What color is it? It's Pink!

Every now and then, Aston English School holds promotions to encourage and invite students to enrol in our school. I already wrote a previous post about this where the school had us do promotions outside on Labor Day. We were at the square doing demo classes and playing games.

Today, I had the opportunity to do three 20-min demo classes in a middle school. Each class almost had 75-80 students from grades 3-5. We picked our own topic and I chose to teach them colors.

These kids rarely get to meet foreigners in their school let alone be taught by one so they were all eager to welcome me. I felt like a celebrity as I entered the classrooms as everyone started clapping. One class even sang ABC as I went in. I was so overwhelmed by how smart and active they were. Everyone listened attentively as I introduced myself and started my demo class.

Photos courtesy of my fellow teacher and friend Kat

Aston School follows a certain teaching method called IPA (Introduce, Practice, Activate). Although time is quite limited, I always try to make it a point that IPA is incorporated in all my lessons. I made a short introduction of the lesson, which is about colors, and was quite relieved that the students already know all the basic colors. For practice, I asked them to show me a color that they have on them. So when I shout a color, they have to point at it (e.g. blue t-shirt) and say "It's blue!". I also told them to say "I don't have blue" if ever they can't find the color that I'm looking for. In this way, I encouraged them to answer in complete sentences.

The students got really excited when I asked them if they wanted to play a game. This is where the Activate part of the lesson comes in. I was able to bring a lot of colored pens with me, four pens for every color. Since the class was already divided into 4 columns, each desk consisting of two students, it wasn't that hard to put them in groups. I gave each group 11 pens, all having different colors, and told them to find the color that I was looking for. The students in each row take turns and they have to raise the pen as quickly as they can. The fastest gets a point. The pens are then passed on to the next row of students. I am including a short video of my demo class to give you a more visual idea of what happened during the game.

It was a very hot day for me but I can honestly say that I really had a  fulfilling and great time.