Ms. Xi is an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at Lucton School Chongqing. She mainly focusses on pathway Intensive English for elementary English learners. Her major class is for part of Year 9 students, who has been regrouped based on their English proficiency. She also provides English Subject Support (ESU) for other subjects, primarily concentrating on learning of subject terms. All students from Year 9 to 11 have this lesson, whose aim is to help students adjust well and quick to different fields of academic learning. In addition, she is the tutor for Year 10 students. She starts everyday with Year 10 students, together with Ms. Illingworth, to do some English practice.
Since Ms. Xi class is mainly for English beginners, we learn basic words and grammars, which gives her lessons a great advantage, that is learning for using and using for learning. Ms. Xi designs different activities for students to apply grammar and vocabulary in a daily context. For example, students describe in turn the bravest thing you have done to practice present perfect tense, open a shop to practice vocabulary about daily necessities, and role play conversation in different daily situations. Although the practice drills grammar structure and vocabulary, students felt excited since they can produce meaningful and realistic sentences based on their own life or real situations.
When learning happens in this way, it is beneficial for students to develop English thinking as they directly associate goods or situations with English expressions. Relating learning to real life is very important and effective because students can really see, touch, and experience in life what they have learned on books. Knowledge is no longer something abstract, it has concrete meanings.
Another excitement in her class is moving. Sitting there statically is boring. If students can move, they will really devote themselves to practice. Activities like ball catching, listing ideas on boards can greatly improve learning concentration and efficiency. Those activities look like games, but learning takes place in the process of active thinking and searching for the right information.
Students have carried out an encyclopedia project this term.They choose a specific field which they are interested in, and spend four sessions to present overall and comprehensive knowledge in this field. Each session again is well organised into subtitles, just like what an encyclopedia has. The purpose of this project is to relate English learning to individual interest, which is the best teacher. It is proved that everyone takes initiative in this project and is eager to share with classmates. What they can achieve in this project? A lot, like structuring, categorisation, information selection, English in certain field, presentation, PPT skills, public speaking skills, etc. Every student becomes an expert in the presentation.
Students are doing a movie dubbing. They chose their roles and practiced their lines several times before they present to the class.
Students are using their own creativity and imagination to complete a story after being given the beginning and characters.
Students are doing a vocabulary competition. They should pass words from the last one to the first one by writing letters on the back of their peers without saying anything.
After making word cards for ordinal numerals, students are sticking them under the number on the white board according to what they heard.
Students learned a passage introducing a custom, “Human Tower”. They are devising and constructing a paper tower by using some strategies and criteria explained in the passage.
Students are learning a passage by searching, organising and summarising key information.
These are some encyclopedia pages from students. They show great passion in their own field, ranging from flight safety to Egyptian mythology.
