China Teaching Day 4

Scavenger Hunt as an ice breaker. The teachers were fully engaged.

Today I want you to think in pictures. The story is that of the Trojan Horse. Draw it out.

Homeroom.

Bad joke. I did two bad jokes. I explained both of them. One of the neat things that happened

In order to lay the ground work for the lesson plan format, we had the teachers review a wonderful pamphlet called: Curriculum & Project Planner by Incentive Publications (World Book, written by Sandra Schurr. Specifically, we reviewed both Bloom’s Taxonomy and William’s Creativity Taxonomy. We also reviewed the Suggested Student Products and Performances. The teachers were very interested in this resource. We reviewed several of the options and had the teachers talk about how they would design these projects too. Next, we talked briefly about the optional Assessment Formats. Finally, there is a chart of Sample Learning Tasks. These are organized by subject area.

We shared a lesson plan format with the teachers. My teaching partner modeled a lesson that we then presented to the teachers. The lesson plan format was filled out using the document camera. Next, we presented the lesson. The lesson has two teachers compete using a remote control car. The students compete in how fast they can maneuver the car around. The goal is for the teachers to then describe the car. Those descriptions identify the prepositions.

We had a long conversation and had to provide several examples of why Fast is slow; Slow is fast. This is something that the teachers are very concerned about – just like most teachers with whom I worked.

We also had students select Clock Buddies. We explained how Clock Buddies work and had them identify a buddy for each hour. We shared how this is used to pair kids up quickly. This was another example of Fast is slow;Slow is fast since it is slow the first time, but after that is very quick. Everyone found their 10 o’clock buddy. We pointed out how fast the pairing occurred.

We also had the teachers create a shared story to demonstrate prepositions. The story started with selecting a location. A teacher was selected to do the cover page. Another teacher was selected to do the Word page at the end. Then the first student started the story by saying a sentence out loud. after the teacher contributed their sentence with a preposition in it, that teacher was handed a blank piece of paper to write down their sentence and add a picture. The next student continues the story. The teacher doing the word page writes down each preposition as it is read out loud. At the end of the process, the papers are collected in order and form a complete shared story.

Every day the teachers write in their reflective notebook. This was originally called a Reflective Journal, however, a journal is like a diary in China. Thus, some of the students were hesitant to write in it. Name change to Reflective Notebook solves that issue. These notebooks will be collected.

A couple of observations about the classroom that we are in. The room has a presentation stand, a chalkboard that has two sections, _one slides over the chalkboard or the interactive whiteboard. There is a raised stage in the front of the room as well. There is no teacher desk.

China – Teaching Day 3

_Please excuse some of the writing. I’m trying to post as much as possible, but I’m writing in small chunks. I also write in Markdown and my WordPress editor isn’t converting that back to html right now. Thus, you may see odd marks in certain places. I’m also incredibly tired at this point. I may go back at some point and correct grammar and structure, but I think that it is more important to share what is happening._

The large group instruction began with recognizing two students from each homeroom with a trinket. There was lots of applause and praise.

One of the American teachers shared their story of why she is a teacher.

The ice breaker was the shoe in the middle activity. Thirty students were selected to form a circle. They threw one shoe in the middle of the circle. They then have 2 seconds to grab a shoe. Once they grab a shoe and return to the circle, they have to find the owner of the shoe. Once they find the owner, they interview the owner to learn about them. The teachers had a terrific time completing the activity.

A Myth/Legend was shared. Today was “Jason and the Argonauts”. The story was projected onto a very large screen and read by one of the American teachers. The teachers then followed directions to create a life jacket that retells the story.

Music in the classroom was next. The lesson revolved around Walking on Sunshine by Christina and the Waves. An action was associated with a couple of different terms. The teachers acted this out. Then the tie in with Multiple Intelligences was made. Next we reviewed the song from the previous day.

Off to Homeroom.

I started out with a bad joke. “What did Snow White say when her photos did not come back from the lab?”. I had to review the idea of having pictures printed (not a cultural issue, but a generational one). Then I shared the punchline with them – “She said, ‘That’s OK. Some day my prints will come'”. On the board I wrote out the punchline with (prince) underneath the word prints. Then I explained that many jokes in English work because of words that sound the same. I had the teachers complete two Frayer Models using the words prints and prince. This was to practice the skills from last night.

