Hello,
I'm currently living and working in Japan as an English teacher at a cram school.
Most of my lessons are private lessons 1on1 but I do have a few classes and there are some classes that are very stressful and difficult to come up with ideas.
I apologize for the long post.
Firstly, my group classes are 50mins long.
The first class I have questions about is for class management.
It is extremely difficult to manage because they are very excitable young learners and their levels all vary. I have 6 students from Grades 1 to 3, 2 girls and 4 boys. So the grade 3 students get bored easily because they already know the words and the grade 1 students don't listen because they don't know the words.
The class is a very chaotic class everytime and most of the time I spend trying to get the boys to stop fighting and getting them to sit down and not stand on the desks. We use Magic Time 2 textbook. Class management advice is appreciated thankyou.
Secondly, I have a class with Grade 5/6 so they are using English Time 2 textbook. This class is 5 students, 4 girls and 1 boy. One of the girls is extremely difficult and refuses to participate unless its interesting. She won't even open her textbook. So I thought doing some games would help and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So next class they need to learn phonics for long e and short e and when I told my boss that I wanted to do some worksheets to reinforce the textbook she rejected it and said these students need to repeat the words lots of times. I am frustrated because my ideas were rejected even though it was to reinforce the phonics and to re-energize the students after repeating for such a long time, the class is 50mins— they get tired. Not only that, but she had told me that the curriculum is also so that students can listen to native English speakers speak lots of English to them, so this was contradictory and I don't understand why doing an activity that would help them understand phonics would NOT help them. Both my games were rejected and I also suggested putting a picture of long e and short e and I say the word then they go to which one they think it is.
These two classes are the hardest ones and it is very stressful thinking how to fit around the school curriculum. Any advice is appreciated.
Thankyou for taking the time to read
by Leather_Collar_6948