​A few weeks ago, I posted a description of a normal day in class.  I promised a follow-up. After a few family emergencies that pushed my personal deadline way out of wack, I’m back to tell you how I pull a crazy class back together.
 
A little flashback to my previous post: 
Working with international kids means that a lot of my time is spent fielding questions about day-to-day life issues.  A Q.& A. session with students can quickly eat up all my instruction time.  I feel burdened to help these kids navigate their lives here in America.  I want to answer their random questions, but I also want to teach content.  So, how do I address the needs and questions of the students while also maintaining my educational goals?  Here are a few methods I use:

1.  I use a timer in two different ways.  I can set a timer and tell the kids we have 5 (or 3 or 10, whatever…) minutes to answer random life questions.  Once the timer rings, class will start.  OR I can set the timer for myself.  I tell the students I am going to teach for 20 minutes and then we will take a 5-minute question break.  After the questions, we are back to learning.
2. I write down questions.  I make sure they know they will not be ignored or forgotten.  I will let them call out their random questions, I write them down and then I reserve time at the end of class (or the start of the following class) to answer the questions on the list.  This method helps them relax and focus on the lesson because they don’t have to try to remember what they want to ask.
3. I add a Q.&A. session to our day’s plan.  In an earlier post, I talked about the boards I have around my room.  One of them is a list of our educational goals for that day (1.  Bell work, 2.  Practice vocabulary 3.  Learn about complex sentence, blah, blah, blah.)  Sometimes I will rearrange the plan a little, and plug a Q.& A. session in as number 2.5, for example.

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These methods show the students that I am not ignoring their concerns, but I am still in control of my own classroom.  Students know they will be heard and their questions will be answered, but I have a purpose and I have a job to love them through education and to prepare them for their future.

 Let me paint a picture…

A classroom flooded with light from a huge, wall-length window.  Not a single desk, only tables to encourage collaboration rather than isolation.  And students looking at me with anticipation in their eyes, waiting for the kernels of wisdom I will bestow upon them. 

Sigh.  Nice dream.

I do have a big window and I do have a classroom full of tables (which I love,) but my students are less like appreciative apostles and more like hungry mosquitos.  They come buzzing into the classroom full of questions, emergencies, and conundrums. 

I’ve taught both American students and international students and they can all be high need.  My heart goes out to the international students more so because I know how anxiety ridden life can be in a foreign country.  You never quite feel like you know what’s happening or what’s about to happen.  What if you misheard a teacher?  What if some health record has expired?  What if you have a toothache, but you don’t want to be a bother at your host home.  What if you need to buy a plane ticket to travel half-way across the world, the rates are about to shoot up, and you don’t know the school calendar?

I believe strongly that English language learners of all nationalities need special help.  They have a lot to negotiate in their daily life without the comfort of linguistic mastery.  These students need someone at school that can answer questions about daily life.  They need someone they trust.  I love being that person, but it makes it very difficult to teach them dependent clauses, transitional phrases or the Great Gatsby.

So, back to the beginning.  What is my classroom really like?  A small group of Asian kids sitting around a table vying for my attention, answers, promises and resources.  I’m trying to prepare them for academic success and they have practical needs with which they trust me.  It feels like a constant stream of emergencies are pouring out of them at all times. 

I feel strongly that half of my job is to serve as their guidance counselor, to help them learn to navigate the world of the American school system (some schools have the resources to employ both, but not mine.)  These kids don’t have their parents with them.  They have been sent to the other side of the world as young teenagers, and they need someone to help.

The question then arises:  How can I teach them academic content?  It is possible to corral the conundrums of the students, help them find solutions to problems AND make it through my lesson plan. 

​In my next post, I’ll give you some tips and tools that I use to make that happen.

A lifetime ago I taught preschool.  Half a lifetime ago I taught in elementary, and I’ve also taught middle school.  I’ve worked with English speaking high schoolers and now I’m working with English learning high schoolers. All of them respond to this classroom management technique every time I do it.

Counting down.

That’s it!  There’s a few spins you can throw, but it’s never complicated.  Here’s how and when I use it.

When I want a class (again, ANY age ANY language) to quiet down, I’ll hold up three fingers and count down out loud.

When I want a class to get out materials, hand in papers, or any other short transition, I count down from 10.

When I give students a slightly more complicated task (for example, getting into small groups,) I’ll count down from 30.

