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Sat 3 Sep, 2005 09:32 am
Hi once again, I am going to teach English at high school after some time off, here I'd like to ask about some American high school language as I decided to use only English in class, which is my students foreign language.
Here are some expressions I'd like to use, but some of them probably need correction:
to write in the class book (meaning the book where the teachers write about who is present , date , lessons etc, teachers do that in our country before every lesson, I actually often forget to WRITE IN THE CLASS BOOK
to grade students, to give them As, Bs, but in our country we dont' use letter grades, instead we use number grades - so shall I say "give you a one, a two, a three, straight ones...?
Some phrases:
Who is absent, or Who is absent today? Could you tell me who is absent today?
A blackboard? or a board?
Wipe the blackboard, please.
how about the plastic thing, white color / whiteboard?
report cards, What was your report card? What grades did you get on your report card?
I'll give you a three on your report card. (This must be totally wrong, but I have no clue how American teachers might say that, talking about giving grades that will appear on the student's report card)
Read an article NOT aloud, silently. Please, read the text silently? NOt sure about the word, I have had so many native English teachers and still don't remember what word they would use.
Thank you for your help.
ryunin, Welcome to A2K. The best way that I can explain is to give you an idea of how it was done when I taught English:
We called the roll in each class: That is, the students would say, present, or here.
We had lesson plan books, where we wrote what we intended to teach and the expected outcomes.
We had "chalk boards", as we called them, and referred to the cleaning of them as erasing the chalk board.(ours were green)
We also kept number grades based on 0 to 100. The teacher had to average the number grades at the end of each six weeks to determine a student's grade.
I'm not certain what you mean by white plastic things, but you could be referring to an overhead projector than was often used instead of a chalk board, to demonstrate the lesson. They could be easily cleaned by sponging them off.
I hope this helps.
Thank you Letty,
so you mean I should say "we'll do the roll in now" or just "roll in"?
That might take a while to go through all the students listed, but it is true that such a way is more reliable than asking the class who is missing.
By the plastic board I mean a modern board that is white and is used instead of the classical chalk board. YOu write with pens or (highlighters?] on the plastic board. I heard a term "whiteboard markers" but that is probably British. These are pens that can be easily erased and there is no dust of course.
Is it OK to say :You got a two? I mean the grade 2.
Hi ryunin,
Where will you teach?
The white boards are called Whiteboards and you write on them with Dry-Erase Markers.
There are some links with classroom phrases, just use your search engine.
http://www.finchpark.com/courses/links/classroom.htm
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/words/anweisungen.htm
I hope this helps.
Well, I would say, "Time to call the roll, now." and yes, what you are referring to are the plastic sheets that one puts on an overhead projector and can be easily erased.
I've never heard of anyone getting a two, my friend. A zero simply means that the assignment was not turned in.
I always called the roll because I think that saying a student's name is quite important.
Letty wrote:Well, I would say, "Time to call the roll, now." and yes, what you are referring to are the plastic sheets that one puts on an overhead projector and can be easily erased.
I've never heard of anyone getting a two, my friend. A zero simply means that the assignment was not turned in.
I always called the roll because I think that saying a student's name is quite important.
Of course, in the States students don't get a two, but they get a B? Right?
So if they get Bs, or a B, a Czech equivalent shoud be "get a two".
I mean our system is number grades - American A is Czech 1, B is 2, C is 3 ,
D is 4 and F is 5.
Oh, I understand now. You assign a number value to the letter grades. That would be fine and much easier to average.
I will teach at a high school that has 8 grades. So the first grade are students at the age of 10 or so. The 8th grade are students at the age of 18 or so.
I have been teaching at compainies for ages, usually tutoring, so I realy miss the classroom environment. As I have some high school teaching experience, I know it is a lot of fun at times to teach at high school. Especially English, because most Czech Students are really motivated to learn to speak English and I love to teach them to speak. Although I have TEFL certificate, my English is not perfect, but at TEFL course we learned a well prepared lesson, or a lesson that makes sense and where students really learn something and communicate, is much more important than the teacher's flawless English.
There were times when I started to feel depressed as I felt handicapped as a non native English teacher. But at TEFL i saw several native speakers being totally ridiculous teaching - like being totally lost or they would confuse students or mumble something in Texan slang - so I came to the conclucion that what I actually do with students is more important than my ocassional grammatical mistakes, I hope you agree.
Kind of trying to excuse all the mistakes I have made in my posts here...
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