Teaching

ScheduleClassesEnvironmentCurriculum

Schedule

The past twenty years have seen Kid Castle grow from a single school into one of the most successful children's English education companies on the island. A combination of teamwork, training, and years of experience have helped us to ensure a friendly and professional environment for our staff.

Each school has a slightly different schedule; however a typical full-time schedule consists of about 30 hours per week in the afternoons and evenings. These hours usually include about 20 teaching or contact hours in the classroom and 10 preparation or administrative hours in the office.

Kid Castle offers three programs for its students:

• Language school program for students age 9–16 in the afternoons and evenings.
• Preschool program for young learners in the morning.
• After-school program (homework assistance) for elementary school students (conducted in Chinese).

Classes

Classes range from 40 minutes to an hour or two hours. Classes include phonics, language arts, songs, stories, grammar, conversation, and plenty of activities. Some branches also offer extra curricular subjects:

• APEX Program: Math, science, extended reading comprehension and thematic integrated activities, including PE, cooking, and art.
• Summer and Winter Camp: The topics for camp change each year, previous topics include finances, folk tales and nature.
• Event Preparation: Events include talent shows, spelling bees, and various performances.
• Festival: During celebrations, such as Chinese New Year and Christmas, students participate in related activities.

Environment

Classrooms usually have between 8 and 20 students. For some classes, especially those with young learners, a co-teacher is also present in the classroom. The co-teacher will have other responsibilities for the class (usually communicating with parents, checking homework, completing administrative duties, etc.). For most classes, the foreign teacher's main objective is to strengthen the students' English speaking and listening skills.

Each clean, colorful Kid Castle branch has a stocked library, a room of modern computers, and a teaching resources area where teachers can find the teacher's guides, resource books, games, and any other teaching materials they need.

Curriculum

Our R&D ELT Department has developed curricula that's designed to meet the needs of our students. The textbooks have a gentle start to ease beginner students into the English environment. New teachers joining Kid Castle are able adapt to the logical structure of our textbooks.

Although Kid Castle provides a rigorous curriculum, teachers must use their office time to read through the teacher's guides, prepare for classes, have meetings with the co-teachers on the status of the class or its students, and grade homework and tests. All of these matters can be completed in a full-time teacher's allocated weekly office hours.