever.

Let me know if you have any questions about your intros.