Flashcards, Green Cards, and Red Cards

When you come to China to teach, it’s not necessary to pack a lot of teaching supplies, because, even though it may not always feel like it, this is still a modern country. Most of what you need in the classroom is available at the supermarket. Except 3×5 cards. I’ve yet to find anything in the store like a good, old-fashioned 3×5. I knew this would be a problem, so I had enough sense to bring several hundred with me. 3×5 cards are a teacher’s best friend, aside from a beating stick.

This week, I put together an activity where each student got a flashcard with a picture of a vocabulary word on it and took turns asking, “Who has…. this?” and replying, “I has…. this.” It turned into one of those things that would have made for a great lesson in any other environment, but in a classroom of 50 Chinese kids, it was about as bearable as the “who’s on first” skit. Yeah. That’s right. Who’s not a fan.

I don’t regret trying to do this lesson, though, because it ended up being a good way to show them just how poor their behavior is. I decided to create a “good/bad bag” based on a discipline idea I got from my mother who used a similar approach to keep my Sunday school classmates in line (because Sunday school students have no incentive to be good). When the class is well-behaved, a green card goes in the bag. When they’re bad, a red card goes in. At the end of class, a card is drawn. If it’s green, something good happens. If it’s red, something bad (or nothing) happens. Simple, right?

My first attempt at this was just to warm the students up to the card system. There were no rewards involved. And I knew they wouldn’t do very well, anyway. One class ended up with only one green card and ten red cards. As we were counting the red cards together, the kids grew more and more excited and shouted hurray on reaching ten. Okay… obviously it’s going to take a couple tries for this to sink in.

19 February 2009 | Teaching | Comments | Home
tags: class activities, discipline, shopping

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