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Wrench
Joined: 07 Apr 2005
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 Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 11:02 pm Post subject: Camp Crazyness |
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They want me to teach 20 kids for 160 minutes with a ten minute at 80 minute mark.
oh they are 3rd and 4th grade from a rural School. So you can imagine I will have to most likely stand on my head and recite the alphabet out my ass to keep their attention for that long. |
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Smee
Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Location: Jeollanam-do
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 6:20 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, I'm doing 160 minute camp days at a rural school, too. Mine range from 3rd grade to 6th grade. I think there are 25 students in the class, but I haven't been told yet.
Most of the younger students can't read, so what I'm doing is making dialogues but writing everything phonetically in hangeul. 아이 라이크 치킨, and so on. I pick a theme for the lesson and make a silly little 10-line dialogue around it. They seem to like it, although it only takes care of 15 minutes.
I also phonetically wrote out some basic English phrases for them. My school wanted me to practice very long dialogues with my students, on themes such as "Going to Immigration" or "Visiting Relatives," but since the students couldn't read and couldn't really produce simple sentences, it was silly. Just giving them a few questions and answers will help improve their confidence and will actually teach them something useful. I spent 25 minutes during a supplemental class just doing "What is your name? / My name is ________" and "Do you like _________?"
Although nothing is finalized yet, a big part of my "camp" activities will involve drawing and presenting. Since I have no materials and no budget, I'm just going to break out some paper and colored pencils. For the last 20 minutes or so I'm going to have them draw something---for example a postcard of their hometown, or a picture of a place they want to vacation---and have them present to the class using the phrases we learned today. |
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Wrench
Joined: 07 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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| They are geting books for me.. Thats all the kids will get. To bad. I have less then a week to prepare for this camp. They can suck on a lemon because I am not going to sit here till 6 coming up with activities for the books that was bought for me just 1 week ago. |
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Bukowski
Joined: 29 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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Smee,
Writing things out phonetically in Korean is, without a doubt, one of the worst things you could do to young Korean learners of English.
Hopefully, others that read this thread know that already, but it can never be said often enough.
What gives with "teachers" that encourage that kind of practice? It merely handicaps the kids.
Do you have any formal training?
AC |
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Wrench
Joined: 07 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Bukowski wrote: |
Smee,
Writing things out phonetically in Korean is, without a doubt, one of the worst things you could do to young Korean learners of English.
Hopefully, others that read this thread know that already, but it can never be said often enough.
What gives with "teachers" that encourage that kind of practice? It merely handicaps the kids.
Do you have any formal training?
AC |
Amen to Korean Phonetics in english.. They don't work. |
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ttompatz
Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Location: Kwangju, South Korea
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 7:40 pm Post subject: Re: Camp Crazyness |
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| Wrench wrote: |
They want me to teach 20 kids for 160 minutes with a ten minute at 80 minute mark.
oh they are 3rd and 4th grade from a rural School. So you can imagine I will have to most likely stand on my head and recite the alphabet out my ass to keep their attention for that long. |
In January I will be doing 3 camps of 1 week duration each - g1/2, g3/4, g5/6. Each camp is composed of 4 classes of 40 minutes duration.
For the winter camp I suggest organizing each week based on a daily theme. These themes can be switched from day to day depending on the weather because some of the activities will have to occur outside.
We will use the same themes for each camp but change the levels to reflect the ages and abilities in each camp. This will allow us to re-use many of the materials to minimize costs.
Our plan is like this:
Day 1 � Magic day � group the children. Each group learns a magic trick and the dialogue to go along with the trick they perform. In the last hour of the day we have a magic show with each of our performers doing their tricks. Card tricks have the most dialogue and are easy to learn.
Day 2 � Winter fun - We will learn and practice some simple vocabulary for winter sports. Have a look at winter sports from other countries and cultures. 3rd class � Make a quickie kite. 4th class � go outside and fly our kites
Day 3 � Tongue twisters and language fun - 1st class � learn and practice a tongue twister. 2nd class � learn and practice a joke. 3rd class � Make a word search puzzle for fun. 4th class � Do a word search puzzle
Day 4 � Science day � make and fly soda/vinegar rockets (80 minutes). Talk about, show and demonstrate a soda/vinegar volcano - volcanoes 101.
Day 5 � Fun, Fun, Fun � carnival games � face painting, play carnival games using English expressions that we have learned to buy your tickets to play each game of chance.
Feel free to add, change or adapt as you will. We used this same format (with different activities) in our summer camp and it was immensely successful with happy kids and very happy parents. |
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lover.asian
Joined: 30 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Bukowski wrote: |
Smee,
Writing things out phonetically in Korean is, without a doubt, one of the worst things you could do to young Korean learners of English.
