Korean Job Discussion Forums

[hadeshorn]

Grr, Every morning at 9.25 I have kindergarten.

This is mostly a rant. Now these kids arent too bad and they arent too young and they speak a little english.

First things first.. I work at a wonderland. That in itself isnt too bad. People are pretty good there.

However this book we are doing for my Kindy class basically allows us to do 6 words a day. (Its mainly 4 words a day) I cry tears of joy when I see its 6 words.

Because you see I have to stretch these 4-6 words out to a period of 70 mins. We have a tape to go with it. They sing the words. Point out the words. Number the words. Use the words in a sentence. I still have 30 mins left.

With a trip to get water.. That leaves us with 20 mins

With a little bit of light hearted stuffing around that leaves us 15 mins.

Then I photocopy some coloring in stuff and let them go sick for the last 15 mins.

Bang, class is over and I can now go enjoy my 4 hour break.

However the parents are complaining about the coloring in. The books are apparently expensive (These are pretty crappy books with mostly pics). But even the work book that we use.. They just have to connect the lines to the pictures.

If I dont keep em entertained with coloring in. They get bored, restless and with coloring in. I get a semblance of peace and quiet.

Another thing that gets my goat about the coloring in, is that one parent who works overtime to afford to send her son to this school complains about the coloring in. I do feel for her because he should be learning english. But her son is so intrepidly stupid that its nearly impossible for him to do anything except coloring in. It takes this kid about 15 mins to write a word.

But what can one man do? I like this class purely because its the first class of the day and I get to run out the door and kill myself at the gym while im still fresh.

Grr next contract will have no kindy classes.

[chronicpride]

haha...I know exactly how you feel about having to stretch 5 minutes of lessons over an hour.

If you're looking to incorporate some new ideas for teaching to the young'uns, you can always check out the Activities and Games forum here at http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/viewforum.php?f=1.

Personally, I'm at the point where I'm starting to loathe teaching elementary and middle school kids. I'm looking forward to picking up a morning kindy gig to keep things fresh.

Many kids between 10-15 yrs old are in that 'in between' phase. Old enough to realize that they are only their because their parents tell them to go, but still young enough to not realize how important studying will be for their uni entrance exams. Many of my kids in that age range are just exhausted from doing the daily study circuit of public school-english hagwon-taekwondo-piano hagwon-ballet hagwon-etc for the past 6-7 yrs.

[RedRob]

It actually sounds as if you are dealing with it very well. If I had to do 70 minutes a day of kindy I would go fking postal!
This might be a bit obvious, but do you do some games to kill that last 15 mins?, a bit of simon sez, or make an english bingo game on the 'pooter, laminate it....away ya go. If the vocab level is up to it why not hangman or an object guessing game. Good luck mate, those little buggers are crazy!

[Gord]

Review words learned before. As well, practice simple sentences involving the words if they are getting to a pretty good level.

When I do kindy, I try to teach two new words a day with most of the class spend reviewing words taught before and getting them to speak them with confidence.

[canuckistan]

When faced with the same problem I used to have the kids learn to write the words they just learned to say on a portable/rollable white board 1 by 1, they all got their turn. They loved that. Would write the word in big letters on top so they could copy it exactly below. Used to get them to do it with crayons on paper too.
How could the parents complain about learning to write Engish too!

[Squid]

Ahh, fond memories of kindergarten- not

I found however that the first 10-15 minutes can be burned up with some scrap paper and a five or ten point ABC writing test. The smarter ones caught on to it as part of the routine- No. 1 write Big A and Small a, No. 2 Big H, Small h... at the start of every lesson.
Take your time and check em' thoroughly- even give hints for the slower students, if that's what they're called at that age, and don't forget to reward any 10 from 10's with a piece of candy. Soon they all scream for a test as you walk in the door.
I got a few Tsk Tsk's from fellow teachers for it, being a bit "Old school",
but it ingrained in the little sods something of value, and the parents loved it.

