Teaching Students AND their parents. HELP!

[sykisssn]

Hi everyone,

I work at a Korean K-12 school (in China) teaching English to kinder kids aged 5 to 7 (which is really 4 - 6 in western countries) - and I have a 3 year old in my 5 years class...
My major was however, in primary teaching.

Imagine my surprise when the kinder leader told me on Friday (i.e. 2 days ago) that I would have to teach open classes next Friday (i.e. in 5 days). Anyone who has worked at a Korean school may know that open classes take place once or twice a year. However, this is my third open class in 8 months. Wait! There's more - I usually teach one class, and the Chinese teacher teaches another (the 5 years class doesn't usually have a foreign language open class) but this time I've been assigned to both the 7 and 5 year classes! Finally, this time I'll have to teach both the students AND their parents!

Apart from the lack of time I have to prepare, I am stuck on how to incorporate the parents into the lesson. I've not had the chance to do this before. For the 5 years class, the topic we are currently covering is pets (in addition to ongoing study of the alphabet). In the 7 years class, we're covering robots. The classes run for 40 minutes. Any advice on how to go about teaching my classes effectively will be much appreciated my fellow teachers!

[Alex Case]

A nice looking activity one of the other teachers in my school came up with is to test the students on their knowledge of their parents (age, likes, jobs etc) and then ask the parents to check. It's a bit like the TV show Mr and Mrs.

With robots, maybe the students can give TPR instructions and parents can do the actions as robots. Do you think they would be up for getting that involved? What level of English will the parents have? Are you sure they won't be happy just to sit back and watch?