Korean Job Discussion Forums

[chotaerang]

i've got to teach some kindies and I have pretty much no experience doing it. The stuff that I've seen so far looks like the kind of useless stuff we used to do in Toronto schools to learn French - sing Frere Jacques a bunch of times and hope for the best. Is there anything more substantive than songs and games that I might use. I was thinking flash cards with a mission to teach these kids a certain number of verbs, nouns and patterns each month. Are there any ways to disguise this as something fun?

[chotaerang]

Sorry, while I'm at it, I also have one genius kindie class. As in I ask them the square root of 144, they stare at the chocolate prize, start shaking and then spit out '12!!!. I want to read something useful to/with them but the parents don't want fiction and I tried a kids oriented Einstein biography but it was too difficult conceptually. Many thanks for any book suggestions.

[caribmon]

It does not matter what materials you use. What matters is that you must keep them under control by constantly asking questions and giving stars on the board for good answers and TAKE STARS AWAY for bad answers. Make them, "whoever is quietest for the next 2 minutes gets 10 stars!!!". They will say nothing. You can talk for 2 minutes in dead silence and they sit there squirming, but saying nothing because they want those stars (winner gets chocolate!!). That's especially good if the head teacher is watching. Always give them chocolates if they get lots of stars by the end of class. You have to manage them like employees otherwise they will drive you nuts with yelling and screaming, fighting and whining. they like games, like pass the kleenex box. RIGHT! LEFT! DIAGONAL LEFT! 3 RIGHT! BACK! FORWARD. Make it real intense. Throw candies all over the place and then first one back to their seat gets a star. They like barking like dogs. They can make insanely accurate dog yelps. they like drawing on the board. They like doing speeches infront of the class. Give 5 stars per speech. If they are unfocused/ noisy, 5-4-3-2-1 PRAY! I make them go NAMASTE, first one to have hands in prayer gets a star. the like doing yoga poses. They like doing shaolin kung fu animal forms, youtube them. They like doing math in their heads, like 20+32, 10-4 etc... they like animal things. Draw animals on the board, give each student 20 seconds. they will draw the animals pooing and peeing on eachother. They like singing if the song is good / funny. They like doing crafts, but hate drawing. They like games involving dice.

[zipper]

[tomato]

Hello, chotaerang!

Here is my collection of threads discussing problems in teaching little kids.
At least 41 other people have been in a position similar to yours.
These threads contain most of my own ideas, as well as oodlums of other ideas submitted by other veterans of the battle.

Enjoy:
41
40 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 42.

[curiousaboutkorea]

As I'm sure you know, kindies like physical activity.

Play 'Simon Says'.

Sing 'Head Shoulders Knees and Toes' (mix it up with other body parts).

Nothing gets their attention better at the start of class than a round of singing 'B-I-N-G-O' ("Therrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre....... Was a farmer who had a dog....")

Play the quiet game. They catch on pretty fast that they are allowed to talk when called on/answering and asking questions, but not allowed to talk otherwise.

'Old McDonald'

'If You're Happy and You Know it' (do all sorts of stuff like 'clap your hands', 'shake your body', 'click your tongue' etc)

If they're really acting up, you may notice 1 or 2 students are still being quiet and listening. Ask the class to do a simple task like "open your book to page 5." Give a sticker/candy to 1 or 2 students who follow your command. The rest of the class will notice and will be quiet and listen immediately, in hopes of a prize (which you have no obligation to give, of course). Just simply explain why those 1 or 2 students got a candy/sticker.

I don't like to be overly-dependent on prizes, but they have their time and place. E-Mart has some really cheap candies. There's E-Mart (generic) assorted fruit candies in a giant bag, a few kg, for like 8,000 won. It'll last you for months; keep a few handfuls in your bag all the time.

I find each time I have a new kindy class, they're a bit weary of me and a bit resistant. Give em a few weeks and they follow along amazingly well.

[lifeinkorea]

I run into the problem where student do nothing but cheat. It doesn't matter if I try to scold them or take some kind of point away. They don't want to get an answer wrong, so they have this group understanding to give each other answers.

Any ideas how to break this up and make them think individually?

[kimchi_pizza]

wrong thread

[yoja]

[ddeubel]

All great comments above re: TPR, activity, songs.

You might get to Cheonan and attend Devon from Supersimplekids lecture (and have a great Turkey dinner) http://kotesol.org/. He has some great stuff. Google or find his player on EFL Classroom.

Also, I've replied very often at length and many others. Search "kindergarten" on EFL classroom and get lots of ideas.

