Korean Job Discussion Forums

NCdan · Joined: 17 Apr 2009 Location: Bucheon

To give the important details: I work at a private school; I teach mostly kindergarten; I have a couple of classes that are making me go crazy because I can't figure out a disciplinary method that the kids actually care about. I've done and am doing: stickers, time outs, talks to the director, grabbing them and screaming in their faces, etc... None of these seem to have any effect on two particular classes. The school thought it would be a good idea to dump all the problem kids in one class and to give that class to the new teacher for about 3 hours a day. I also have an exceptionally bad class of really little kids who can understand almost no English. I am seriously at the end of my wits here; I have to restrain myself from punching some of the kids in the face. I can control all my other classes just fine, but these two classes are beyond horrendous -- it's like they gave all the ADHD kids who don't have meds and whose parents could care less to me. So, does anyone have any suggestions? Btw, the administration is not interested in changing my classes or taking students out of them. Thanks.

chris_J2 · Joined: 17 Apr 2006 Location: From Brisbane, Au.

What worked for me was getting photocopies of pictures, & a separate sheet of letters. eg 'A' is cut out & pasted on a picture of an apple, 'B' on a banana & so on. If you don't trust young kids with sharp scissors, guillotine or cut them yourself, beforehand. There are glue sticks, crayons, & paper all over the floor at the end of the class, but that's a small price to pay for having a little quiet & order. Previously, they were jumping from desktop to desktop like monkeys, & tearing everything to bits. I once found the letters S, A, S, M, U, G, & N on the floor after a class. No prizes for guessing they were removed from the Samsung aircon unit.

If they're bouncing off the walls on a rainy day, spend more time on TPR.

http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/classman/

http://www.sparklebox2.co.uk/literacy/

I'm going to try this song, too. Early on in the class, before the stampede for the door:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b4gSs0KhIU&feature=channel

tomato · Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 12:24 am Post subject:

Hello, NCDan!

The first time I had to teach kindergarten, which was 10 years ago,
I felt the same way you do now.

Here is a list of threads having to do with little kids.
At least 39 other people have been in your position.
Most of my ideas are in these threads, as well as oodlums of other ideas submitted by other veterans of the battle.

Enjoy:

39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31
30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The next time someone asks, this will become thread number 40.

NCdan · Joined: 17 Apr 2009 Location: Bucheon

Good information so far, especially in all those links. I've already found some stuff that I might try out. But, the biggest problem I face is the fact that this kindergarten is extremely... ack... regimented. That's right: I have to cover X pages every day, and I also have to do X amount of workbook pages every day. Not fun. On top of that, every kid absolutely, positively, HAS TO have every workbook page filled out perfectly with all the right answers by the end of the period -- in their own handwriting.

The testing this school utilizes sucks, which means that I have have a couple of brilliant kids who are totally bored, a couple of kids who are the perfect fit for the material we're covering, and a couple of kids who are hopelessly behind. I'd love to implement all these fun ideas I'm reading about, but I don't know if I have time; just finishing the freaking lesson and getting them to finish their workbooks every day takes up 99% of the available time. If I could just spend less time on discipline I could implement more fun things.

At this point I'm feeling like I just want to finish the year without getting fired (I've already been lectured by my supervisor multiple times in the three months I've been here for failing to meet all kinds of ridiculous goals), and then get the heck out of Korea. I suppose that's a bad attitude, but if I could just get my main class under control I might not be totally annoyed and exhausted by the end of the day, and I'd also stand a much better chance of meeting all the ridiculous demands the school places on its teachers. I'll look at the stickies more later, but if anyone else has any suggestions don't hesitate to post them. Thanks.

Hornbill · Joined: 09 Sep 2009

blackjack · Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Location: anyang

I have never taught kindy but this works for 1st year elementary.

It seems like you are making a major error in that you are making a you vs them situation. You have to turn them against each other and let them self police.

Divided them into two teams (left and right hand sides of the class room) give them names (I use Lions and tigers). When the class starts don't say a thing, raise your hand and extend your fingers one by one till you get to five, If anyone is not paying attention to you give that team a minus point, repeat till the class is quiet, explain the rules (if you want). Every time someone does something good give that team a plus mark, something bad a minus point. At the end of class total the points.

Here's the kicker I don't give rewards or punishments, what I do is let the winning team leave the class first, while the losing team has to remain seated till the winning team has left the class room. Once every couple of weeks to a month i might also provide a small reward or punishment (stickers/cleaning). Kids are in insanely competitive that all it takes is to beat the others for it to be enough. An important note tho is don't let one team fall too far behind otherwise they start thinking "I've lost anyway so..."