Next we had the teachers employ a Box and Summarize strategy with a piece of text that is in their book. The teachers read the material and boxed each paragraph. Next each table of students were assigned a specific section of the text. They were to become the “experts” of that section. The experts would then go off to the other tables to be the envoys of that section. The tables selected their four experts per table (and the three who would go to other tables). After time to process, the teachers mixed into the tables appropriately. This is one assignment that reminded me of the power of collaboration. As I originally designed the assignment, the teachers would’ve presented to the entire class. One teacher from each group would’ve been talking. This would’ve taken more time and resulted in fewer teachers leading/talking/explaining. By having each table become a talking point, many more teachers were leading/talking/explaining and participating. This also led to the idea of the feat of being wrong. One of the teachers said “But we don’t know what to do…”. He meant that this was something new for them.

The teachers provided valuable feedback as we asked them to reflect on their role as a student learning the material and a teacher who would present the material. They had lots of questions. They found the material difficult and asked about students doing this level of material. This led us to a terrific discussion about leveling work. We discussed the ideas of Zone of Proximal Development (though we didn’t use the term). Our discussion focused on the example of children learning to walk. During this class, explosions were heard outside the classroom. The explosions did NOT interrupt the class at all. It turns out that there was a wedding and the explosions were the fireworks from the wedding. One of the questions that came up was the difficulty of the text. The teachers wanted to know about the whether we would assign something like this to our students. They mostly assign stories to their students. We talked about using informational text with students. This also led to the discussion about leveled reading. We shared the idea of differentiating ideas. We also shared the Lesson Writer site. My teaching partner has an account and showed how you can create different lessons by adjusting parts of the lesson. For example, vocabulary can be adjusted based on student need. We also shared Newsela. We showed how the same story could be presented at different levels automatically.

It is interesting the number of pictures that the teachers are taking. Almost all of them obviously have a cell phone with them. They frequently take pictures of the screen as we are presenting, pictures of examples, and even videos. The cell phones are also used for looking up words that they are unfamiliar with.

We did our Story Cubes Bell Ringer activity. This time we did 5 words instead of just 4. We talked about why we upped the number of words with them. They wrote and shared their writing with each other.

We had a rich discussion about learning styles and how long it takes to develop these. Thus, my teaching partner came up with homework for teachers. It took less than ten minutes to present the lesson and provide them with the rules and examples. We talked about moving the work from teachers to students.

Homework:

1. Choose a children’s song.
2. Remove the words and replace with the 23 non-action verbs (listed below).
3. Include movement.
4. Groups of 1-4.
5. You perform in 3 days.

23 non-action verbs.
* am
* is
* are
* was
* were
* be
* being
* been
* do
* does
* did
* have
* has
* had
* may
* might
* must
* can
* could
* shall
* should
* will
* would

Interestingly, many of the students stayed after Homeroom was over and we could hear children’s songs playing. There was lots of positive noise and discussion. Plenty of laughter.

China Teaching Day One

The day started off with a large group presentation. The students were welcomed and provided with an overview of the program. This was all done in Chinese. Thus, I’m not sure exactly what was said, but I did spend time reading the body language of the teachers. I would propose that if you recorded just about any opening of Professional Development, and turned off the sound, they would all look the same. The vast majority of teachers were paying attention and focused on the presentation. A few of the teachers appeared to be off task (I use appeared very deliberately). There was plenty of laughter and body language indicated that the teachers were engaged.

Due to the number of rooms available and the number of teachers, most of us are now paired up to teach. I’m paired with the wonderful Mr. Shawn McGirr. Shawn has been in China for the previous session as well as this one. This is a big advantage as he has the structure for working with the Chinese teachers. However, unsurprisingly, these teachers are very different than the previous teachers.

We started out with an ice breaker activity. We had the teachers line up in alphabetical order based their English name. They needed to accomplish this without talking. We had them complete the task again using their birthday, then by using the last four numbers of their ID. They are a good group who completed the tasks well. They processed the idea of different ways of communicating well. They also observed the different roles that participants take on.

We talked about the professional role of teachers as well. Their schedule is very different than the schedule that Americans traditional teach. For example, they teach two classes a day. However, they have lots of other meetings and duties to which to attend. The students have about seven classes a day. Also, the students stay in the same room. The teachers rotate rooms to go to the students.

We had the teachers work on an Insight Inventory. Here they identified their own learning styles. Once they had done so, they also imagined a student and identified the characteristics of that student on the Insight Inventory. They shared their story with each other.

We had the teachers complete a KWL activity revolving around their learning throughout the day. This was their Exit slip for the day.

At several points today, we had the teachers work on Table Talk. This was a new concept for most of them. We had them talk to the person across from them, talk to the person on their right, etc.

