the lesson plan: an insider's view

Some of you may recognize this photo from
my first newsletter. I suppose that signs like these
are posted to seemingly "motivate" our students.
However, decoration could also be a factor O:-)

Since I have not received much inspiration for the blog as of late, I thought I would simply share a bit of insight into the main way that we have opportunity to serve our students as Oral English teachers here in China.


This week I have had two main goals for my classes: 

1. To have them think critically about their experiences in school and the personal values they have discovered from these experiences and have since shaped them and
2. To learn to organize their thoughts in an outline as a tool to help them create lesson plans one day (many of our students will be English teachers of small children in the future).

Below is an outline exactly as I write it on the board that I used this week to explain my "Life-Lessons from School Experiences". For those of you who are not familiar with my strange ways of writing sometimes the "=/" stands for "is not equal to".  As I explained to my students, the outline is not extensive (wordy) and is simply used as a template to help me to remember what I wanted to share with my classes.


Life-Lessons from School Experiences

1. Elementary School
   1. Be loving to others, even when unkind.
      1. Chris, David, & Eric
      2. mother's faith
   2. Everyone needs a friend
      1. Chris
      2. unusual people
2. Middle School
   1. popularity=/most important
3. High School
   1. right choice=/easy choice
      1. Mexico
      2. Independence
   2. everyone changes
      1. return from Mexico
      2. family & friends

They created a similar outline, shared their life-lessons with a partner, listened to a partner's life-lessons, wrote down their partner's life-lessons in a small outline, and shared their partner's life-lessons with another partner, retelling information.  Afterwards, I divided them into groups of three and provided them with the following three discussion questions which I wrote up on the board one at a time as they discussed for about three or four minutes per question:

1. Who was your favorite teacher? Why?
2. What was the most difficult? Why?
3. If you could change one thing, what would it be? Why?

The intended goals of each question:

1. I thought that as many of them will be teachers in the future, this could be a good way to pin-point what values they have and to seek to meet those values in their own teaching and classrooms.
2. To think about the difficult aspects of life and to have them reflect on past challenges that they had to overcome and how they overcame (or didn't overcome) them.
3. An opportunity for students to share regrets and vulnerabilities with their classmates. As well as an opportunity to reveal what they value based on what they would choose to change about their past.

Also notice that I end each question with "why?" Not only does this provide them more opportunity to speak English (an answer like "My favorite teacher was Mr. Lin. He was very nice." turns into "My favorite teacher was Mr. Lin.  He was very nice because he always encouraged us when we made a mistake and did not punish us badly like other teachers"), it also provides them opportunity to think about their values and particularly why they hold certain opinions about life, giving them opportunity to explain themselves, and their reasoning behind certain personal answers to life's questions.

I hope this has been informative and, if anything, if you have a keen eye, you can see how you can be lifting us and our students up here in China ;-)

Until next time... "Happy every day"


(NOTE: I teach this lesson two more times this week. [I've already taught it six times]
 Once this morning @ 10:10AM. And once tomorrow morning at 8:00AM)