Genki English

Genki in Austria

richard — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:03:49 +0000

Today was my only teaching workshop in Europe this year and we had people fly in from all over the continent, from Spain, Germany, Lithuania and of course Austria!

Amongst all the general rules and positivity behind Genki English we did…

- Genki Disco Warm Up,
- String Game for introductions
- My self intro about the India/China/Thailand projects and why schools aren’t working
- What’s your name song? to get people into eye contact etc.
- Then the GE lesson plan – warm up, song, game
- How are you? – with the balance of positive words at the end.

Then lunch!

After we did a needs assessment.

Then …
Extra warm up games with Lines Quiz and Soldiers & Ninjas + mingle to get into groups
Then a demo lesson with What’s the weather like? + Clap Clap Game
Then how to use the software – some people were surprised that they already had it on their CDs!
Then computer games – for the Playstation generation - Do you like..? OK but too easy = boring,Genki Chinese – too easy! Genki Korean, more of a challenge, everyone on the edge of their seats – really saw how the computer games work!
Then Hip Hop games for higher level.
Got asked about “That’s not in the exams” – that’s fine, we teach the kids to speak, then the exams become easy later!
Then Superhero to finish off and out for dinner!

Overall a really great day with a great bunch of teachers in a fabulous location. And as usual the exact same challenges that everyone else has came up. Although brilliantly when I asked for “problems” in the needs assessment, none of them had any! Very cool.

Then the next day we did even more cool stuff…

Think you’ve got discipline problems?

richard — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:39:45 +0000

When it comes to discipline, Europe/US and Asia are like chalk and cheese. Discipline problems can seem to fill you up completely but it also pays to see what other teachers have to deal with. Here’s an article about teaching in the US: What are they going home to? Makes you glad to teach where you teach?

Thanks to Gumby for the link over on the forum.

Looking forward to seeing you all in Austria this weekend!

Education Policy & Development Lecture

richard — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:52:51 +0000

Some of the students on the Education Policy and Entrepreneurship for Development course.

Today I was invited back by the University of Newcastle to give my lecture to the students on the Masters of Education course in Education Policy and Entrepreneurship for Development.

First the Doctor in charge gave a run through the phonics programmes and the research they’d done on the effectiveness of phonics and Genki English. Then we had some very cool videos about phonics teaching in Ghana.

Then it was my turn. Just like last year I was invited as an “Education Entrepreneur” and it was a trip through why I started Genki English (appalling ways of teaching, kids sleeping in class, inequality between public and private schools), how we teach (finding out what the kids want to learn & how they want to learn it), how successful we have been (180 countries, every school in Thailand, 1 billion students by 2012) and the problems we face (the Okinawa problem, teacher apathy!) I also talked about the research projects in developing countries, private vs. public and I also left on a question “do we really need teachers at all?” which is something they’ll be covering in other parts of the course.

Then lots of really good questions from the students (exactly how did you develop the curriculum? What to do with teenagers? Use of mother tongue in the class? What research data do we have? Does it really work even with no teacher?)

Back to ground level

After a few months focussing on Genki English business development (i.e. getting more Genki English sales) then it was really good to get back to the education development issues. It is nice to sell a load of Download Packs (thank you very much, it looks like we’ll have another record breaking month this month!), and that is really important to fund things, but it’s how much we are helping kids in the worlds’ poorest areas that really motivates and excites me. It’s always good re-seeing the results of the India and China programmes and to see how it is affecting the kids there, because in the day to day running of things you tend to forget the big picture.

Room to Read

Then lunch with some people talking about some very exciting ways to do more education development work using more corporate ways of doing things, not just small scale entrepreneurship. Very exciting. After reading the Leaving Microsoft to Change the World book (highly recommended) last week about the amazing Room to Read programme, this is also something I’ve been really interested in. We have a really good programme, it’s now a case of how quickly we can get it out to more schools on a huge scale, not just thousands, but 100s of thousands of schools.

So very, very motivating and I also got a name check in the acknowledgement section of The Beautiful Tree book!

Thank you very much again for inviting me back and I’m really looking forward to the future, it’s a whole new chapter and there are so many more amazing things out there to be done!

How to speed up your computer for free

richard — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:33:21 +0000

Here’s a cool video to show how to, hopefully, speed up any old laptop. I’ve tried it on loads of machines and it also keeps the computer quieter and increases your battery life. It’s not quite as good as a new computer, but it can make a huge difference! Have a try (at your own risk!) and let us know in the comments if it worked!

Right, I’m just heading off to the University to give my lecture for the Education Policy master course.

Uno Style Christmas Prepositions Game from Zurich

richard — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:28:02 +0000

Thanks for all the requests this week. In Zurich airport I just made a Christmas version of the Uno Style Card Game – The One. This one is to practice prepositions (under, on, in etc.) along with Gingerbread house, snowman, Christmas tree and Christmas presents. Enjoy!

Plus new Superhero Dominoes from Gaz.

Got the flu? Get well soon! Flashcards & Mini Cards

richard — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:18:07 +0000

I hope the flu’s not effecting your lessons too much – I know quite a few classes have been suspended. But whilst it’s around we might as well take the chance to use it to teach some useful English.

And of course the most useful English is “Get well soon!” The song and animation are on CD10and by request I’ve just made up A4 flashcards and mini cards of the “before and after” characters from the song. Enjoy if you can!

VIP members click the pictures above, non-members just order the Download Pack and get access straight away! Or you can of course go for the physical Teacher’s Pack, the choice is yours.

How have you been teaching this song?