Korean Job Discussion Forums

[marlow]

I have a co-teaching presentation coming up in May, and I'm looking for ideas. The teacher I work with and myself have a good personality match, so there are no worries in that area. It is for middle school, but I'm not sure which grade I'll be using yet, although probably it will be first grade.

I just started thinking about it seriously, and have only a general idea of what I want to do.

I certainly want most of the activities to involve the students speaking in small groups, or speaking as freely as possible. However, since this is going to be an open class with an audience, there needs to be a strong teacher portion to the class. There will need to be lots of high quality materials and teaching aids.

The actual roles my Korean teaching partner and I take is also up in the air. The talking we do will need to be scripted so that we interact smoothly.

I'm open to any ideas, and to hear about anyone's past experiences with this sort of thing.

Thanks,

Marlow

[crazylemongirl]

These things are complete dog and pony shows. You arne't being judged on the quality of your teaching per say but rather how you present it. I would make sure that you use as much IT as possible and maybe a song or two as those are the things that the other teachers love. You then go into a room and unless your class competely sucked then they will say nice things about you.

Maybe pitch your lesson slightly easier than you would normally so that the kids don't freak out.

In the end they may reherese the class to death. I'm not keen on those types of classes. As they should try and give as accurate representation as possible of your actual teaching. But in the end these things are a compelte waste of time.[/quote]

[canukteacher]

I have done several of these. My advise is DO NOT rehearse. Good teachers do not need to rehearse. You should let your audience see an authentic lesson. That does not mean that you shouldn't be prepared. A well prepared lesson does not have to be rehearsed. It should come naturally.

Good luck.

CT

[plattwaz]

Although I agree with canukteacher about not rehearsing, my experiences have been that the pwers-that-be-above-me have always MADE my class and I rehearse....we used to have to rehearse 3 or 4 times a WEEK for 2 or 3 weeks before the open class.....then won-jeong-nim would come and watch the rehearsals and tell us what was to be changed....total micro-mangement, down to details about what one sentence I may have said that she did or didn't like.

It is even worse with younger kids because by the time the "show" comes, they are SOOOO BORED with that lesson that they refuse to do or say what they are supposed to, and they have come up with so many different ways to plot out "funny" things to do instead...

My solution was always to "rehearse" to managements' satisfaction and then come the day of the Big Show, throw in so many changes that it kept the kids on their toes and had the "real" lesson aspect to it Always worked like a charm....

I suppose that doesn't help the real poster though, if you did that to a partner teacher, they probably wouldn't be to happy.....

[Derrek]

You will have to rehearse. You're asking for trouble if you don't.

The school will be all concerned about it, and if they don't see you preparing, they will freak, start getting paranoid, and rumors will fly about how you are a lazy teacher, etc.

My co-worker prepared a lot of the class (she pver-scripted everything) and we had some difficultlies at first because I'm more of an "outline" rather than "script it" type. She even wrote every joke I was to say... ugh.

We practiced about 8 times over 2 or 3 weeks. We pulled the same class in every single time, and yes, the poor kids were bored with it. We were very select about which class we chose -- knowing which class would handle it best.

Have fun.

[crazylemongirl]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

It's Korea so you might as well be more concerned about what's in your wardrobe than what's in your desk. A trip to the barber might also help compensate for other faults.

[Ekuboko]

My team-teaching demo lesson is coming up very very very soon!

After attending a few demo lessons last year, I told my English teachers and VP that ours would not be rehearsed to death. They agreed with me and said they wanted to see something fresh and interesting.

So.... as it happens, I ended up writing the plan and I have been ordered to play the main teacher and my co-teacher is supporting me, even though I don't think that's right (looong story).
The VP has approved the plan and told me that we would 'rehearse' it once -- but with a different class that it is scheduled to be demo'ed on. I'm pleased about that!

[marlow]

I'm still thinking about this. I want to make the co-teaching aspect innovative and noticable. I want to make sure the presentation shows that co-teaching is superior to just a foreign teacher or just a Korean teacher.

[crazylemongirl]