Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Eedoryeong]

3-2-1-

Okay.
Mondays 3:30-4:30
Wednesdays 1:30-2:30, and 2:40-3:20
Each time it's grades 4-6 all in one big room, plus the best speakers in grade 3

Will there be death or can this possibly be a successful English extra class?
Has anyone had mixed classes like this before and made it work?Is there any way in hell this can succeed?
That is the quest laid before me by my school.

I'm thinking Genki English songs, writing notebook, and most of it action speaking games. And not anything else. I'm thinking basically one game with terraced goals so everybody's achieving at their own appropriate levels.

They tell me back in the days of the red brick schoolhouse, it was all like this i.e. different level learners all learning at the same time (?)

Constructive replies only, please. Thanks

[chevro1et]

Sounds like death to me. How many total bodies are you gonna be stacking in this room?

[oldfatfarang]

[nomad-ish]

in my experience, it doesn't work. last year i had students from the same grade level, but various ability levels (think almost no english to almost fluent), and this year i had 3 different grades in the class.

don't put too much pressure on yourself, it's going to be too easy and boring for some and too hard for others, it's inevitable.

[Ninjaniki]

It's not bad in my experience. We have 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in my special class. They are all very bright. They must take a test to get into the special afternoon classes. I teach at one level. I don't teach for the 4th graders although some of them are better than the 6th graders. The 4th graders must work to the level of the 5th and 6th graders, and they usually excel.

[Eedoryeong]

thanks so far, folks.

the total number of casualties will be estimated at around 26, but the good news is the room has eight color-coded tables of four matching-color chairs each, and everybody likes being in there. So I think I'm going to tier abilities (using the same curriculum themes) by grade to color, e.g. pink tables, blue tables, yellow tables will be different levels of the same theme.

At my disposal I've got a large whiteboard multimedia display, a neighboring gym, and a whistle.

So I think I've got a chance anyway. I'm not sure if this can count as one of those 'if you imagine it you can do it' scenarios. Five days to do some pretty intense imagining. At least I know the material (songs, activities) I'll be teaching from.

[Otherside]

My experience has been hell.

I have two groups of afterschool classes. They are divided by age.

Class A. First and Second grade students (though this year they've kept a lot of the second graders from last year...so it's really 1st-3rd grade), with the odd kindergardener thrown in. 45 or so kids, the ability ranges from what you'd expect from a Korean first grader with NO english ability to kids which would give most my 5th graders (admittadly very low) a run for their money. There are also a couple of absolute trolls, who do nothing but ruin the class. My class is divided into 3 sections. 50% discipline (which is really keeping kids alive), 40% focusing on the kids who want to learn and 10% "group" lesson.

Class B. 3rd - 6th graders. Got about 20 kids in this group. Had some moderate success with them as I have a group of about 6 keen boys, and 1 girl who are keen to study. However, for the rest it seems to be a waste of time (there are those who after a year, still can't even write their name in English). I'm really struggling to keep them all interested, so I'm sorry to say I primarily focus on those who interested and the others are left behind. I know it's not ideal, but I'd rather have 8-10 kids who are learning and making progress, than spend all my time on kids who aren't interested at all, at the cost of the others.

The major problem is, that my school is a poor rural school and thus these kids don't attend hagwons etc. The school runs an afterschool program, which basically "looks after" the kids from their last class until 4:40. All these kids (of which 90% really don't want to be in school let alone in English) come to my classes + a couple of others (who are almost always, the "good ones"). Another problem is that these classes are a "double" so they are long and it's hard to keep their attention. Additionally some of the kids seem to be doing other activities so they roll in half way through, which means they've missed the "Teach" part of the class and are clueless for the rest of the lesson. They also cause a huge disruption. If I do take the time to re-teach the material, the kids who were there from the beginning get bored and run amok.

My co-teacher support was average last year, this year it varies from my co-teacher not showing up or if she does show up, she'll be doing work on her computer which happens to be the computer tied to all the AV equipment in the room, thus throwing any plans I had out the window.

[JJJ]

To Otherside.....A double for an afterschool babysitting class?? Jeez, take a 5 or 10 min. break. I'm at a middle school and the bell goes at the start of class, again 45 min. later, 10 min. again to start the next period and so on. Just like during regular class hours. If you don't have that, take a break anyways about halfway through. Both you and the kids need it and it's worth it. Your classes will probably go better. Good luck

[Otherside]

[Eedoryeong]

OtherSide, do you have any seating arrangements available to you? I'm banking on being able to strategically seat similar-level students with each other and giving as many self-directed activities before having a check-up and a big group game as fun reward for doing well.

Do you have anything like that at your disposal to help you?

[Robot_Teacher]

After school class means not listen, climb around on everything including the teacher, let out pent up angers, and just go nutz. It's tough to get their attention after school and they don't take a foreigner seriously as a figure with authority like they do a Korean teacher. Of course, I've been seeing a 6th grade class eat up a Korean teacher recently. In my afterschool class, they're literally beggin for candy and movies so next week the bingo games, candy, and movies shall begin as I was told I can do whatever I want. It's really a babysitting thing as they're at school until 4PM, but finish like at 2:30 or 3.

No sense in a robot teacher expending energy and effort when it's not demanded nor wanted and received.

[lifeinkorea]

I would never teach more than 25 on a regular basis. If a school tried to get me to do that, I would simply go into the teacher's room and wait until they have chosen 25 students for me to teach.

If they don't like that, time to go our separate ways.

[Eedoryeong]

Well I tried to make a tiered-content lesson plan for four grades at the same time last night and I can't do it. I'm going in today and demanding they split up the class.

There's also another factor. We have a non-native English teacher teaching only one grade of English at my school (I teach three grades) and we have to share access to the same classroom. She's been difficult about adjusting her schedule to accommodate the higher load I presumably would take on in addition to the three grades of students I currently teach regularly. So I've decided it's time to lay the smackdown today.

But I wanted to reply to Robot teacher's idea about the extra classes. Yeah it can be a babysitter's job but there are plenty of cases where it's not, where the foreign teacher does have authority in the classroom. In my case, speaking in Korean to homeroom teachers and parents about problems in extra class with individual students definitely makes a difference. Last semester I only spoke to one parent directly about his kid, as the homeroom teacher was a pushover and tried to suggest I'd have to bear it, which I refused to do.

[ardis]

I've had the bad experience of teaching 3 grades of mixed levels at the same time. It's not fun. At first, I tried to plan lessons that were easy enough for the younger kids and hard enough for the older ones, but it just didn't work at all. I had kids that were reading Harry Potter in English in the same class as kids that didn't know what words like "because" and "write" are. So in the end, I divided the class up into two sections--an advanced one and a beginners one. I had to make two different lesson plans and ran back and forth between the two groups to check answers, go over new material, etc. It was a lot more work, but that way, the kids benefited more. The younger kids got the simple exercises of vocab/grammar that they needed and the older kids got more difficult writing/reading/speaking assignments that kept them busy.

[TheUrbanMyth]