[poppynicholson]

hi, ok so i have three problems and i am looking for ideas on how to tackle them. sorry i know i put that i have 2 questions in my question box, but i really have three, i just can't work out how to edit the question! oops!

my first problem is my junior one class in middle school in china. i have two classes of this age and in both the level of english isn't great, so my problem is that they think they are too old to play the primary level games(i have tried, i think they wanted to kill me) but their english is not good enough for me to teach anything that i think would be of interest to them. Also they will not read out loud, as in loudly enough so the rest of the class or myself can here, and i can't trust them enough to just put them in pairs and tell them to practise talking in english while i walk around and listen. i have tried putting them in teams and letting the competitive nature of the chinese do all the work, but this is not working with these kids either? please any ideas for actvities would be great, they say they want to play english games, but i just dont think i have any they would be interested in!

the second problem is also with these two classes. what can i do about their huge differences in ability. some can have a short and basic conversation, the 'hello' 'haw are you?' 'what's your name?' 'how old are you?' 'how many people are in your family?' 'do you like sport?' type conversation, but then some struggle on answering 'how are you?' so any suggestions on this would also be great. it is mainly the boys that can't speak much english, if that helps with ideas.

and my final question is for kindergarten.

i teach a class of 2 and 3 year old about three times a week, and i'm really struggling with ideas for their classes, they are very hard to control as they are very young, also their attention span is very short. i spend most of my classes doing the alphabet and head shoulders knees and toes, as this is all their level of english can handle(as they are only 3) so any ideas for VERY simple songs or games would be great.

thanks and sorry to be asking so much! if you need any more information to help answer my questions then just ask!

[mesmark]

How many people do you have in each class?

There are a lot of games you can play. You just need to adjust the language to the students needs. I have a few games you could look at and see if they'd work for you www.mes-english.com/games.php

Can you post what you plan to teach in the next few lessons? It's easier to give advice based around some target language or vocab.