By the way, it's nice to see some more experienced posters weighing in with solid advice.

Squid

[OiGirl]

If you feel nothing but coloring will do, why don't you color pictures of the 4-6 words of the day? It's coloring, but it's curricular, especially if you and/or the kids are talking about it and recycling those words during the activity.

[Twister]

Get them to do a daily journal.

Today is (date)
It is (weather) sunny etc
Make a sentence (or a few depending on how quick they write) using some of your daily words.

If there is still time left, let them color a picture under the journal entry that relates to the sentence. If the coloring is part of the lesson parents don't seem to mind as much. Just tell them its part of the program.

[William Beckerson]

I love kindy.

You only have to make them sit there for 45 minutes studying like highschool kids if your boss is a complete raving lunatic.

[anae]

That sounds dreadful. The National Association for the Education of Young Children would be appalled. Memorize some words - yeah- that's the way young children learn a language.

Is there any room for other activities or are you tied to this "curriculum"?

Just off the top of my head am thinking of:
calendar time
story time
puppet play
preschool movement activities
games
songs
art
science experiments
dramatic play


After five years teaching kindy in Korea, I just finished my early childhood B.Ed. PM me if you want more specific ideas / help.

[Son Deureo!]

[ice]

When I did kindergarten (at a Wonderland as well) we had 60 minute classes, and I generally did them like this:

5-15 min: write everyone's name on the board, ask them all how they are, what the date is today, how's the weather, and "news" (as in, I got a new pencil, went swimming, etc.) Sometimes all the kids want to say something, sometimes no one does, so it can take a really long time or not long at all, depending)

10-15 min: review of vocabulary done in the previous class, and a game

5-10 min: introducing new vocabulary - maybe play a short game

5-10 min: doing the student book with the tape. If there's a song on the tape as well, when the kids like the song I'd play it until they got tired of it.
With whatever actions you can make up. And if there are lots of nice pictures in the books - use them. Talk about the pictures, ask the kids questions about them.

5-10 min: Another game

5-10 min: workbook - maybe the workbook doesn't take that long, but organizing the kids to sit down, take out their pencils etc, always ate up a lot of time.

So far, that's anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour. So, add in about 5-10 minutes for the trip to the bathroom, and you have either no time, or 25 minutes left.

With whatever extra time, I would play more games, sing songs, do a craft, or read a story. Or all of them.

I always had them getting up out of their chairs, changing places for each activity - on the floor in a circle to start, then a game, then the desk, then maybe on the floor again, back to the desk to do their workbook, back down on the floor for a game. With really young kids, lots of moving keeps them from getting too restless, and I tried keeping the activities to 15 minutes max.

If you've got any song tapes lying around, use them. The kids usually loved to do any songs with actions. In one class, I did a hello song, clean up song and good bye song nearly every day. When they start the song, they don't know the words, but they all love to do the actions, and they gradually learn the words.

As far as games go, there are lots of variations on team games you can play, but with young kids they get cranky when they don't win, so I usually would try to keep it to cooperative non competitive type games.

I did books with only a small bit of vocab each lesson as well - maybe 6 new words one day, 4 the next, and I was often hard pressed to finish all the activities in the student book and workbook and have time to play games.

You wouldn't be doing the magic time or supertots books, would you? Do you have the teacher's guide that goes with your books? Because the teacher's guides to most of those expensive glossy kiddy books seem to be the main reason to get them - they have loads of games to play, extra worksheets, and little crafts you can do suggested in them.

Anyways, hope that helps. I won't claim to be an expert and say that this is the best way to use your 70 minutes, but that usually filled the time for me.

[captain kirk]

tiny tots! songs! we wrote the songs on art paper and hung them up and rowed through those jaunty ditties, again and again mind you(still got a mind; liability that). the text of the book,it's new vocab and dialogue: 'look at the moon', 'yes, it's yellow', 'look at the yellow moon'. lol, and the boss wanted them to memorize sentences.
must really have to love people to love them at that age