28 students, 5 students, 1 student--no problem!

Today I seriously had a hard time waking up. Last night I set my alarm clock to 7:00 am. Surprisingly I managed to be half-awake at 6:59am and reset the clock to 8:00 am (which I then woke up at 7:59 am), yet it still wasn't enough for me but my conscience dragged me out of bed into the shower and out the door in 30 minutes. After taking the first few steps in today's below-30-degree-freezing-weather, I said to myself, "There better be more than one student today or..." I somehow didn't finish my thought and kept on walking to the bus stop.

You might be wondering what kind of class operates with only 1 student... Every other Friday or so, I teach English at a drop-in conversation class for adults at East Liberty. Well, the title of the class says it all--people drop in to study English and the number of people showing up for class really depends on many things. The harsh cold weather certainly affects the class' attendance. For the past 2 Fridays, it happened to be snowing and icy, and I had no more than 2 students in each class...

Kids love games! - Part 2: Bingo is B-I-N-G-O

A reader asked me about a game that she/he can play in their English class with 4th and 5th grade students, and I immediately thought of a game called BINGO...

Who doesn't like playing BINGO? I think it's one of those games that never gets old and boring because of that one moment when someone calls out, "BINGO!" and everybody cheers! :) It's a game that can be played across age groups with as little as 2 people, and incorporate any topics.

I usually play BINGO at the end of a unit to review materials, although sometimes I do it at the beginning to assess my students' prior knowledge and to start a discussion about the connection between the words. You can play BINGO using any kinds of topics, and it's very easy to prepare.

How you can play BINGO in class (click to see samples): 

1. English : review topic-specific vocabulary e.g. occupations, body parts, kitchen items; grammar-related vocabulary e.g. homonyms, prepositions
2. Math: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, shapes, and many more... Your students won't realize that they're learning their times table! 

Kids love games - Part 1: Conversation Cards

How many times have you played Human Bingo on the first day of class? I think Human Bingo is a quick and simple way to get the ball rolling as it allows students to get to know each other and lets them move around to get rid of some of the nervousness.

Since Human Bingo is only designed to be a starter, I was looking for an activity where students can have extended conversations and learn about their classmates in greater depth. I wanted to do something fun, yet well-structured at the same time while giving plenty opportunity for the students to talk and listen to each other.

I thought of typing a list of questions, print them on small index cards, and randomly assigned the cards to the students, but I have done that too often by now. So using the same idea, I decided to use a deck of cards as a tool!

I call it: Conversation cards

• Depending on the grade level of the students and time allotment, make a list of questions consisting of min. of 13 questions (# of cards in a suit) for your students to ask each other.
• Assign each question to the cards in the deck (see example of questions). You could make as little as 13 questions and as many as 52 questions. 

Student: We're like passengers here...

I couldn't stop thinking what my student said this morning, that she thought that they're (students) like passengers of a bus--"We don't stay here for long because someday we get off and move on..."
Is that so?

For the past couple of meetings, my students and I have been talking about the tentative times of when they would return to their country. I might have mentioned this in my previous note, at the moment I am teaching a group of spouses of graduate students of UPitt and CMU as well as wives of employees of multi-national companies in Pittsburgh. One of them has decided her departure date and I can tell that she has mixed emotions about leaving.

These spouses, including myself, know that living in Pittsburgh has never been a permanent thing, at least not for now. And we all know that someday, we all have to pack and say goodbye to Pittsburgh, a place where we all learned how to survive away from our family and close friends.