July 19th – Sight Seeing Day 2 & Planning

Today we had our second sight seeing day. We headed off to the see the  Great Wall. There are three sections of the Great Wall still in tact. It is a common myth that the Great Wall is the only man made object that can been seen from space with the naked eye. The parts that we were on were very impressive (especially for their time), but the road ways that we build now are wider. Thus, the new roadways would be easier to see from space.

We went to the section that is closest to Beijing. This was an impressive experience. After we arrived, we were given a couple of hours to explore the Wall. Some of us decided to climb the Wall. The steps are step and very inconsistent in height. This made walking up the Wall quite a challenge. The first section was very crowded (like all of Beijing). The higher were climbed, the less crowded the Wall became. A group of us went to the highest point of the Wall. It was quite the climb. We didn’t have time to circle around the other side (just in front of the highest point, Beacon Tower 13, is a fork in the Wall. This allows one to continue on the Wall around the mountain.

After that, we had a quick visit to the Olympic Stadium area. I didn’t spend much time there as I was hungry and ate lunch. We did walk down to see the Bird’s Nest. Interestingly, we have had to run our bags through a scanner when entering certain national monument areas, but they’ve never checked our pockets or had us walk through a scanner.

Next up was the transition to the new hotel and planning. Using the knowledge of the first round of training in another area, the group has made some adjustments to the schedule. We got the daily schedule set. One of the decisions was to interview the participants and ask some basic questions in order to group them efficiently. The idea is largely to group them based on what they are teaching next year.

I had the opportunity to interview six teachers. This was a terrific experience. It seems to be pretty universal that teachers are some of the best people in the world. There was a mix of students with varied English abilities. The group consisted of teachers of third grade up to the teachers of high school. Unfortunately, not all of the participants showed up for the interviews. Thus, we pulled back together for a planning session again. We made some quick adjustments as to how we would conduct the interviews. We tweaked the daily schedule (from lessons learned from the first group) and worked out our nightly teaching schedule.

I was completely exhausted by the time. I headed off to sleep.

July 18th – Sight Seeing Day 1

Today we had a sight seeing day. We went to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Pearl Market and an acrobatic show.

The day started with a breakfast buffet. The buffet was very different than an American breakfast, but the food was good. There were hard boiled eggs, which was a positive, along with lots of dumpling type items. There was juice, but no coffee. Bummer for me since I usually have cup of coffee in the morning.

Next we were off to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was previously the Emperor’s Palace. Tiananmen Square is massive. It is nearly impossible to convey the scale of the Tiananmen Square. Forbidden City was beautiful. There are three rings in the Forbidden City. The common area, the outer ring and the inner ring. The outer area was where the Emperor would meet visitors. The inner area was where the Emperor lived and worked. The beauty of this area is tough to relate. We learned that the court area of the inner ring has no trees in it due to the idea that there should be nothing above the head of the Emperor.

Next we went over to the Pearl Market. This is essentially an indoor shopping mall. Instead of being filled with large name brand stores, the entire building is populated with booths of various sellers. We started on the fourth floor. First up was a view of a Taoist Temple. Next, the stores on the fourth floor. These are the most authentic. These include stores to buy real ocean pearls (which are apparently very expensive). We were free to roam after that. It was explained to us that the third floor was more pearls, but a lot less expensive (thus, lower quality). The second floor was filled with watches, handbags and wallets. It is very widely acknowledged that the materials aren’t genuine. The first floor is filled with electronics and toys.

Lastely, we headed over to see an acrobatic show. The show was incredible. The amount of power, balance and movement was extremely impressive. I lost count of the number of times the audience audibly gasped. The show was so good that it kept me awake even though I was sitting in a comfortable chair in a dark room.

China July 17th – Arrival

The plane trip was in two sections. The first was a flight from Detroit to Boston. There was a long layover in Boston. A five hour layover that gave us time to chat and have lunch. The flight was over 13 hours long. I had a middle seat, so sleeping was very difficult . The airline provided warm towels, which really felt good.

We made it through the passport lane, picked up our luggage and then went to Customs. We were waved through Customs, so that was one concern that was unwarranted. I had heard tales of things being confiscated in Customs.

There was a nice young lady waiting with a sign for us. She was also waiting for another person (who turned out to be on our plane as well). After lots of chatting with a taxi driver, Andy and I were put into a Taxi and sent on our way. We got just a little bit nervous when the driver seemed to stop and ask for directions, but ultimately we ended up in the correct place.