Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Derrek]

What are you guys teaching your kindy kids? By that, I mean my students are age 5 in Korean age.

Are your kids just learning the alphabet? Are they learning to write letters yet? Are they learning verbs and nouns? Are they reading?

I'm just trying to get an idea of how far I need to take these little critters this year, and what is realistic. We have gone through the "Let's Go 1" book, however the writing parts were a bit much for some of them. Depends on the student, of course. The songs were great, and they learned a lot of the basic concepts in the chapters, but I don't feel they are ready to move on to "Let's Go 2", given the different levels of the students. I'm sort of searching for new materials to feed them.

I'm going to keep up with the letter practice, and increasing vocabulary of Nouns and Verbs. Also, I'm getting into some basics using these words in sentences: "I can run. I am running. He is running...."

What is realistic, and where should I be concentrating from here? Thanks.

[anae]

Derrick,

If your kids are five Korean age, that would make them three or four years old. I don't know many early childhood professionals that would recommend using text books and doing a lot of sit down desk work. That being said, I know what it can be like to work in Korean hagwons and that may be what is expected of you. I had to use Let's Go myself my first year teaching kindergaten and I found it less and less useful as the students progressed, because it is not designed for that age group.

The best methods I found for teaching young children language is thematic units. Ideas like animals, seasons, community helpers, transportation, holidays, family can be made into a curriculum which includes games, songs, poems, chants, crafts, and other activities. Phonics and letter recognition can be integrated or additional part of the overall curriculum.

The last class of 3 year old I had learned all of their letters, almost all had learned the basic sounds of the consonants and short vowels, most had learned to read simple words,and a number were reading simple sentences and stories. I did do some writing practice to learn letter formation, but care needs to be taken because some kids this young may not have the small motor skills necessary and may become quite frustrated. Those that were ready to write were encouraged to do so and some learned to compose their own simple sentences. They had good grasp of everyday child conversations - ask permission, describe wants and needs, describe objects and events, retell simple stories, etc. They were using past, simple present, present progressive and future tenses. The thematic units and daily structure of calendar, sharing, games, crafts, storytime, etc. gave them a wide vocabulary of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

My teaching involved mostly naturalistic situations. I tried to teach language through learning about things in which they were interested, through play, and through daily activities. With children of that age, I tend to stay away from memorizing sentence patterns, vocabulary, and grammatical terms. Since I had them almost five hours each day, most of the language was learned just through repetition and their natural desire to learn to express themselves.

Your situation may greatly vary with the availability of time with the kids, materials, and how open your director is to developmentally appropriate teaching. If you can provide more details, it might be easier to give you a better idea what are realistic goals.

If you want specific ideas about games, songs, activities, or themes, feel free to PM me. If I can't have my own class, perhaps this early childhood degree can be useful for someone

[Derrek]

Thanks for all the great info...

I should have mentioned that some of the kids are age 6. The 5 year-olds (I have two 4 year-olds in korean age!) are mostly doing vocabulary work with me, and learning simple stuff with pronouncing vowels, etc.

My school is a really great one. Actually, the English I teach is only a part of what they are learning overall. As a school, we do the "theme" oriented stuff on a monthly basis (sometimes weekly, depending). It really is set up like a western school, and the students all come from upper-crust families. I'm learning a lot about teaching kids from being around here. It's my first year teaching kindy though, so I am sort of learning a lot as I go.

The classes have about 24 students in them (I only have 2 classes now -- awesome). Each class also has 3 Korean teachers in addition to me. At the beginning of the day, I teach them all as a group for 20 minutes. Then, we rotate the kids in groups of 6 through for different areas -- each area with an activity run by a different teacher. Activities are learning/fun oriented (not English). My area is English. I teach each group for about 20 minutes, then my class is over for me and I move on.

It sounds like I need to work away from getting too intense with paperwork. They totally love flashcards though. I've developed a program on computer that they use to practice their 10 words for the week -- parents love it. Most of the kids pass the test weekly.

[anae]

Derrek,

Is there any way you could get in on the thematic stuff? That sounds like an excellent opportunity. The kids already have a firm grounding of the concepts in their own language from the other centres, all you have to do is introduce the English.

Twenty minutes at a time is not much time to be too ambitious with the language goals. I can see where a naturalist approach is going to be tough without the necessary time to let language unfold. My last school, we had forty minute periods for each activity - library, storytime, sharing, music, language arts etc.

