Seminar Seminot

So before the "fun night" on Thursday, we had a 5-hour long seminar. The first hour and a half was dedicated to advertising some marvelous book that we will never see or use. It did look pretty interesting, and I did come away with some ideas about teaching kids how to use transition sentences. For the MLA test, a test for writing proficiency required to graduate from college, a big part was being able to use transitions between paragraphs. Now, I don't like to brag (stop laughing!), but I did pass on the first try. Only 1/3 or 1/4 of students pass on the first try. Bwuaha.

Anyway. The second half was more interesting, I thought. Yuria taught us some songs to sing to get the kids involved, and I wish I could remember more of the songs from when I was little to try and incorporate something. There's a series here by JY Books that believes, "If you can sing then you can say, if you can say then you can read." I wonder how much truth is in that philosophy, because it seems to be setting them up for rote memorization, but I guess my part in life is just to give them a good start.

The second presentation was by Heather, and she did a really good job. She told us about the games she plays to reinforce grammar or vocabulary, and some of the suggestions were really helpful. I knew hangman and charades and pictionary, but introducing actions to songs for storybook, or laying out all of the flashcards, then hiding one and asking which one is missing.

The third was Sunny, where she reminded us of basic duties of teachers, i.e. acting in respectable ways, understanding that this is not public school and that it needs to be a profitable business. It's left me with a more sober approach towards school. I think it might be time to look at getting my TESL certificate.