2018

04.12

Shuofang Experimental Primary School

Paul and William

Reporter: Timothy Sowards

My very own Grade 2 students in Shuofang were treated to special lessons à la none other than Mr. Paul (under the '70s alter ego of "Mr. Awesome") and Mr. Will (as himself, because "awesome" just oozes effortlessly from his pores)! These little rascals were taught to say watch, camera, computer, smartphone, spaceship, robot, and the Middle Kingdom's be-all and end-all, WeChat, in conjunction with I have a _______ and I like _______(e)s. 

If they don't remember how to reproduce this language, they'll certainly remember Mr. Will doing the robot; then again, how could they not remember with such "explosive" activities as the Minesweeper game?! There's no doubt that my students had quite an awesome gas!

Reporter: Warwick Midlane

Spring City Elementary was treated to a day of fun and learning. Jennifer kicked it off with a fun song about technology which had the students jumping and jiving. She ratcheted up the fun with a game where students raced to touch the flash card which she had just mimed. The students loved the animations and the really interactive ppt. 

Up next was Julie whose homemade hologram blew everyone away. Students got invited up to view the amazing spectacle even teachers crowded up. Julie then led the class through her list essential modern technology. Next the students played the Kidnap Game where students can swap points with the other team, you can imagine the excitement. All in all the students of Spring City Elementary had a great day of learning and fun. 

Reporter: Jafar Abbas

On a bit of a dreary day both Val and Jocelyn prepared to lift the children's spirits with a lesson about technology. It was easy to see that the children were very intrigued about who would be teaching them, and they were eager to get involved. Jocelyn began introducing herself as 'Teacher Jocelyn', and continued the warm-up nicely by having the students introduce themselves and become confident with a different teacher. Jocelyn's lesson used the vocabulary "watch, robot, phone/smart phone, TV and computer".  Jocelyn use of TPR helped keep the students engaged and actually helped them become familiar with the vocabulary very quickly.

Meanwhile in Val's class, Val was amusing the students with a fantastic impersonation of a robot.  It had everyone laughing, and it definitely caught the students' attention. Val's class was full of energy; with a little support from their teacher, the students comfortably moved on from words to making sentences.  To increase the students' recognition and understanding of the sentence, Val had a lovely hot seat activity where a student had to guess which was the correct word by saying "I have a _______." If correct, the rest of the students together had to say "Yes,you do!", if incorrect they had to say "No, you don't." There was something very amusing yet impressive about watching and hearing 40 plus 7-year-old Grade 1 students call out the responses together. To finish off his wonderful class, Val had students play a target game using the blackboard and a sticky ball.  

It was amazing to see how well such young learners can learn, but it goes without saying that they were guided by two fantastic teachers.

Reporter: Christopher Gray

10^th Grade students at Nanjing No. 5 High School were edu-tained by teacher Kathleen Oleksiuk, who equipped with them with skills to talk about one of their favourite subjects: technology! Kathleen divided the class into two appropriately-named teams, the iPhones and the iPads. Once they settled into their roles (in which PDAs are allowed), the games/learning began.

Class 4 is a whip-smart bunch of nearly 50 students. The first activity involved having the teams make as many words as they could using the letters in the word 'technology'. I was impressed by what they came up with, particularly 'hotel' and 'length.' However, I was most amused by one student's joie de vivre as they happily contributed 'YOLO'.

Kathleen did a great job at getting 16 year olds up and moving, and, once they got moving, they seemed to enjoy the opportunity to work up an appetite during the period before lunch.

Students excelled at matching pictures to words such as 'microchip' or 'antibiotic,' and readily grasped that technology is as old as any tools we've used, and isn't just the realm of flashing lights or League of Legends.

JESIE's Open Day activities brought a bit of sunshine to a rainy, Friday the 13^th. However, some of the iPhones were set to silent, so in the end the iPads won the day.

Reporter: Amber Cameron

On Friday April 20th, Youfuxijie Primary school enjoyed two interesting lessons by Darby and William about technology. Children love playing with tablets and cell phones, so their eyes were glued to the teachers during the entire 40 minutes!

Darby focused on new and old technologies in the grade 4 class. Her friendly personality and humour motivated the students to participate and learn about pieces of technology they use every day such as televisions and tablets. During the lesson, she integrated the use of numerous toys with her games such as a bell, a ball and glove which proved effective in encouraging the young students to move around the classroom, play and learn English simultaneously! Then she gave the students a hands-on activity where they could create their own cell phones. At the end of the lesson the students were able to ask and answer questions such as: It is old or new? and How many?   

Not far off, William brought a dynamic style of teaching to the grade 6 classroom. He asked the students questions and incorporated some of their suggestions during his lesson! This really helped the students to open up to their new teacher. William taught the students some interesting facts about technology such as when and where these inventions were created. He played racing games that got the students out of their seats, and a hot seat game that pushed the students to use the utilize the sentence structures they had just been taught. Then the students were given a chance to show their creativity and draw pictures of their own inventions! By the end of the lesson all the students could ask and respond to the questions: What is the invention? Where was it invented? When was it invented? What is it used for?

When the bell rang all of the students in both classes continued with their art projects and happily discussed amongst their peers about their interesting English lesson.

Reporter: Danniel Bartlett

On the 26th of April, Sam and Davean made their way to Houzhai primary school to share their knowledge of technology with 2 classes of eager grade 4s. Sam introduced new vocabulary using a game where the students had to match pictures with words. She went on to play hot seat and all the students wanted to have a turn. 

Upstairs Davean used a song about a robot to introduce the class to the new vocabulary. Once they were all familiarized with the new words, she played a game where the students had to say the words on the ppt until a fly popped up at which point they had to swat it as fast as they can. The students loved this game and had a great time.

Reporter: Kathleen Oleksiuk

Tony opened his lesson in Class 3 by introducing the idea of technology and inventions; not just the new computerized ones you might immediately think of, but considered inventions new and very old!.. from the wheel and the lightbulb, through the Rubik cube(remember that? No?! Where have you been!?).. all the way to our beloved WeChat of today. The first main activity was a team quiz (Robots vs Humans!), in which students were invited to guess when inventions first appeared (from a choice of 2 dates). Following this was a game in which flashcards displaying inventions were arranged on the board. The students of team 'robots' and team 'humans' then raced to grab flashcards displaying dates and pin them to the corresponding invention flashcard. The final game was a 'hotseat' activity, in which students sat blindfolded on chairs, facing away from an image of an invention behind them. Students from their teams then gave the blindfolded students clues to help identify the mystery invention.  Following these games, Tony rounded the session off with a vocabulary recap – with many pictures of inventions displayed, students simply run up and write a word they can remember, and then nominate another student to do the same. Simple, but very effective! 

Meanwhile, Tim did a very interactive lesson starting with a categories game, and moving on to his version of the timeline game that Tony used, which involved boys VS girls and "Rock, Paper, Scissors" to decide who took the quiz question. Occasionally, the selection process was more intense than the question… After each round, the entire class repeated the information and wrote the date of the invention on the board. The final goal of the game was for the class to match the dates on the timeline to the invention it belonged to. Tim moved on to a word scramble that involved the entire class as they unscrambled and spelled the inventions. The class was focused and motivated throughout the lesson, and Mr. Tim was easy-going but very strict on the "No Chinese" rule.  A fun lesson was had by all!