Korean Job Discussion Forums

[katydid]

I feel I am still relatively new to the teaching game at times, and while I feel I certainly have the personality and enthusiasm for teaching, I have to admit sometimes my orgnization skills leave a lot to be desired in creating my lesson plans. Of course I prepare, I would never show up to class unprepared where 82 pairs of eyes (including a hawkish co-teacher) are scrutinizing me. What I mean is I haven't had enough experience I believe to know what exactly works in a class and what doesn't, whether pairwork is better than group work or individual work and so on.
Anyways, I was wondering if anyone else is in the same quandry as me: what I would like to do is start up a thread where if a teacher hits a snag in their lesson they can use this thread to post what happened and receive *constructive criticism* on where others think the teacher went wrong and how they could improve or at least tighten up their lesson plan.
I'm all finished for the week, but if anyone would like to jump in here, feel free to post something.

[kiwiboy_nz_99]

Do you have a textbook, if so which one? Does it have a tape or CD with it?

[katydid]

Yes, it's called Middle School English 1-3 (how original ) published by Chunjae Kyoyuk, and it has CD-roms which are very helpful and audio CDs, which I don't quite care for. (Mainly cause now as I think about it, those CDs are actually tapes and the whole listen and repeat thing takes forever when you have to friggin rewind to an exact point...)
But I digress.
Like I said, I have ideas and I think my main problem is that as I have had no formal training, a lot of what I am doing is on the fly and I find out what works through trial by fire.

[VanIslander]

82? I can only imagine.
8 or 2 is what I do in hagwon heaven.

With such a large group I'm not sure what sort of interaction you could foster, but I think giving them smaller unit names, and maybe designating seating areas ("red team" members sit somewhere in their area every day) might facilitate groups having conversations in unison with other groups (in reading exercises, or answering yes/no questions).

I suggest this because when I have a barely manageable 12 students in a class, I have divided the class into groups and they had lots of fun in their subgroups.

You can be like an orchestral composer waving your hands, gesturing from one group to another to respond next.

Just an idea.

[schwa]

I assume that was a slip & you meant 41 pairs of eyes?

Putting the class into 6 or 7 groups has a lot of advantages. My kids are trained to arrange their desks before I get there. Same groups each time with only minor adjustments until you get a fairly equal range of abilities in each group.

I vary my material a lot but lessons do fall into a general pattern. 5 minutes of smalltalk with randomly selected students &/or volunteers. 10 minutes teaching some point & explaining the day's activity. 15 minutes small group work where they work together to complete the task (better students help lower level & its a good chance for me to walk around & make one-on-one contact). 15 minutes eliciting their responses to the exercise -- which I generally structure as group competition.

Do you teach the same lesson to several classes? First time through there are usually flat spots or bits that seem too easy or difficult, but with a couple of tweaks its smoother sailing from the 2nd time onward. With schedule interruptions the 'guinea pig' class seems to rotate quite regularly.

Short of sitting in on & observing a teacher's style & classroom dynamic, its pretty hard to suggest specific tweaks. You yourself will be the best determiner of what works & what doesnt after a while. Your bag of tricks will expand rapidly. In general terms, I'd suggest working on being a big presence in the classroom -- big voice, big gestures, circulating around the room. Keep things moving at a good clip. I like the orchestra conductor analogy above.

& dont forget humor. Act & look like you're enjoying yourself & make a point of generating laughter at least a few times per class. Seldom does a lesson go perfectly but a happy class will forgive the dry, boring, or weak parts.

[Zyzyfer]

yea, schwa makes a lot of good points; it's all stuff that i finally started to pick up on by the end of my contract at a middle school.

in concerns of group work versus individual work, it all depends on the assignment. with so many students, you should avoid a lot of individual work, or you'll find yourself spending an entire class getting very little accomplished. i usually did group work, unless it was a simple worksheet, and i did an awful lot of projects(because they wouldn't let me use that there book like you can).

you should definitely have a guinea pig class, where you test the boundaries of the lesson and find out what works and what doesn't. and don't let it always be the same class, either. it'll rotate naturally every so often, but you might need to occasionally manipulate it. the kids will know when you're not really prepared for your lesson presentation, and it'll probably break your lesson down.

good thread idea, though. there were countless times where i had lesson bugs and didn't feel like making a massive new post about it on here.