Well I had my second day of classes today. I will be meeting with about 18 groups of students a week, with zero repeats, meaning a lot of my lessons need to share elements or be completely portable between classes. The students range from advanced (communicative to near fluent) high schoolers, to surly and non-communicative remedial 9th graders, to fluent or near fluent children 5-10, to non communicative children of that age.
On thursday I will be teaching a range of kids from about age 5 to 10. The level is beginner generally, with a few kids in the communicative range. It will be 5 classes, and the head teacher asked me to prepare a lesson that involved music.
Here's what I was thinking for this week (and it will work for next week as well, as it is a whole NEW set of kids again!). I can write a short song for the guitar involving some of the animal sounds. I can combine this with pictures of animals, and a review of the names and sounds they make. We can go through various stages- identifying and repeating the animal names and sounds, acting out the animal actions with the sounds, drawing the animals in a pictionary-type game, and finally singing a song that incorporates the information into one fluid song and dance.
Any suggestions on all of this? What animals would you include, and how would you tweek the exercise? Do you have any other games for the students to learn information at this level? My requirements are: the students must talk as much as possible, the students must be in one group (splitting doesn't work because I don't speak Czech, and have no co-teachers), and the students must have fun.
Edit: As an aside, it would be difficult to convey the mental confusion induced by dealing with a group of unenthused 9th graders who answer you in their own language, which just happens to be a language where the word "no" translates into English as "yes." "Do you understand?" "No." "Can you say it in English?" "No."