Although May doesn't have any special theme for an Open Day, that did not stop JESIE from gracing two of Nanjings premier schools, Nanjing Number 1 Experimental Middle School and You Fu Jie Primary School with a visit from some of our teachers. As always the students were thrilled to be treated with some new and exciting lessons prepared by JESIEs foreign staff. In typical JESIE fashion, all the teachers were well prepared and enthused to be asked to teach some fresh faces on this beautiful spring day, May 13^th 2016.

The first stop of the day was bright and early at Nanjing Number 1 Experimental Middle School. Two 7^th grade classes were giddy to be graced by Val and Amber at the front of their classrooms. Amber decided to educate her students about Canadas wonderful wildlife and give them an opportunity to play some highly entertaining games to get this new knowledge to remain with them forever. After a brief introduction about what and where Canada is, Amber introduced some of Canadas most beloved critters including, the black bear, moose, Canadian goose, skunk, beaver, and chipmunk. She drilled the pronunciation of each animal as she used visual aids to make sure the students were aware of what these creatures actually looked like. Then she introduced the first game. She split the class into two teams and brought one student from one team up and had them pick a random word out of a hat. The student had 30 seconds to attempt to act out this word and have their team guess the word. If they were able to guess the word their team received a point, but if they failed to guess the word the other team had a chance to steal the point. Next, Amber used a PPT to explain more details about each animal. She explained what type of habitat each animal lives in, what they eat, and one special quality that each animal has. She presented this new knowledge in sentences and tested their comprehension by asking some students some questions after the PPT was finished. The next game was a classic game of Chinese Whispers. She lined up 5 students from each team and showed the first person in each team a small piece of paper with a sentence on it related to one of the animals and its habitat, what they eat, or its special ability on it. After the sentence was whispered to all 5 students, the last student had to run up to the board and write the sentence out. The first team to have their sentence written on the board received a point for their team. After all the students had a chance to play, and were very excited, she had the class complete a worksheet with questions related to information taught in the lesson. The students were very happy with Amber after her lesson and were asking when she would be coming back.

In the class next door, Val was expanding his students minds to things greater and larger than even their imaginations. His lesson was all about the Solar System and to some extent the entire universe. He began his lesson by making sure the class knew the difference between a star, a planet, and a satellite.  In order to do this he had prepared an awesome Prezi which was visually stunning and able to capture a little bit of the magic of being in space with its awesome effects and unique ways of presenting information. The students were aware of the differences between these words in Chinese, but they were unsure of the English vocabulary until Val went into some detail to explain the distinction between these words. After explaining what each word is, Val showed the class a really awesome video to illustrate the scale of some objects in the universe compared with the Earth and our home star, the sun. The students gasped in awe and humility when they were shown the size of the largest known star in the universe. It is truly an incredible fact and makes our small home of Earth feel quite insignificant. After the Prezi and video were shown, and Val was sure the class had a grasp of the information, he moved on to a NASA activity. He split the class into about 8 teams and handed them worksheets with an actual list of things which NASA considered for survival on missions to the moon. He went through what each object on the list was with the use of visual aids. Then he had the teams rank each things importance against the other things and then explain what logic they used to justify their choice of its ranking in the overall list. Once the groups were finished, he showed the class the real ranking made by NASA. The students were very excited about this activity and it did more than just teach them some useful English words, it actually had the students think logically.

After lunch, JESIE's teachers, Paul and Matthew, traveled to You Fu Jie Primary School to teach two lucky 3^rd grade classes. Paul, probably JESIEs most energetic and perhaps most experienced teacher, took his class by storm in what is now his signature style of teaching. Pauls demeanor and facial expressions seem to change when he enters a class with young students. He has an innate ability I have never witnessed before and every student who is lucky enough to be in one of his classes is better off because of it. One cannot help but give him their undivided attention because it truly is mesmerizing to watch him in action. To start his class he sang the song You Say Yes acapella in order to make sure he had the whole classs attention. Then he introduced his home country of Australia by saying Australia is a big country. Australia has kangaroos. After the class was familiar with who he is, Paul moved onto the topic of the day, favorites. He wrote favorites on the board and asked the students to give him some examples of their favorite things: toys, colors, animals, foods etc. He asked them to make sure they were giving this information using a sentence. He then wrote a simple dialogue on the board, What is your favorite animal? My favorite animal is the panda. The students practiced this dialogue using their own favorite animal. Then they were asked to come up to the front of the class to perform this dialogue. Afterward, Paul introduced a really fun game to the class to get them up and active. First, he split the class into four teams, asked the students about their favorite things, and then students from each team had to race to the board and write their answer.  However, the teams were not allowed to write the same answers. The class was full of laughter and cheering as this game was played and eventually a winning team was recognized for their unique answers. To conclude the class, Paul sang the Pizza Hut song and bid the class farewell.

In Matthews class he began by introducing himself and then asking the students Whats your name?, How are you?, and Whats your favorite animal?. Once almost all of his small class had answered at least one of the questions, he began to introduce the topic of the day, rooms of the house. First he presented flashcards with each room of the house on them including: kitchen, living room, dining room, hallway, bedroom, and bathroom. Once he had drilled the pronunciation of all the words, he placed on the flashcards on the board and wrote the letters A-F above each room. Next, he split the class into two teams and let the students pick team names. Then he played a game to test their comprehension of the English names of each room by either saying the room and having the a student from each team say the letter above the room or the letter and having the students say the room. The first student to say the word or the letter was awarded a point for their team. Next, he gave each team a ball and had them pass the ball around to each other while some music played. When the music stopped he pointed to a room and the person holding the ball had to say the word as quickly as possible. The first student to say the word was awarded a point for their team. Following this game Matthew had the class play a speed writing game. He brought up a single student from each team and called out one room of the house. The two students had to quickly write the word on board. The first student to write the correct word was given a point for their team. To finish the class Matthew showed the class some examples of some simple house blueprints and explained what the diagrams were describing.Then he handed out paper and had the class draw and label a blueprint of their own homes. They sat in silent concentration and carefully sketched their house blueprints, as meticulously as an architect would, all the way until the bell to signal the end of class rung. 

Today's Open Day was a nice way to end the week and give the students a change of pace from their normal lessons.  JESIE has once again proven why we are one of the most respected organizations in Nanjing. All the students involved were grateful for our efforts and asking when we would be back again.  Happy May yall!