Prepare for Your First Day of Teaching in Thailand

"Hi my name is Sean Graham on behalf of Expert Village and sponsored by globespancapital.com. In this segment, what, I want to discuss, is your first day warm-up lesson as a teacher in Thailand. This will be the very first time that you meet your students. What can you do to get your classes off to a good start? Here's a method that I use, although, you don't have to use it, it is just a suggestion. First, I write a circle of words on the white board. For example, Sean, 47, 5, England and Nottingham. Since this is the first day that my students have met me, I just turn around, face them and ask them, what do you think that Sean means? Hopefully, a student will say, 'It's your name, your name is teacher Sean". I will respond by saying "Good". Then I'll ask, "What do you think England means?" "Well, that's where you are from teacher?. Oh, good answer again. Most students won't know what Nottingham is. That's my hometown. So, hopefully, one of the students will actually say "That's your hometown". At this point, I can actually tell them about my hometown. Another item there is 47. What does 47 mean? My students will probably guess that it is my age, but I usually don't go around telling my shoe size, as well as my age. Twenty-six, what does that mean? This is the number of countries that I have lived in. They don't usually guess this, but when I tell them, they are very interested. Then, I can tell them a lot about the countries that I've lived in. Finally, the number 5, they'll usually say something like, it is the size of my head or my nose. Especially, in Asia, where they talk about your nose a lot. However, I will tell them that it is the number of years that I have been teaching. Once, you have completed this, you can get illicit answers from the students. They can either write a data sheet about themselves or stand up and introduce themselves to you. Also, they can introduce themselves to the rest of the class, if they don't know each other. It is a great warm up lesson. It gets them to know a lot about you and you to know a lot about your students."