Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jajdude]

Have you taught these books before? We are using them now alongside other books, and I'm not sure if they're OK or not. They don't seem too bad for basic level students, but we're supposed to just do a page or two in 25-30 minutes and sometimes that involves stretching it thin. Korean teacher does the workbook, which I think is easier to teach, but anywho, listen and repeat kids, "Da la ha say yo."

[bixlerscott]

Yes, I use them like you do with the Korean teacher teaching the work book on alternate days. I am using them for elementary classes in late afternoon after kindy classes. Without multimedia in the classroom, it is tough or next to impossible to get them to understand what a lesson is actually about such as when reading about things in other countries. Of course, due to ESL's experimental nature, the curriculum is often written like we are teaching American kids, but in ESL, the curriculum needs are very different. Do you have the BackPack CD's? I do not,(been speaking it all and having students repeat) but the school is ordering the CD's today after believing I had them for the past few months and asking me again and again during the past few weeks if I had them with my reply each time being, no.

[jajdude]

Yeah we got the tapes, and students have it too. A few songs or dialogues they can listen to at home. It seems OK, some stuff is worth skipping, but some other parts are fine. Stretching the material is key for me as I'm supposed to go slow and the kids need a lot of repetition and practice to get it right.

It's similar to "New Parade" I believe, which many on this site have decried as lousy, but one has to make lessons as good as possible, obviously. Fortunately games are encouraged, and the school has pretty good resources.

[uofagirl]

I've been teaching this book at my hagwon for the last three years. It's a pretty decent text and the kids seem to like it for the most part. I see my kids twice a week for an hour at a time and we're suppose to finish one unit in five classes. Basically we have five classes(5 hours) to cover everything in the textbook and the workbook for each unit. For the lower levels this is a bit harder since there isn't a whole lot in the books but the higher level books have a lot to actually get through. Which Backpack are you teaching? I maybe able to provide some help...

[jajdude]

I'm teaching books 1 to 4. I have noticed that book 1 is a bit sparse, but after that there is enough for a class. Also the students have another book, so we can use that half the time.

[oneofthesarahs]

I really disliked the Backpack books. The songs were obnoxious and hard for a lot of my students to sing, although the chants were okay. And a lot of the readings in the later Backpack books (5 & 6) assume a certain level of vocabulary that a lot of students simply don't have. I found myself teaching a ton of vocabulary, when the focus of the books seemed to be reading comprehension. The one thing they have going for them are the two grammar pages in each unit. It was generally pretty useful grammar that fit in well with the unit.

A lot of the class projects and games are also very unrealistic, especially in a hagwon setting.

I was teaching each unit in three 50 minute class periods, but wasn't doing many of the projects/games and I didn't have the workbook either.

[Corporal]

Backpack (and New Parade for that matter, but NP is slightly worse) are meant to be taught to Spanish-speaking kids back home in the West. Thus, it's not that useful as a book for Korean kids here in Korea.

[sineface]

I used Backpack last year, they introduced it towards the end, and my kids absolutely loved it. To be fair, there was a lot of timewasting games centred around embarrassing singing marathons and how tongue twister-esque they all were, but they became my favourite classes to teach. My classes were really short at that hagwon (30 minute class then a 20 minute class then 10 minute break) so I'm not sure what help I could be at bulking up the lesson time, other than to try to link anything in the backpack book to other stuff they're learning about- discussions about moving house or drawing pictures and writing a little explanation about their own experience of whatever is being covered in the book. But I reckon that's obvious, right? I certainly spent the majority of my time having tangent style discussions so that they'f talk a lot, about whatever.That, or descend wildly into the boundless and undying shame that is singing, a lot

[I-am-me]

I've been using Backpack for most of my classes for the past 2.5 years. I really dont like the books for writing or reading exercises. Just not enough in them to last a 45 minute class. They are basically good for conversation classes which is what I end up doing. I also get other material from countless other books to add to whatever the subject matter is about. Not sure about others, but one backpack book usually last me a few months per class. I agree that it is meant for teaching hispanic kids. I always have to explain why you read Jose and Juan with an H sound. I rarely use the cd's or the workbook. They are about as dry as the book. If you like to talk or have a lot of experince in the world...Backpack is the book for you.

[b_canadian_eh]

I have taught most of the Backpack books at some time and found them mostly frustrating, especially at higher levels. They move too quickly through concepts and then you get to the next level and the kids are expected to have improved exponentially when really they only got a mere taste of the ideas... and they've forgotten it because it was so brief. I ended up supplementing it with alot of writing excercises and activities to prolong units and get them used to ideas before we moved on. Just my 2 cents.

[Greekfreak]

I'm well versed with New Parade and Backpack; both are published by the same company.

In my opinion, there's not much difference between the two, except that the workbook for NP is much much better, especially in regard to reinforcing newly taught lessons.

My only gripe about Backpack is their dry formatting; the book gets predictable after a while, and even the kids see it.

[plokiju]

I didn't mind Backpack all that much. Of course, I was pretty selective in what I did and would skip a lot of the activities and I didn't bother with the tapes. I usually covered about 5-6 pages between the text and workbook a class though. 2-3 pages would be a bit much to stretch though.

They were a lot better than what I'm using now. Up and Away and Finding Out are terrible. Mostly because I'm restricted to one or 2 units a week.