dear teachers,good to see u all.
i'm a new comer. I teach English for 12-15 aged students in indonesia.
I have some questions:
1. what is the diffrence between "timetable" and "schedule" ?
2. i'm going to organize an english club at my school. that is an extra activity for our students who are interested in english, and held outside the lesson time. it's new at our school. I plan to make it as a conversation club. the activities are discussions, book reviews, watching movies,games, and debates. the duration for each meeting is 2 hours.
I would be glad if you give me some suggestions, or share your experience in handling such this club. thanks
no gain without pain
english club at school, suggestions?
Moderator: Joe
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msy_heaven
- Member
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:56 pm
Timetable and schedule are the same thing.
Congratulations on setting up your English club. It sounds like you already have some good ideas about how to organize it. Two hours is a good time period. It's good that it isn't organized around homework, because that would make it too much like school, and the club idea is to give students something more fun. Watching and discussing movies is a good move, but like book discussions, you'll want to have some good discussion questions mapped out before the session. That means you'll want to show movies that you already know well. It can also be fun for both movies and books to have students do role plays based on them.
There are tons of topics that you can use for debates. Keep an eye on who is more or less talkative in your group and make sure everyone has an opportunity to talk. The trouble with debates is that one or two students can easily dominate, leaving everyone else out in the cold. So, you'll want to establish some ground rules from the beginning that limits how long any one person can talk. It might be a good idea to let the students decide what topics they want to debate, rather than making assignments. They can choose from a list that you make out for them, or make their own list, subject to your approval.
The main thing for such a club is to keep things moving. Have several different things going on in your two hours and keep the students involved. When the time is up, you want them to say, "What? Already? Can't we stay one more hour?" The activities you already have planned can do that. It would be nice also to have some sort of snack. Teenagers are always hungry, and they have no trouble eating and talking at the same time.
Good luck with your club.
Congratulations on setting up your English club. It sounds like you already have some good ideas about how to organize it. Two hours is a good time period. It's good that it isn't organized around homework, because that would make it too much like school, and the club idea is to give students something more fun. Watching and discussing movies is a good move, but like book discussions, you'll want to have some good discussion questions mapped out before the session. That means you'll want to show movies that you already know well. It can also be fun for both movies and books to have students do role plays based on them.
There are tons of topics that you can use for debates. Keep an eye on who is more or less talkative in your group and make sure everyone has an opportunity to talk. The trouble with debates is that one or two students can easily dominate, leaving everyone else out in the cold. So, you'll want to establish some ground rules from the beginning that limits how long any one person can talk. It might be a good idea to let the students decide what topics they want to debate, rather than making assignments. They can choose from a list that you make out for them, or make their own list, subject to your approval.
The main thing for such a club is to keep things moving. Have several different things going on in your two hours and keep the students involved. When the time is up, you want them to say, "What? Already? Can't we stay one more hour?" The activities you already have planned can do that. It would be nice also to have some sort of snack. Teenagers are always hungry, and they have no trouble eating and talking at the same time.
Good luck with your club.
My suggestion is to make sure it is fun as the children will already have spent a full day in school and will be pretty tired of sitting all day at a desk, so I would include some games that involve movement to break up the sitting periods.
Watching movies is a great idea and you could just show the first half or a movie, then talk about it, and what the students think will happen. Don't show the second half till the next session that way the students will be more motivated to show up.
If the students are really motivated to learn English of their own accord it should be relatively easy to keep them happy, but if not you will have to work harder at keeping it fun so include plenty of games. How about some English karaoke!
Hope it goes well.
Shelley Vernon
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com - English language games for 4 to 12 year olds
and
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/3-5.htm - Free story and games for preschool children
Watching movies is a great idea and you could just show the first half or a movie, then talk about it, and what the students think will happen. Don't show the second half till the next session that way the students will be more motivated to show up.
If the students are really motivated to learn English of their own accord it should be relatively easy to keep them happy, but if not you will have to work harder at keeping it fun so include plenty of games. How about some English karaoke!
Hope it goes well.
Shelley Vernon
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com - English language games for 4 to 12 year olds
and
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/3-5.htm - Free story and games for preschool children
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msy_heaven
- Member
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:56 pm