THEME: Classroom Management

"All my classes are combo levels, so I am just trying to figure out what they know and don’t know. I am trying to find common areas of things that they haven’t learned before, and then we can do them together. The previous teacher split the levels into different groups, but that is so much work. I am trying not to do that. Some of the students are complaining about that, but I can’t teach 3 different levels separately in one class. I have 5-6 students who are quite fluent, including reading, which is different from my previous school. I’m not sure how to keep them engaged. Some of their Chinese is better than mine, since they grew up in China. Then I have about 10 heritage speakers who speak well but don’t know many characters. They need to be in the lower levels, but I also don’t want them to be bored. It’s a lot to juggle. I want them all to have a good experience and learn things at their level, but that just might not be possible with such mixed classes. I feel like it’s kind of an impossible task. But I’m just going to do my best, and in the future, if I am full-time at a single school, if we grow the program, then I can separate the levels more." (Bridget, Journal)

REFLECTION QUESTION:
你所教的班级存在这种学生水平参差的现象吗？你是如何管理和教学的呢？