Teach English in Shihudang Zhen - Shanghai Shi

Classes of mixed abilityIntroduction: A mixed ability class or teaching system is one in which students are taught together in the same class, even though their abilities are different. The field of interest of this work is methodology, specifically teaching mixed ability classes and creating materials for such classes. The choice of the field and topic is affected by my practical experience of 6-years period of teaching young learners of 6,7,8,9 years old and throw my teaching I found that there are some students that their levels are different from each other especially when they come from different schools, and this matter causes a lot of trouble and hard time for us as teachers, such as the strongest students finishes the activity very fast while others finish it very slow, there will be some broaden for the clever students, and maybe they will try to disturb their friends while they finish the same activity, and for that we should do extra practice sheets for such students to let them be busy like their friends. I had this situation in my class this year I have a very strong girl in grade 3 she is excellent in english because she was in the usa and she is with her dad in KSA for his work, her level in english language is for grade 5 but her age is for grade 3 she is felling board most of the time but I always try to make her busy by giving her different tasks and ask her to write some composition and read it for her friends in class, but in the same time she is very weak in Arabic language, she need to be in grade 2or 1, this is very frustrating for such students like her, so I was suggesting to have the ability in our school to let her attend english classes in grade5 and Arabic in other classes too, but some schools they will not agree and they find it far away from the school?s curriculum. Conclusion: Their mixed level of knowledge regarding english is among other things a result of two factors. Firstly, english has not been a compulsory part of their education ,or english as a subject had probably been much less motivated to pay attention to it during the studies. These students tend to show a weaker performance in the class. Or the students families has less knowledge in english language so they seems to be as weak as their parents, normally in schools they let the student pass in his class level ignoring his subjects level especially in english subjects because it is a second language. Such class is in methodology call a mixed ability - or more currently ´heterogeneous´ - class. The ways of teaching that would be the most appropriate and efficient for mixed ability classes is one of the issues nowadays widely discussed by the teaching community. The idea was very strange at that time but it worked a little bit, because it was new at that time it needed to be more studied at well organized . Now days I wish all schools has classes of mixed ability, but first we should inform the parents of this methodology , and to let the students understand very clearly that this way is for the best of their learning life as for english as a second language, and also for other subjects. And this way of teaching need to take care of two important methods: The theoretical part deals with the methodology and aspects of the issue ? i.e. It explains what are the causes of the differences between students´ abilities. Motivation and its role in the process of learning and teaching are discussed. Students and teacher as the members of the process are looked at. Students needs and ways of trying to meet them are presented together with several views of learning styles. The practical part contains lesson plans tailored for teaching heterogeneous classes including activities based on the methodology described in the theoretical part. The lesson plans are accompanied by either completely original or adjusted worksheets and materials. I think an important part of this project is to try all the newly created activities in the class, comments on how successfully they were realised and if anything should be handled differently are presented. This is a very brief idea about this topic, I really wish that all International schools would attend this educational program to help students witch come from different countries or different schools, to come throw this learning problem that is important for students as well for teachers, as well for parents too. Any way there are some ways that can help in the classes like these such as the grouping and pair work activity it helps a lot to enhance to learning process, each way has its own advantages and disadvantages, but we do not have the space to discuss all that. After all it is almost impossible to avoid teaching a class with different abilities as we all are unique and have different abilities and goals. This can make teaching a bit more difficult but it also keeps you on your toes and teaches you to be more prepared for possible problems in a lesson. Websites: 1- http://www.teflcorp.com/articles/98-tefl-classes-of-mixed-ability/292-teaching-classes-of-mixed-abilities.htm. 2- Teaching_Heterogeneous_Classes_in_Practice.doc. 3- mixed-ability definition | english dictionary for learners | Reverso Collins.