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Published: August 11th 2010
It's the last day of teaching and I began with some riddles followed by a listening from Great Ideas -- do you remember that book? That is a brilliant book for ESL..so many good listening and speaking activities. Although some are a lilttle dated now (technology is beyond land lines) it's still got some very innovative ideas. We did the unit called Once upon a time...remembering things that happened in the past. I felt completely happy about that but the students couldn't catch everything. I think they get discouraged because it's hard to catch the tape..no matter how many times I play it and how much I break it down for them. But it's good practice.
In addition, we did some songs...basic songs for elementary school level -- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Row,row, row your boat, The wheels on the bus, ...those were all the ones that I had power points for so we found some relief in singing. Finally we did another small evaluation I had created an evaluation form but it was in Word 2007 and I couldn't get it printed out at the school....so I abandoned that idea for just an oral evaluation. We reviewed the activities and then they discussed which activities were helpful, which were not helpful, and how they would change the program. I think that one of the major changes should be materials...they really need their own copies of the reading materials. The visualizer just doesn't work..you can't see the writing and students need their own copy in front of them to write on and to read.
The afternoon I brought in my computer and we looked at photos and then they worked in their groups on a final presentation skit while we packed up our office and all the materials. We are almost done. Tomorrow morning we have the skits and final ceremony, tomorrow afternoon we are free to pack, and tomorrow night we will have a dinner with the local officials and Zigen representatives, followed by Karaoke (don't know where exactly) but it should be good. Friday morning at 8 we leave for taiyuan. judy and I will be staying at a hotel there for one night and then she leaves for Singapore and on Saturday I'll be leaving for Beijing where I'll stay for 3 days...I'm very excited about seeing something else in China.
this evening I took out the two teachers who have been tutoring me in Chinese. They are both very good English speakers -- some of the best students inthe class and they have been quite supportive of my limited attempts to pick up some Chinese. I wanted to treat them to a dinner before I left. I just found out yesterday that another teacher in the class -- someone that presented a really outstanding lesson -- was their English teacher in Middle School so I urged them to ask her to join us...Ms. Ren has been an inspiration to a number of the teachers..there were about 4 of our teachers who had had her as a teacher. She's very modest but she's a very good teacher.
We went to the hot pot restaurant that I have been to a couple of times...apparently it's new only a little overa month old...but the food is tasty and it was an enjoyable evening. Afterwards we walked over to Ms. Ren's home and I met her husband. They all have such spacious homes; they put our small NYC spaces to shame in comparison.
so...it's really almost over...
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npulleslinares
non-member comment
Great experience
Hi Cynthia, I love your blog and I was just telling Carlos that we should have done one for our two months peripatetic experience. We didn't always have access to internet out in the wild, particularly in some National Parks. Your students seem to be lovely and it must be such a treat for them to be able to learn some English from you. Enjoy the Great Wall and Tiannamen Square, take lots of pix and we'll share once you are back. We have over a thousand pictures here from our journey too. See you and Linda on the 29th. Best always, Nidia