The 29^th September 2016 was a very dark and rainy day in Wuxi. On this miserable day two JESIE teachers, Damien Mathews and Tomas Crook, visited Wuxi Mei Li Middle School, to bring fun, excitement, enthusiasm, and educational English lessons to the students of Mei Li Middle School. What started out as a gloomy day ended brightly, with the students extremely happy, smiling and most importantly, having a greater understanding of the English language then they had before.

Both our teachers taught a junior 1 class, and they both brought a unique teaching style with them. The classes contained an array of different activities and games, with a strong emphasis on fun learning. For both teachers, this was their first time doing a JESIE open day event, but you would never have guessed it, with the confidence and ability of these teachers.

Tom is great at getting the students to feel comfortable with him, and in the classroom. Starting with a fun, relaxed, easy game that made full use of the classroom. With one student at the front of the class wearing a blindfold, whilst other students run to the four corners of the room, that had been designated a number between 1-4. The kid wearing the blindfold then says a number between 1-4, and who ever is standing in that corner is out of the game. This was a sign of things to come for Tom’s class, a fun, creative and entertaining lesson.

The kids learnt the vocabulary of different clothes, which then developed into the sentence, “What do you wear in (season), I wear (clothes) in the (season)”. Through a variety of fun games, Tom got the most out of his students, which ended with an explosive game. The class was put into two teams, and they had to dress another student from their team. This involved putting clothes on the student, which Tom had supplied, over the top of the clothes they were already wearing. I honestly don’t think the students have had this much fun in a lesson before.

Damien’s lesson had a really clear flow. With only a few words, he could get the students to guide themselves to the language point of the lesson. Starting with animals and finishing with the sentence “I can (verb) like a(n) (animal)”. The journey to get there is a marvel of Damien’s teaching.

Damien uses a variety of fun teaching methods for the students to learn the language. Combining power points, flash cards, and funny gif videos, the students quickly understood the language. Reinforcing the language through funny and entertaining games then followed this up. The students had great fun playing charades, Pictionary, Pictionary combined with Chinese whispers. Finishing with a very fun and competitive game, where a couple of students each have a flash card behind their backs, they then have to try and look at the other students flash card without letting them see theirs.

It’s fair to say that these two teachers were the highlight of the day for Mei Li Middle School students. The kids laughed, had fun, spoke English and completely forgot about how bad the weather was on this incredibly rainy Thursday.