Life as an English Teacher in Taiwan

Unit Introduction and Pre-assessment For this unit the students will be reading The Giver  by Lois Lowry as a mentor text. They will be practicing the following standard while doing so: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.1 Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. In order to determine the level of the students, I made a simple pre-assessment that checks for both reading comprehension and their ability to properly practice the above standard. The questions, only four, are multiple choice, but leveled so that each question addresses the student's ability to infer. They are then required to choose the appropriate evidence from the text, and try to explain as best they can. For more details you can view the pre-assessment here . Unfortunately, through a testing app, I am unable to truly test for the objective stated above, as quiz apps generally address content instead of skills, and for one that requires read...

High Stakes Testing and Me Being born and raised in the United States, one would think that I would be well familiar with high stakes testing. But I am not, at least, not in the form they are today. During my childhood, I had multiple encounters with standardized tests, which under Bush's much beloved No Child Left Behind (NCLB), would morph into the high stakes testing children all over the United States know today. I took my first test in third grade, called the Iowa Test, and then the following year, took the MEAP (Michigan something or other), and then those two tests came and went irregularly throughout the rest of my school career. I did not know when they came, I did not know why they were given to me, nor did I care, and it seemed, neither did my teachers (this attitude must be baffling to teachers in the US today). I tested well, my parents took a look at it then shoved it into a dark corner, and that was it. In high school, I was told that my decent performance on the...

A Homogeneous Class I'm accustomed to teaching multicultural views in a class, and guiding discussions so that students are free to share their own cultural experiences, to give a voice to students from minority or less-heard groups. In my teaching experience, there's usually a main cultural norm (generally white, Euro-American), and a plethora of other norms competing with and coming to conflict with it. A good deal of my background as a literature teacher has therefore been to bring light to these conflicts, to help students become open-minded and experience each other's cultures, and to resolve differences amicably, respectfully, and with open-mindedness. This shows itself in the books I choose, where I try to choose novels written from Asian, African, Native cultures, rather than the usual classics. It shows itself in the lengthy efforts I take to prime students with background understanding prior to reading books. I often ask students to share what their cultural p...

Students Requiring Differentiation My school is made up of students who all speak English as a foreign language, as they are living in a country where Chinese is the main spoken tongue, but attend an English medium school. As my school is a private school and does not have the resources to support students with disabilities, it officially does not accept any. While I and other teachers are fairly certain that there are a few students with undiagonosed disabilities, such as dyslexia and ADHD, we are unable to officially provide students with accommodations. Because of this, there are two main areas where I need to differentiate. English level and ability: Students read, write, and speak at varying levels in my class. A student who is an excellent writer may be a poor speaker, and vice versa. When it comes to communication, I therefore have the students practice the areas where they require improvement, but may also have a student use their strongest area to communicate their ideas...

SMART Assessments With the Standard and objectives decided upon, it is time now determine the type of assessment I will be using to show that students have managed to achieve the skill indicated in the standard. To recap, I teach 6th grade English Literature at an international school in Taiwan. The students are all of Taiwanese descent, and speak English as a second language. Their only English input comes from the classroom. The standard I have chosen to focus on comes from Common Core Language Arts Grade 6: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.1 Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. I had created a total of six objectives I wanted the students to be able to complete as a part of achieving this standard. These are: Define what textual evidence is. Identify lines of text that serves as textual evidence. Explain with detail why the textual evidence supports their answer. Refer to textual evidence to sup...

Standards and Backwards Mapping Subject and Grade Level My subject is English Literature for sixth grade. However, due to the fact that my students are not native speakers of English, and are only exposed to English in the classroom, I have and will continue to adjust the standards to suit their English ability. I will also adjust the standards so that I may assess them in their mother tongue. This is in part because the skills I am teaching are not always linked to language, but to cognitive development. As the students are bilingual, I also want them to become proficient in the skill regardless of which language they are using. Chosen Standards Because of this, I have chosen the standards below that both address their English skills (as they will be reading and writing in English), but can also, when push comes to shove, be adjusted for Mandarin Chinese, which is their mother tongue. From the very beginning of the school year, I have been introducing and teaching the studen...