I even count down when a student says they must absolutely or-they’re-going-to-die go to the bathroom.   I’ll tell them they have 60 seconds once they cross the threshold.  It works!

You can add rewards or restrictions based on their success if you want (if they are ready by the time the countdown is complete, they earn a marble/bingo chip/penny OR if they aren’t ready they lose a …something.)

It may seem too easy, but it can quiet a class, create fast transitions, get students on task, even save your sanity when your subbing.
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Stop talking, stop warning, stop thinking of creative programs to focus the attention of your students-it’s all wasting valuable teaching time!  Count down and your done.

​I was trying to teach a unit on directions.  We were supposed to be learning location words, prepositions, learning to give and receive locations.  My kids were NOT interested.  This class loves to be together.  They love to talk, joke, chat and tease.  They love to get off topic, create drama and laugh.  Have you every had one of those classes?  I needed to be strategic in my lesson plan.
The first two days I gave it the direct approach:  pull out your books, open to page blah blah blah…  It was as exciting as it sounds.  Disrespectfully (and yet a little understandably) they tuned me out.  I knew what I had to do.

There are three keys to make a lesson grab the attention and imagination of a chatty class: add   personalization, risk, and reward.

Here’s how it worked for us:
I wanted to teach them how to give and receive directions.  The map in the book held no interest to them so we made our own map. 

1.  Personalization: I gave each of the students their own house which we added to our “town.”  All the kids were given jobs and places of employment which we also added to the picture.  Their attention level shot up.  Now we have a shoe store, a gas station, a bank, and a department store.  I asked them to name their businesses.  Now the lesson was becoming personal.

2.  Risk:  I told them that someone was going to make more money…Soon they were asking for more vocabulary words so they could navigate the map, throw up road construction to sabotage each other’s businesses, make more money, build larger houses, and take over the town.  Now there was risk.

 3.  Reward: They student with the most money or biggest house or the last man standing, won.  Each lesson might have a different reward.  It isn’t necessary to have an actual, physical prize.  There’s nothing like the thrill of the win to encourage learning.  Now we have reward.

Students learn best what is relevant.  Making a lesson personal, risky and rewarding will create intrinsic motivation and they might even forget they’re learning!  Use your imagination.
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I would love to hear your experiences.  How have you adjusted a lesson to make it personal to your students?

I decided I needed to be active in teaching our English-only students how to talk with someone who is acquiring English.  Here are a few of the things that have worked:

1.  Classroom visits

I collaborated with another teacher at school who had a class that met at the same time as one of my EFL classes.  I invited her students to come to our class monthly.  It was important to keep the ELLs in a familiar environment -a home field advantage of sorts- in order to make them more willing to participate.  When the other class arrived, I made sure to mix up the seating arrangement into small groups or teams which included an international student. 

For the first 10 minutes I brought to attention the nervousness that people have when talking to someone in another language.  I gave them tools to use when communicating, taught them easy phrases and made them practice with each other.

The rest of the class time was used to play games.  Look up ice breaker ideas or minute-to-win-it games online.  Once kids are having fun, a lot of nervousness dissipates. I love to hear new English phrases that the international kids have picked up from their teammates.

        2.  International Journals
One of our English teachers worked with me on international journals.  We had a pile of composition notebooks and, once a week, she would give her students a writing prompt.  They would fill a page responding to the prompt and without including their name.  Then the notebooks would go to my EFL class and my students would be given the same prompt.  Again, no names were signed.  That anonymity not only made the students more willing to expose their writing skills but it also made it a little mysterious and fun.

The English-only students could see the language acquisition level of the international students which helped them to adjust their conversational expectations and the English language learners were able to practice their language skills.  Both groups really looked forward to the project.

        3. International club
This was actually the idea of one of the international students.  Once a month we take a field trip to a traditional restaurant of some nationality.  The international students are required to invite a traditional student to come along.  We decided to also invite another teacher or administrator.  This gave the teacher an opportunity to see the international kids in a more relaxed environment and get to know their personalities a bit.  Any time food is involved, kids are excited to participate.  We’ve had Thai, Japanese, and Vietnamese…next is Mexican!
 
Just talking about the problem of cross-cultural communication seems to help kids relax.  Once everyone knows that everyone else is nervous too, students let their guard down and give conversation another try.