Class projects.
Others.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Hi and welcome to my English teaching program made by someone who used to be dyslexic. When I was young, I had all sorts of learning difficulties and had to go to special classes. I was so bad that I started primary school later than other children. I couldn't speak properly, read, write nor remember my own name. In fact I couldn't draw and "the experts" told my parents I would never do anything artistic. I was so bad that I couldn't join up a simple triangle let alone write words. Despite all of this, I managed to learn how to do all of these things including drawing. However, there are some lingering shortcomings which mainly are punctuation and grammar. Oh yeah, spelling but I love spell check, though.
So why am I an English teacher if I am so crap at it? I often ask myself this question but this is how I got into it. My friend came back to Australia for his winter holiday, noticed I was working my arse off just to pay my rent and introduced me to teaching. My first thought was "hmm, teach something that I am hopeless at, I don't think so." After a lot of persuasion and watching half my salary go straight to my landlord, I gave in. I had a short term contract and then I was planning to come back. Because I was expecting teaching to be like high school English and not know what I would be doing, I didn't plan to stay longer. In the end, I changed my mind and here I am teaching it.
The reason why is that I am a huge fan of irony. If I was a child who grew up within a Chinese education system, there would be no way I would've survived. I am a day dreamer and had a short concentration span. Yet I have a university degree even though I floated through primary and high school. What I noticed in Shanghai university was that everything they were doing was never going to work. As the students had foreign teachers they didn't have the freedom to do active speaking exercises. The school never tried to improve their system and the foreign teachers had no authority to change the method. It was a calling, if I could do what I had to do in order to not be dyslexic maybe it will work with Chinese students. Do classes have to be this boring and can students have a bit of fun while learning? I couldn't start doing this at Shanghai University, I had to go where there is freedom for new methods, rural China.
Now you know my background I hope these projects will help you and your students. Please remember that not all of these projects are edited by another person so you may find some typos. I can't afford a full time editor yet and if you do just cut and paste into word document to edit yourself.
The class size for these projects is a maximum of thirty students and this should be the standard in schools. Unless you are stuck in a poorly managed school and you've got a hundred students in a class. Don't fear I have made a few projects that could be useful in such a large class.
The file format for these projects are in HTML which you don't need to open in any other software. You can print them off straight from the window browser but I do have some in PDF format which you need Acrobat Reader.
Some of these projects can be used together such as using this project which is a multiple choice class discussion. Each group gives their opinion and in between the topics you can do other things to keep the class time fresh.
There are a lot of good text books out there that have very good situational topics. Unfortunately, schools tend to buy really boring ones. Which is why I created this website to help you if you're stuck. For example some foreign teachers created a text book on survival English, which is great to teach. Yet, some schools just buy comprehensive text books, instead.
One of the difficulties I came across when working at a new school is taking over another teacher's class. Especially when a teacher has been working with a rigid method and the students just listen to the teacher. This makes it really hard to make them active. Teachers tend to prefer working with first years from their first day of college so they are molded to be active. If you're taking over another teacher's class then don't do anything that is too active, try to do questions instead. When I first came to my current school, the students were not used to working in groups.

Don't just use my projects there are tons of other teacher's who produce class work of their own. This is a link to other websites and RSS feeds to teaching materials.
Before you browse the class projects go to the brief descriptions of class projects.