Walking around in class, sleeping, jumping around, shouting, swearing, playing cards, using kaetai, and taking no notice what so ever of the teacher - is daily life at the low academic senior high school I work in in central Fukuoka prefecture.
My challenge is to get these students remotely interested and engaged in learning rudimentay English.
Does anyone have expereince in this sort of situation? Does anyone know any one in such a situation? I'd be pleased to hear from anyone who can help me start the process of getting my students motivated.
Looking forward to hearing from you...
Sounds like my school.
First, it's time to establish some rules and pick your battles wisely. Kids who are sleeping I tend to leave alone, since them being awake usually just leads to more disruption. It's best to leave them be.
For the cards and keitais though, that is something that needs to be stopped. At my school we had a box for each kumi that we had in the LL Room. When we saw a student with a keitai, manga, cards, purikura, or homework for another class, without saying a word we would pluck it from their unsuspecting hands and lock it in the box. That box, at the end of the school day, would be given to their homeroom teacher before cleaning time. That way the homeroom teacher could be the one with the displeasure of returning their contraband. All of the students were told on the first day of classes this would be the system, so they only had themselves to blame when their stuff got taken away. After about a month of this system it was rare that we had to take something.
Also, let the JTEs know that you feel the classrooms are out of control and you want their advice and help controlling the classes. If they're disruptive to the point that you're not doing any effective teaching, that is a problem. The JTEs might not even realize you think the class is a problem. Or perhaps their prior ALT was a drill sergeant and they never had to worry about discipline. This is how it was at one of my schools. If the JTEs seem unresponsive or even give you grief on the topic, that may be the time to contact your PA. I would only save this for extreme cases though, such as a student physically or verbally assaulting you in an aggressive manner.
Finally, use that energy! At my school I have lots of activities we do that make the students run around, stand, sit, jump, throw, etc. The less time they spend in their seats having to listen, the more they seem to do the activities. Focus your lessons on student-centered teaching rather than the more traditional teacher-centered teaching. As an example, here is the self-intro lesson I did. I maybe did a total of 10 minutes talking for this lesson.
Part 1: Hand out hanko sheets and tell them my name.
Part 2: Self-intro Powerpoint
The class is divided into 5 teams. Each team has 50 points starting. On the powerpoint, each slide has one question about me. "Where am I from?" "What's my favorite food?" etc and four answers they can choose from. Each team picks an answer and then bets points on how correct they think they are. After all the teams pick an answer, a countdown clock on the slide counts to 10 while playing the "24" music (they love that show here currently). Then the answer shows up, usually with a funny picture or something. The winning team gets 3 hanko points.
Part 3: Each team gets an envelope. Inside the envelope are strips of paper, each with a sentence such as "This is (your name)'s favorite food!" or "This is (your name)'s dog!" Around the room are laminated photos that go with the sentences. The students must work together to collect the photos that go with the sentences. The team with the most photos gets 1 hanko.
Part 4: In their teams, the students janken to set an order. Each student picks one picture from the ones they collected. In turns, one student stands up and describes their picture for 30 seconds. The loudest, genkiest team to use English gets 1 hanko.
Part 5: On a sheet I made, the students write two questions they want to ask me. We collect them at the end and I answer their questions on the paper.
I also use games like hot potato, telephone, relay races, musical chairs, etc. It may seem childish but they seem to really enjoy it and it at least makes them a productive sort of disruptive ;)