DD
http://eflclassroom.com

[Gnod]

Yoja said:

[ESL Milk "Everyday]

Well... I can tell you what I've been doing.

I don't think you can expect them to respond to things 'more substantial' than songs and games... this isn't University. Plus, I bet that you still remember the words to Frere Jacques today... this is why all of the kids TV shows you probably watched as a kid were LOADED with songs and games-- because that's what kids this age respond to.

I bought a book of songs that came with a CD... you could probably just download some children's songs from the Internet, but I like to have the pictures. We sing the same songs over and over... I only do the easiest ones... and the same songs begin and end every single class, ('Hello' and 'Goodbye'), like theme music... it's also a cue that says that class is about to begin. They don't mind... some days they like it and get excited, some days they don't.

We sing 'Hello', then we either do another song, or sing 'ABC'... which is also sort of their cue to sit down. I bought a pack of those colorful capital letters from the 1000 won store, and every three classes or so I do a new letter and a few words that start with that letter. After that, we either do a story (I've done the same 3 or 4 stories over and over for the whole year-- they mostly just look at the pictures) and they act parts of it out, or I do a game that usually has something to do with the alphabet or the letter of the day (it's often hard to relate things closely to the letter of the day)... and then at the end, we do a worksheet (mostly coloring pictures and tracing and writing the letter of the day-- I've got a book of alphabet worksheets-- again, I had to buy it myself-- but they also have coloring sheets online if you do a google images search.

Sometimes we do a cut and paste activity related to the letter of the day-- if the letter is 'S' we would make a 'snake', or if the letter is 'T' we would do a tiger puppet-- stuff like that-- most of the ideas I got off the internet-- these often take the whole class to complete. Other times we have done collages-- for 'O' I made an 'ocean' backdrop and printed out images of sea creatures from the internet, and they colored them cut them out and we glued them all on the ocean backdrop together. I did a jungle for J, and I also did one for Spring (because it was spring-- I don't always follow the alphabet thing). For 'I' we made Indian headbands and jumped through a hoop to the tune of '10 Little Indians' while counting to ten.

Other things that have worked: letter BINGO (they really liked this-- you can make the cards online), Who's got the button (with the magnetic letters-- I tell you, they're so cheap and they're one of the best things you could possibly buy for this job-- get two and you can have spelling competitions in your other classes-- I've done this with third year middle school students using random higher-level words from their textbooks and they loved it)... I got a magnet and tied it to the end of a beating stick like a fishing pole and they 'fished' the magnetic letters out of a hula hoop 'pond', and finally I bought one of those 2000 won JENGA games and wrote letters on the ends of the blocks-- I made three teams with an equal number of blocks and called out letters, and whoever built the highest tower and used up all their letters first was the winner-- but if their tower fell over, that team lost. They were very excited about that one!

Last time, I got them to write out their names... and they actually liked it. I used only capitals because we haven't gotten to lower case yet. But they did so well that next week I think I'm going to get them to make cards for their parents.

Some of my students are higher than the others-- and my goal for the year is for them to know their capital letters. If they help each other (cheating??), I don't make a big deal out of it-- I never test them, and it doesn't bother me if they don't know. Everything I do is only to encourage them.

I used to give out stickers, but more recently I don't use anything, except sometimes high fives... and they don't seem to mind. Sorry, but if you ask me candy is not a good idea for kids this young... though I think that first response was probably a joke-- because it did crack me up.

I have a mixed lower-level JK/SK class (some of them are VERY young) and I teach to the middle. I live in a rural area so anything I do, so long as I try to help, is usually good enough... this may be different elsewhere.

Hope this helps.

[yoja]

[Hightop]

The thing that I found worked the best with kindy kids was routine. Every day the same routine. It maybe be hard at first but establish a set routine that you do every day. At first you may want to write it on the whiteboard but after a while it will become second nature to them. For example, 9am writing practice, 9.20 singing 9.35 reading practice 9.50 drawing time etc etc soon you will come to class and they will already have their writing books open and be ready to go. You know they are really into routine when it is 9.35 and you say drawing time and they say no teacher now it is reading time. Another hot Hightop teaching kindy tip.....when you are teaching them to read make sure they follow the words with their fingers when you read it and when they read it.

[jhuntingtonus]

The Alphabet Song
Singing other songs
Just plain playing with them and their toys, throwing in the name of things in English once in a while

Kindergarten is more about getting them happy with the concept of school than anything else - having them be happy seeing you, if you look Western, is valuable all by itself.