Save the Planet for Another Day...save Alaska....let the caribou stay

Having been an elementary school teacher in Korea for over 6 years now, I've had many highs and lows with respect to my lesson plans. When I first started out, I can honestly say that very few of my lessons were of high quality. Don't get me wrong, I tried my best to create what I thought were great lesson plans but that fact that I had little experience teaching at that level lead to less than perfect material. Thinking back on those days, I would say that many of my lessons were very poorly structured and didn't have a smooth flow to it. As with everything in life, the more you practice the better you get at that skill.

Over time, and with the help of the many websites that cater to us ESL teachers, such as http://www.waygook.org/, I have been able to fine tune my skill to where a feel like I can produce and most importantly deliver the info in a very clear and fun way. I'm not saying that I don't produce lesson plans that don't bomb...I still do that too at times and  it's always the first class of the opening lesson (I always feel sorry for them....lol)  But I'm able to pinpoint the problems quickly and tweak it in ways that enable me to still use it.

Now this year, the lesson plan that worked best for me was the lesson I taught to my 6th grade students on using "Should and Shouldn't". Now since I have a background in Biology, I thought I'd use those key words and relate it to our environment. They are fairly low level so I always try to keep my lesson very simple and accompany it with some sort of activity that includes a PPT and /or Youtube clips. So I used some incredibly funny clips, for example,  http://www.youtube.com/watchv=h8Ek3v1RBEU ,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzsQwwnqSGo and  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PqiSMtbxhY, to try and elicit responses using those key words. Now before, I showed these videos, I showed them a PPT which contained all other words that they would need in order to make  a full sentence. In the PPT, I had words like pick up, throw away, pollute, garbage, plastic bottles, save...etc. I had the students in groups of four with a whiteboard.  After each video and a minute of brainstorming with the other students, they would write a sentence that was related to protecting our planet. Some of the higher level students really surprised me with their answers. Things like " You shouldn't waste energy" or "You should turn off the lights before you go to bed" , were examples of things the students wrote.

The reason why i think this lesson was so successful was that it included a component that all students, even the ones with absolutely zero English, could enjoy. That being the video clips. All students enjoy a good laugh and bonus if they are using the intended language and learning something from it. I'm off to plan another lesson plan...... Good to luck to me and my first class students :)

(By the way.. the title of my Blog comes from a line in Neil Young's "Be the Rain" song on his Greendale album...which is Killer!)