Bayview demo reflection—Chinese 1

Classroom management is always one of the most challenging tasks when teaching elementary school students. Teachers should keep simple and clear “ultimate learning objectives” in mind instead of insisting on covering and finishing literally every single activity in class. Once the major learning objectives and teaching objectives are fulfilled, the exact number of the activities done in a class does not matter that much anymore.

Also, teachers should be able to “detect students’ mood” at the beginning of the class, especially when having young kids as students. Children might be easily influenced by the previous exhausting class, difficult exams, or even the bad weather. These all might reduce the effectiveness and the efficiency of a language class which is just about to begin! Thus, teachers should know how to “switch between” different types of activities, (For example, when students look bored and sleepy, teachers could ask students to stand up, form a circle, and do some group activities which require “real actions;” on the other hand, if the class is noisy, teachers could ask students to sit down and fill out a handout individually.) in order to reach the highest level of teaching effectiveness and efficiency.

Since the students Andrew and I taught that day are at beginning level of Chinese, we decided to use English only when giving instructions. One of the things we kept in mind was that it would be really great and helpful if we could go observe the exact class probably a day/week before the demo. At the beginning of our demo, it was hard for me and Andrew to pick up the “attention getter” that teacher was used to using with her class. The lack of confidence when using the attention getter (we learned just learned it right on the spot!) made the situation sometimes looked like it lost control a little bit. However, Andrew was so skillful and seasoned at managing an elementary-level class that I did learn a lot when I was assisting him. One last thing to keep in mind is that “children do observe,” they are observing all the time, especially when you (new teachers) are new to them. I believe that, to greatly improve my teaching skills in the future, “confidence” is always significant. When standing on the stage, I need to achieve what I am capable of.

-Chung-Hui Kim Liao