[chokosaki]

Yeah, my lessons are all prepared on a computer. I'm planning on printing them out along with the supplementary material. That way I can put together a binder/notebook with everything I need just in case my computer has any issues.

The time spent on each unit is strictly based on the number of topics it has. Each topic (what I listed) is its own class and lasts for two hours.

The class is essentially a conversation class. I was told not to worry about handwriting/reading or achieving perfect grammar. The students just want to practice their oral English. I do want to help them out with improving their grammar tho. Hmmm, if I find I need to explain any advanced points....I might be able to do that through email. As this is strictly a conversation course, I don't want to spend too much time on that area.

Ahh, health and feelings are actually sort of fun. Within health, we've discussed fitness, eating healthy, and medicine (western medicine vs chinese medicine). I also printed out an article about a toddler in Indonesia that smokes 20+ cigarettes a day. Seeing the students reaction and having the follow up conversation was pretty fun. Oh, another point I touched on was which parts of the body can 'ache' and which parts get 'pains'. This went pretty well, despite being a boring area I think. I drew a basic stick figure on the board and let the students label everything they could....then I added anything I thought was important.

For feelings, most of the students learn the basic feelings....like happy, sad, angry, etc. I get into a few more emotions (scared, jealous, embarrassed, proud)...including the noun and adjective (ie happiness vs happy). I passed out a matching exercise for a warm up activity. This had some of the usual emotions listed with an example of them on the side. The students matched everything up and then we talked about follow up questions...got them to give new examples of situations where someone might feel a certain way. I also let students discuss one of their 'most (proudest, angriest, etc)' moments.

I think being a conversation teacher is a lot easier than other types of teaching. It's just a bit wracking trying to come up with some role plays for some of these topics. Especially for environment/future of the planet. The class is pretty laid back in a lot of ways. I can also be myself which is nice. For the kids I teach, I have to be an actor like you would see on the Disney Channel or Sesame Street. x.x;; It's fun tho, but tiring. Very, very tiring...tho it's rewarding!