April 10, 2008 – 11:29 pm
Students who are “Normal” can get very comfortable with their teacher and classmates, so it’s always an interesting twist when a new face pops into class.
Recently, two of our more mature students had their first class together. The last time that Mr. T and Mr. S saw one another was at the Smith’s Halloween [...]
I found a great phrase cards lesson plan in the English Lesson Plans section from Gideon at Kyobashi. I have used it several times and really enjoyed it, as did my students. I have now expanded on it, and added a couple more sets.
In summary, here’s how i run this lesson.
1. Write the [...]
Often lesson plans may seem like just that – a plan for a lesson, but there’s nothing more exciting than a lesson plan that has been put to the test and comes out on the winning end!
Shimokitazawa Smith’s youngest student had the pleasure of seeing the results of a successful lesson plan. Let’s call [...]
With my red man-to-man student on Saturday, I covered the lesson on imperatives. I always get a kick out of the pictures in the Smith’s curriculum. In case of many of them, no imperative warning could possibly save the person shown from sure death or severe injury. A steel I-beam falling from [...]
February 28, 2008 – 7:04 pm
I started teaching the Smith’s curriculum in December, and i have discovered some great lessons. But i know that many of you have been working with this curriculum for a while and probably have some great ideas. I want them! So i wrote an article title “Stretching the Morning” under “English Lesson Plans” explaining my [...]
February 27, 2008 – 7:42 pm
We bought our Smith’s franchise in December 2007. When i did training at Kyobashi, Gavin told me “The Morning Routine is a great routine” (not an exact quote), and i thought “yeah, whatever” (exact quote). Anyway, after teaching “The Morning Routine” a few times, i realised that it IS a great lesson. After teaching it [...]
September 1, 2007 – 12:05 pm
I believe we have an excellent English school curriculum at Smith’s that focuses on things students need work on. I always try to use the “loop”, which is the overriding format for every lesson. It works very well and I use it at Smith’s Tsukaguchi school http://www.smithweb.co.jp/school/tsukaguchi.shtml . I was taught the loop at [...]
This lesson was with one of my favourite pink students, who is going to Cairns on holidays over Obon. Her husband`s nickname is Billy, and he has been both training her physically (bikini-body) and mentally (English conversation, of course!) After both of us complaining how hot it is…
ET
Last week`s One Point was `I`ve never [...]
Here’s an example of one way i like to use the curriculum phrasal cards in my lessons at Smith’s School of English Kyobashi.
Today’s lesson was a red level gentleman who comes as a man to man student.
ITEM – PHRASAL CARDS 436 – 440
I wrote up on the board;
I saw a man [...]
ET
A3.15 I’m broke
It was my fist time to meet the student today so before jumping right into the one point review I decided to establish trust by asking her what her job was. She answered “I’m …office worker”. OK I thought, a little bit of work will be required getting her to give me [...]
April 7, 2007 (SJ)
Today is a miserable rainy day. The students seem to trickle in as stray raindrops after abandoning their umbrellas at the front door.
My next student is taking a man-to-man lesson. Before she even looks up from the depths of her coffee mug, I can tell that she is probably still [...]
ET
A1.57 We’re behind schedule.
I always enjoy drawing out my ET in a natural conversational manner. It might be a bit non-standard, but for this particular One Point I start the lesson off with a bit of chat. I ask about the students’ days and one student tells me that it was another [...]
January 16, 2007 – 5:10 am
Gavin Bielski (Teacher, Smith’s School of English - Kyobashi)
Teaching English in Japan has been an incredible learning experience for me. I studied Japanese in Colleges including Kansai Gaidai so I have some idea what it’s like to work toward not only grammatical understanding, but actual functional mastery of a foreign language. I had [...]