First day was terrible, help?

Jagyr · Post by **Jagyr** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 9:42 am

I just had my first day as a native english teacher in Korea, and I don't know what I did wrong. I'm teaching at a public school with 1st and 2nd grade middle schoolers, classes of 25-30. They have about 1.5 months left in their year. I have been given a textbook, but they are mostly done with the year and I have no clue what they were learning, their level, or where they were before I got here. I have asked my "co-teachers" but they haven't been able to give me any information on the classes. Apparently I'm going to have each class once a week, though I haven't been able to get an answer about when or what they need to learn or are going to be tested on.

I have a Bachelors in music and teaching experience in the performing arts (music, dance, drama). My only experience teaching academics has been tutoring friends. Also I've taken an online certificate course, which was helpful, but not completely relevant.

Here is a simple version of my lesson plan for the classes today.

-I started off my class with introducing myself, drawing a map of the US and letting them guess what part I was from, then letting them ask questions. I tried to start off each class very positive and energetic.
-Then I set down rules and consequences.
-Next I tried doing a name game, to help me learn their names, where they all stood in a circle and put a movement to their name. This failed pretty badly, though I had thought they would enjoy getting up and moving around. So I sat the classes it didn't work with back down and moved on.
-After that I tried to start assessing their level with either a competition game like Boggle where they write down vocab as a group, each group reads out their answers, and the group with the most wins,
or
having them discuss as a group "What do you like to do?" then write down the answers and tell the class. Both of these didnt' get any interest.

by this time the classes were done or very close to done.

I had 4 classes; 2 were very talkative/disruptive and I couldn't get them to stop for more than 10 seconds, 1 was almost catatonic, and the last one went well. I did very little different between the classes. I will have 17 different classes of unknown levels of skil, about half 1st grade and half 2nd grade, so I'm guessing I won't have to worry about making too many lesson plans

, but I would really like the ones I do have to work.

I would like to ask for any suggestions that anyone has on how I can change my lesson plan to have anything closer to a modicum of success

. It seemed that none of the children enjoyed the class, and I also don't think they got much from it.

Also I would greatly appreciate it if anyone has any ideas on what I can say/ask my Korean "co-teachers" to get the information for where their students are in their learning, what do they want me to teach, or get anything other than "you'll figure it out, go teach english".

I have ideas of what I can do/change, but after my first failure I dont'know if anything will work and would like to ask other more experienced teachers.

Thank you for reading

oh ya, I've been searching the forums and will continue, but I don't have much cash right now and can't stay at the net cafe's long

, if you have links to relevant articles/discussions that would really help as well.

Jagyr · Post by **Jagyr** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:15 am

so far in looking through the forums this link has given me a lot of ideas... if anyone else has a similar trouble

http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... highlight=

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 2:32 pm

Hi Jagyr, glad you found a useful thread.

Native co-workers can be very tight-lipped when it comes to divulging what's 'in' and what's 'out' culture-wise in their country. I guess they feel that you should be thinking up your own ideas and perhaps even introducing them to aspects of the foreign culture rather than "telling them what they know already but just in a different language"...don't be surprised however if your activity on James Bond or whatever tanks and they then criticize you for not using characters or personalities that the students know and can relate to! (A bit hard to do that if you don't know what they know and "will" relate to though, isn't it!). All I can suggest is that you try to watch some TV and get out and about hiring videos, going to the cinema, visiting a few bars or whatever, and making a few notes on the popular music, movies and celebs. A lot will depend of course on your level in Korean for a start, but it is still possible to learn a fair bit even with a linguistic barrier. That being said, I wouldn't neglect the linguistic aspects (research, sociolinguistic/natural discoursal design, allied decent methodology etc) of activities in favour of a few name-drops hard-won from boozing through several all-night lock-ins in some local bar!

Jagyr · Post by **Jagyr** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 2:11 am

ok... I figured out why the first few classes went badly. Simple put... not all of the kids were involved all the time. Since I only worked with 1 table/kid at a time, all the other kids didnt' pay attention in the least.

Did a new game today where there were 3 groups... and they had to race to speak a question and answer between partners... then write it down on the board. It kept all of the students involved, and also kept them speaking english

Well.... now to figure out something for next week ... hehe.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 5:51 pm

Yes, concentrating on only one group can be fatal. You can get away with a bit of it, especially if you instruct the rest of the class to be your extra set of ears in monitoring whether what that one group is saying is kosher, but generally all eyes and ears should be either on you, or (then) on fellow members of the same group or pair (i.e. in doing groupwork or pairwork).