I would say that basic kindergarten vocab. of things such as numbers, calendar, weather, seasons, clothing, food, colours, feelings, family, community people, actions, animals, body parts will be the core from which you can build. I agree that flash card games and activities can be fun ways for them to practice vocab. in such a short time span.

Games will also be helpful to practice certain key sentence patterns that you are already working on. Make sure they have a firm grasp before introducing too many, but if you can see them needing to express a certain tense - by all means teach it right then! As for how to practice - You can always adopt old childhood favorites to fit your purpose. For example, I found chardes can be adapted to handle many a basic sentence type. What is she doing? She is swimming. Hide and Seek team can be adopted to work on prepositions - where did the teacher hide the ruler? Mother May I? also has endless possibilities.

Songs will also help to reinforce the basic sentence patterns. Let's Go has some pretty catchy tunes, but don't forget to look at old childhood songs as well. She'll be Coming Around the Mountain, The Bear Went Over the Mountain, The Wheels on the Bus all work for practicing different tenses. Writing them out on chart paper with key words or phrases highlighted in different colours can be helpful as the year develops. Eventually some kids will be reading some words and will make the connections. I knew a teacher who used the song Bingo to work with consonant sounds. That dog had some crazy names - kingo, dingo, wingo...

I also strongly recommend reading to kids simplified fairy tales. They repeat sentence patterns, so children can comprehend easily and books are a wonderful way to introduce vocab. The Learn to Read, Read to Learn series is excellent for beginner English. They use lots of everyday vocab. and repeat the sentence patterns. I personally really enjoyed using Who Will Help, a simplified version of The Little Red Hen. The kids loved chanting the sentences as we read and eventually we made our own play based on the book with homemade props. We put on the play at our school's yearly concert. Parents love to see their little ones up on stage!

As for the paperwork, I know that parents sometimes can expect it and even demand it. Try to keep a balance if you can, perhaps rotate learning activites so that writing is once a week or whatever works for you. You can get around some of the fine motor skill issues by working with the gross muscles first.

Here are some ideas off the top of my head:
Use their bodies to make letter shapes, trace letters in the air with big arm movements, use the white board (easier position for little kids) and board markers (easier to grip), use small sand boxes to trace letters in the sand, use the tops of margarine lids with white board markers and kleenexes as mini white boards.

Don't be afraid to write in front of the kids. Have them tell you a story about what they did on the weekend and write it on the board. Have them give you advice on how to make letters, how to spell their names, and later on how to write words. The more personal meaning it has for them, the more likely they are to learn from it and remember it.

Drawing pictures and writing words and phrases can also be a way to do developmentally appropriate writing. It can also help kids to tell stories. Who is this? What is she doing? How is the weather? How is she feeling? Who is with her? Kids also have a better chance of remembering the vocabulary and the tale when talking to their parents because it has meaning for them.

I hope I haven't told you too much of what you already know Let me know if I can be more specific.

[Derrek]

Nope, it's all appreciated! Thanks!

Actually, my school has TONS of resources for "show and tell" type learning, but it's all in Korean.

If you are curious to see my school, check out my website and see the "Chusok Video": www.seoulstream.com

Thanks,
Derrek

[whatthefunk]

I taught my kids to not eat their boggers. Ive made some progress in the 'not eating your crayons,' but there is still work to be done there.

[Derrek]

[crazykiwi]

i agree with whatthefunk! it took me at least 6 weeks to get my three yera olds to say "teacher bathroom!" but lets go 1?? thats a bit of a joke eh. these kids can barely read thier own names! haha, not dissing you at all, as you are probably asked to at least give this book a go but they have to be realistic. the extent of my teaching was, uppercase letters versus lowercase, colors, a few numbers etc. having fun was the main emphasis during my classes, so learning was secondary, in theory anway. as long as the kids were happy, my boss was happy. of course they learned, but it was games games games. thats what i did at kindy when i was at young, so why not eh? bye for now
crazy

[Derrek]

My school is more of a learning institution than the typical Hagwon. Also, they don't force me to do anything -- at least, not yet. I think they are happy with the way things are going (at least, I hope). The parents are all upper-crust types, (a few movie/TV Star kids, etc.). They appreciate their kids learning, and I like this job a lot, and want to stay. And many of the parents know English, so they have help at home.

Let's Go 1 is kind of hard for them, but I just stick to the main themes and concepts. The songs have been good. Of course, they're not going to get everything, but a lot of them have picked up on it.