AC |
I couldn't agree more. Please reconsider your decision. |
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Smee
Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Location: Jeollanam-do
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| I couldn't agree more. Please reconsider your decision. |
Yeah, as I mentioned elsewhere it's something I've done when I was put in a bind (forced to have very young students memorize extensive dialogues). For young students we use phonetics textbooks complemented by teachers and the CD-Roms. I'm aware, AC "teacher" the limitations and problems that accompany using hangeul to represent English sounds, but thank you for pointing it out again. (reeeallllly tempted to use rolly-eyes).
That looks like a fun camp, ttompatz, thanks for sharing. I'm curious, how many students will you have for each camp? |
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Bukowski
Joined: 29 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 10:44 pm Post subject: |
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If you know that it handicaps young learners, are you saying that you do it intentionally (the ends justifying the means  )?
There must be hundreds of "teachers" out there doing the same thing, because every year I have first year middle school students that try to translate material that way (those before them must have only reinforced the practice).
Sorry, but I don't agree with you on this one. There are no short-cuts to learning the basics.
Camps can be many things from a starting point to a big waste of time. No abdication here, as we have a big impact on what we allow it to be.
Sorry for the self-righteous tone (I'm sure you're a well-intentioned teacher), but that practice and the excuses given for using it really chap my backside.
AC |
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ttompatz
Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Location: Kwangju, South Korea
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Smee wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I couldn't agree more. Please reconsider your decision. |
Yeah, as I mentioned elsewhere it's something I've done when I was put in a bind (forced to have very young students memorize extensive dialogues). For young students we use phonetics textbooks complemented by teachers and the CD-Roms. I'm aware, AC "teacher" the limitations and problems that accompany using hangeul to represent English sounds, but thank you for pointing it out again. (reeeallllly tempted to use rolly-eyes).
That looks like a fun camp, ttompatz, thanks for sharing. I'm curious, how many students will you have for each camp? |
It looks like the 5/6 camp will be about 30, 3/4 camp about 40 and the 1/2 camp about 60-70. I will have my NZ co-worker and a Korean teacher with me for the 3/4 and 5/6 camps and 2KTs + my co-worker for the 1/2 camp.
It is the same format as our summer camp with changed activities and we are suffering from our own success.
The nice thing about this design is that it is easy to modify on the fly, adapt easily and keeps everyone happy without too much strain, stress or work on our part.
K.I.S.S> kids learn best by see and do... Chalk and talk will always fail with little ones. Busy hands mean happy and well behaved kids. Bonus is that they actually learn English AND some fun stuff at the same time., |
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Smee
Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Location: Jeollanam-do
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| Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Bukowski wrote: |
If you know that it handicaps young learners, are you saying that you do it intentionally (the ends justifying the means )?
There must be hundreds of "teachers" out there doing the same thing, because every year I have first year middle school students that try to translate material that way (those before them must have only reinforced the practice).
Sorry, but I don't agree with you on this one. There are no short-cuts to learning the basics.
Camps can be many things from a starting point to a big waste of time. No abdication here, as we have a big impact on what we allow it to be.
Sorry for the self-righteous tone (I'm sure you're a well-intentioned teacher), but that practice and the excuses given for using it really chap my backside.
AC |
Yeah, sorry for sounding like a *beep* earlier. It's been one of those days.
Anyway, I guess I deserve the eye-roll b/c I'm aware the practice handicaps learners, but I do it occassionally. My justification (to myself) was this: I'm charged with taking beginners (who can neither read nor speak English) and making them speak sentences and participate in dialogues. They aren't false beginners, either, and the "English" words they do know are the ones that've creeped into Korean (버스, 오랜지, 룸, etc.) I've seen that, after 9 months of weekly classes---though not with me---the vast majority of students have not retained basic vocabulary nor the skills to build sentences (except for those who attend hagwon in the evenings.) I hoped it would accelerate their learning a little. And, to be fair, it did, as it quickly brought them up to speed. They use the hangeulization to pick up the basics, and they model the pronucniation and sentence stress after me. (Similar to a beginner student of Korean learning Seoul before reading 서울 . . . and of course if there is no Korean speaker, the student will mispronounce Seoul because English does not completely represent Korean sounds.). They shift their pronunciation away from 버스, 세븐, 오랜지, and toward a more approprate English sound. Because I don't have the time, I can't teach them much in the way of reading/writing, although we've started with consonants.
The camp here is meant to be an English-immersion center. They will build an "English Town" here in July, and the county office wants me to prepare students for it by doing dialogues and role plays based on real-life situations. The ones they gave me were obviously inappropriate for my students, so I made my own. For me it was choosing the lesser of two evils. When the Korean teachers do role play they have the students memorize very lengthy pieces, although the students have no idea what they are saying. There is no emphasis on word/sentence stress, and I honestly understand very little of what they say. I felt what I was doing with the younger children was focusing I see your point, though, and I'm glad you and others mentioned it. Though the hangeul was never the centerpiece of the lessons, I will take steps to find other ways of working through sentences. |
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OiGirl
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: Hoke-y-gun
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| Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 2:04 am Post subject: |
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| Why do you teach speaking in a way that relies heavily upon written language? |
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