I have my classes so well trained that all I have to do is raise my hand and I hear minus-su, minus-su and within seconds the room is silent and everyone is paying attention to me. You will get one or two rebels that don't care but because you are "punishing" his team they will enforce it.

This way you can get what needs to be done while still being the good guy

good luck

chris_J2 · Joined: 17 Apr 2006 Location: From Brisbane, Au.

dalem · Joined: 30 Dec 2008

It's all about building a relationship with your kids. Yes, they are just in kindergarten, but they have the intrinsic need to have that teacher-pleasing relationship. I'd go so far as to say that all kids have that... some it's just buried (much) deeper than others.

Best way? Sit and eat lunch with your kids a time or two. This is a low pressure time, where nothing is expected of you to teach them. No workbooks, no expectations, no power struggles. You simply spend time with your kids, and eat some lunch together. A co-worker had trouble with his pre-kinder class... it really worked wonders for him.

NCdan · Joined: 17 Apr 2009 Location: Bucheon

The idea of splitting the class in to two teams seems like a good idea to try; I've just been handing out rewards and dishing out the discipline on an individual basis at this point. If I can get the kids to understand that they will be rewarded and punished as a team, hopefully the bad kids will help to get the really bad kids to behave better (sorry, I have no good kids, haha). The idea of eating lunch with them might be a good idea too. My Korean co-teacher (who I never teach with) eats lunch with them (she has to), so maybe I can eat lunch with them one or two times.

The other class I really can't build a relationship with because I only see them 2 days a week, and they are the youngest age group of preschool kids (I don't really understand Korean age and grade level; I think they have like three years of preschool and then two years of kindergarten -- what the heck?). And I have 15 of them (give or take), so it is a bit too large to divide the class, and plus, they wouldn't understand it anyway. It's just 25 minutes of insanity. Now, you're probably thinking 25 minutes is nothing, but with those monsters it's an eternity I tell you... Confused

seonsengnimble · Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 8:00 pm Post subject:

Here are a couple of techniques that I found to have worked for me.(These may have been covered in the threads linked to by Tomato, but I don't want to read through 39 threads.)

1. Class captain. Set up a class captain system which rotates every day. Each day, one student is the captain, and another can be the commander, liutenant or whatever you choose for the vice captain. The captain's job is to make sure everyone is listening and following directions, and the commander helps the captain. The next day, the commander moves up to captain and another student becomes the commander. If the captain is behaving badly, the commander gets moved up and the captain is put on the end of the que. If anyone misbehaves, they get placed on the end of the que. This works pretty well because kids love getting to be the person with authority even if it's only the limited authority granted to them by being named captain for the day. You can also have a lot of fun with this one. I extended the ranks to the entire class and also used this system for lining up for the bathroom/lunch etc. I used a modified Star Trek system with chief engineers, doctors, counselors, ensigns and cadets.

2. Jar of balls. This one only works if the other teachers get on board with you. Each class has a jar, and you put in one or two balls each day. At the end of the month, the class with the most balls wins a prize. You can do lots of stuff with this one. If the class is bad, you can take out a ball or two. If the class is terrible, you can take out balls and put them in another class's jar. Another teacher at my school did this, and the really well behaved student in his terrible class ended up throwing a chair at the student whose behavior resulted in the removal of the balls.

polarbear119 · Joined: 31 Aug 2009

Clearly you are not scary enough.

cruisemonkey · Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 12:09 am Post subject:

Hornbill · Joined: 09 Sep 2009

seonsengnimble · Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 1:28 am Post subject:

Kaypea · Joined: 09 Oct 2008

... glad I don't teach kindergarten anymore Smile

I taught at a kindergarten with an activity book that they had to do everyday, so I thought I was doing the right thing by keeping them in their chairs for 20 min, to teach a seminar type lesson and then to force them to do the book...

And my class was awful... until I changed tactics. I minimized desk time to roughly 10 minutes per class (or sometimes 2 sessions, with a break in between).

Class management got a lot easier-- and they actually I think ended up being able to do more pages per class-- when I started teaching the lesson on the carpet, doing interactive phonics games with alphabet cards, or erasing games with the playtime whiteboard, stuff like that. Then, we would have 10 minutes of workbook goodness! It helped to let the kids come up and take turns writing answers on the board... so you'd have all the answers there for them to copy. Plus, they would be engaged because little kids love writing on the board.

Good luck!

Remember... kids that age don't need a lecture. Try educational games, daily repetition of phrases, and during workbook time, it's all about writing on the board and copying it. They don't really need to understand each page, they just need to do it.