Second Life

This was a new one on me. It did cross my mind that a history lesson might just become far more interesting if the students could actually visit any sites of study. March with the Roman army maybe ? A biology lesson where the student goes into the pond to study the life cycle of a frog? This has a lot of potential. A geography lesson where the student could go into an active volcano? What ever next ? Years ago I had a Land Rover, I worked on it but did not really understand how the engine worked until I stripped out an engine and took it apart. Now, if I had the opportunity of wandering around inside a working engine, I would have understood it a lot better. It took me a long time to figure out how a differential worked, it would have been quicker if had been able to clamber inside a virtual differential. In the end I would rebuild differentials that the Land Rover specialists would not touch.

Odd ways of learning English

One of my contacts in Shenzhen, China learned her English by watching Prison Break. An odd way but I had no problems understanding her. Does anybody know of any other odd ways of learning English ?

What have the Romans ever done for us ?

OK so what have the Chinese ever done for us?
Paper, gunpowder, sunglasses, food, medicine, a sail, wheelbarrows, a writing system, the rocket.
Can anybody add to that ?

British English

At the risk of infuriating the vast majority of British English teachers who insist that British English is the correct form of English, I would suggest that English is just a language. It does not matter where it comes from, or what accent is used as long as it is understandable. This is clearly demonstrated by this advert


This demonstrates that beer helps students master the correct pronunciation. Maybe the good professor from Singapore who conducts phonology classes at CityU could kindly provide huge quantities of beer to assist his students master pronunciation. I would have said that about 99.9999% of English vocabulary is the same the world over. There are small differences between American English and British English, way too small to be of any major significance.

Regarding artwork

Often there is incidental English used in artwork classes. Example the students want a red crayon so they have to ask for it. Children can be very creative, far more so than I am ! I would show them how to do the artwork and then hide it as I did not want them to copy my feeble attempts. In the UK I picked up some plastic cookie cutters from A to Z. Just right for using with Play Dough. Play Dough sets are readily available at toy shops. It is a good way of encouraging manual dexterity. Origami would be another great activity. Some artwork can be taken home, this is good a PR exercise. Often children are enthralled by such artwork activities. Sometimes the results are unpredictable, eg green elephants in a picture, however I am not one to say that green elephants are wrong or bad. If a child wants a colourful creature, flower, or a pink sky, well they are being very creative indeed ! If the artwork is displayed at the school it greatly encourages the students. Often artwork materials are all around us. Scrap cardboard, old clothes and material, photos, food containers and such like. Plastic containers with lids can have a few beans put inside them and have the lid glued on and they make great rattles. Sometimes very young children will select those in preference to commercially made rattles. Recycling is also very ecological, further the price is right ! A discarded jar can become a thing of wonder when it has a few beans planted in it to show children how plants grow. Plastic bottles can be made into hanging plant pots. Discarded 20 litre plastic buckets that contained paint or detergent make very good plant pots, they would do well for giant sunflowers !

String and rope can be used to show students how to tie knots. Some shoes still have shoelaces ! As a teacher you may be breaking new ground if you show your students how to tie knots, now there is a point, knot and not are spelled very differently but they sound the same !

My sewing abilities originated when I was at primary school and we had to make a puppet out of papier mache. The puppets clothes had to be sewn ! Papier mache is in itself a dying handicraft. The price of it is right, try and use it if you can. It could be used to make wonderful masks for school plays !

Arts and crafts

To get ideas for arts and crafts have a look at MTR stations in Hong Kong. Sometimes they display local schools' arts and crafts. Flowers made with cardboard and paper, painted in the hues the children like. Arts and crafts can be sometimes be very revealing.

I have seen the arts and crafts created by Cambodian and Burmese children in refugee camps. An American artist would take art materials and show the children how to use them. The children would paint and draw wonderful pictures, sometimes tragic pictures that man, let alone children should not have seen. It was a release for some of them, like therapy.

One Christmas I invested serious money (25HKD) on a sushi Play Dough set. I thought that the children might enjoy playing with it. I was right on that one ! Suddenly all the children were creating small dishes of Play Dough sushi, the teacher's assistants were using all making sushi as well, oh yes, and so was I, it was great fun for all ! One boy, who had been somewhat disruptive, suddenly wanted to tell me about his trips to Japan and how he loved sushi. This was the most communicative he had ever been. If you teach young children Play Dough will make an excellent activity for them. Play Dough is cheap to buy, if you need lots of it you can make it. Search for a recipe on Google.

On one occasion I showed the children how to make a butterfly by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting out a shape of half a butterfly. I opened up the butterfly and applied paint to half of the butterfly and folded it together again, and sort of squished it a bit. I then opened it up so the children could see the finished product. Then I would hide the butterfly as I did not want them to copy my butterfly. Every butterfly was different, this is the way it should be.

If you need ideas for art activities, YouTube is a good place to look ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJNj1AVFcrg Every time you find a useful site go to "More From: XXX" and see if there is anything else that you like there. If there is something you like save it to a hard disk rather than saving the link. Links sometimes get removed, it would be unfortunate if you were going to rely on a link that had been removed.

Magic, juggling and balloon modelling

I usually teach the younger students. I have been using magic, juggling and balloon modelling for years. Of the three by far the easiest to master is balloon modelling. To a young child a balloon is really exciting. A balloon made into something is even more exciting. They make wonderful prizes. Balloon modelling is a win win sort of thing as even if the model does not work out as planned it is fun. I suspect that face painting would be very good with the younger student as well.