Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Kristsoy]

Dont worry about it, I was just giving my opinion not asking for an apology. Im not even a real teacher like many of us here, Im someone with a business degree who couldnt find a job 3.5 years ago and gave up and moved to the other side of the world from Canada.

My school does tutoring for the slow kids too, but it doesnt seem to help them, the parents are anal too. One of my korean co-teachers called one of the kids parents and the mother's reply was why are u telling me this, you're waisting my time calling me, it's your problem that my kid doesnt understand, which is an interesting cycle because I think it's the parents fault and they think it's our fault and I guess it's gonna stay that way.

She yelled at her for calling to tell her about her kids lack of progress of whatever, the korean teacher wasnt very happy and ended up quiting weeks later.

[Eazy_E]

[quote="osangrl]
Of course i went to Uni...and puzzles building vocabulary. Ok, sure. Keep telling yourself that. Its a waste of time. My last school we had this fat canadian girl, that was the laziest, most useless excuse for a teacher, she had "puzzle day" every friday....[/quote]

I guess the fact that she was fat made her a much worse teacher.

I agree that the puzzles are a waste of time if the students have never encountered the words before, but if they have seen them in the course material, using the words actively in a puzzle or a game helps it to stick.

Please don't dismiss a teaching strategy just because it has the potential to be misused.

[chronicpride]

[Guest]

[discostar23]

osangirl didn't you read the topic "want a lazy afternoon"???
Really when has a puzzle harmed the teaching process? Just because your fat co-worker turned you into some sort of teaching expert doesn't mean us as teachers don't deserve a break once and a while.

[Crois]

I agree with Osangrl and discostar23 on this.

Puzzels are waterbaby and the kids might find them boring. But the teachers do need a break everynow and then.

Havent used one for over 4 months now. No point. Can entertain them some other way.

[Wishmaster]

I've been using word searches for years. When I think how much money that I've made(equating to the time spent on them) and only spending a dollar or two on a big, fat book of them...it's exciting. They take up so much time and I still get paid as if I were actually teaching. Take advantage of it. Why work yourself to death here? English is considered a sideshow anyway. You can be a "real" teacher all you want...but the truth is that my salary is probably comparable to most of the "real" teachers that are in Korea. I just don't have to work as hard.

[Kristsoy]

the kids find the books boring too but they still have to do them because mommy said so, Im trying to put alittle thrill into their pathedic repetitive lives

[oneiros]

I only use wordsearches when I'm oral testing outside of the classroom, thus leaving the rest of the class unsupervised. Since they only get to do them once a month, its a special treat, so it generally keeps them nice and quiet.

I used to work for a big chain school, and their curriculum workbooks were full of wordsearches, bingo games, colouring, and cutting and pasting. We all agreed that they were the most useless thing we'd ever seen, particularly since we had 6th graders and middle school kids using those books.

[OiGirl]

Wordsearches and other puzzles can be a part of a good English education program. This is an activity that reduces "teacher talk time." As others mentioned, I use puzzles in situations like after a test when some students are still finishing, or a day when I am sick and can't talk but have to work.

A little bit of effort on a one-time basis makes the difference between killing time with puzzles and developing spelling and vocabulary skills with puzzles. Just doing a puzzle out of the book is killing time. If it is thematically related to your lesson, you can pretend you are doing something useful. If you cut out the word list before you copy the puzzle and just give the students the topic, you are getting somewhere.

If you use Puzzlemaker or another program to create puzzles that recycle and review the language you are teaching in class, then give categories, clues or pictures for the words they need to find, then the students are actually learning something! With Puzzzlemaker, it is easy to make up a number of different arrangements where the same words are hidden in different puzzles, so students can't just copy from their buddy.

I think puzzles are an important item in an experienced and effective professional teacher's toolkit. When used effectively (i.e., tied to the curriculum, not every class!) they can be motivating for students. And it does happen that giving students puzzles to work on can give the teacher an easy class period.