Warm-up Activities for Unit 10 "The Teacher Who Changed My Life"

Today I started Unit 10, "The Teacher Who Changed My Life" in Class 313.  Since I promised them yesterday that I would teach them a song first thing in today's class, I began the class with the song "To Sir with Love."  They listened to it once very quietly and then tried to sing along.  The students said the song was beautiful but hard to sing.  I wished then that I could let them sing with the CD for ten times so that they would find it easier. 

After the song, I asked them to look at the title of Unit 10.  Then I had them close their eyes and recall their school years.   And I guided them to think about the teacher(s) who changed their life.  After they opened their eyes, I asked them to write about a teacher who had a great influence on them and how he/she affected them.  

In fact, I had planned to read to the students a few lines from an article I found on the Net about great teachers, but I forgot it.

After the students handed in the papers, I asked them who they thought were great teachers in history.  To my surprise, the first one they mentioned was Anne Sullivan.  I had expected them to give "Confucius" as the answer.  I later asked them why they didn't come up with Confucius first, they said because they were too familiar with him.  Then I spent quite a few minutes telling them stories about Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller.  It is a pity that they haven't had the opportunity to read part of Helen Keller's "Three Days to See" in their textbook.  If they had read that essay, they would understand why Sullivan was dubbed "Miracle Worker" by Mark Twain.

P.S. After the warm-up, we went to the text.  As usual, they read a paragraph and told me its main idea, followed by answering some questions about details.  Then they did pair-reading.