Korean Job Discussion Forums

[d-rail]

i need some help/guidance. im at a public middle school and im finding that i dont have good material to structure some sort of syllabus. the former korean english teacher transferred to another school so a new one came in. the teacher that is new just graduated college and this is her first job at a school. my school is out in the country so the students level is very low compared to those in larger cities. like i said, my problem is putting some sort of structure to the semester. i have realized that i dont know how to put together units. i can write lesson plans fine but having a new topic/theme daily is too random. i need to be able to break the semester in chunks and focus on a topic for a few weeks at a time but coming up with a few weeks worth of lessons on the same topic is nearly impossible for me. does anyone have any advice for me? i need a syllabus and i dont know how to plan for a semester or entire month at a time.
thank you in advance to anyone that feels ambitious enough to help me out.

[ddeubel]

Planning is the art of commiting things to paper so you'll never have to do them...........

That said, you got to cover your ass. So many ways to plan, put the semester down onto paper.

You can plan by chpt of the text. You can plan by theme as you suggested (but harder to create any flow or logical order). You can plan by grammar points/tenses. You can also plan by arranging your syllabus around a certain teaching methodology, say "songs" or "dialogues"......

But what you have to do is draw out a flow diagram of some sort and roughly layout the dates/ lessons. Most important is to organize around objectives. State clear objectives ie. STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO ASK FOR HELP AND REPLY THANK YOU. Then structure a lesson or group of lessons/activities around that.

I tend to teach around verb tenses. Use of tenses. so these are my objectives and then I organize how I am going to teach them....either by a theme or by individual lessons..pg this and pg that....

I don't know if this helps much. My try. Also there are some good planning websites but unfortunately geared to the regular school system. I forget off hand the one I used several times, throwing together plans quickly to impress the V.P. and then never teaching those things...Ah! the joys of bureaucracy!!!

DD

just found it, the site for planning/rubric making was http://www.thecanadianteacher.com/tools/ontario/wizard/

[Matt DuGhee]

When I got here, I was given no guidance on what to do, and told not to work form the textbook. I had similar issues of having no idea what to start. I tried a few things, a couple of which bombed (this has been my first real teaching experience with children). I'm also in a very small town where the students have a very low english level.

One thing that I did that really worked was a month of "Describing People". I started with the face (taught parts of the face) and used simple sentences and adjectives (taught with a "matching the opposites" game). The next week, body parts, with the same adjectives and sentence structures (Jim has big feet, Suzie has long black hair, Jinho is wearing a red sweater). This brings in "Guess Who" type games, and you can have the class describe a face, and you draw it, which is a lot of fun. Then, add in clothes, and more games. You can call it back later, too, as review, and you can move the describing sentence structure to other things (pictures, weather, any object). This lasted me about 6 weeks, and the other teachers were pretty happy with it. It was a not a lot of work (even with making my own handouts and flashcards), but it carried me for a while, and was easy to plan.

If you're following the text, just disregard this whole post. ha!

Otherwise, I hope this helps. If you're interested, I can give you more detailson what I did, I think you can PM me.

[schwa]

Your situation isnt clear -- I'm guessing your classes are a supplement to a Korean teacher who is otherwise teaching the textbook?

I'm further guessing your school has expectations of you along the lines of helping students' speaking & listening skills with a bit of foreign culture info tossed in.

I approach a new school year with the observed knowledge that my kids (2nd-year middle schoolers) know a lot of english that they've had about zero chance to articulate in any meaningful way. Their productive ability bears no resemblance to the stuff they study & regurgitate on exams.

So I start with simple words -- games & activities that wake up their memory of vocab they already know or that translate easily from konglish -- & get them verbalizing. One word answers, okay! Small-group brainstorming activities are great, they'll surprise you with what they know. I do this progressively with nouns, then verbs, then adjectives.

Theme is less important than just getting them used to hearing themselves speak in english. Over a year you'll touch on all the usual topics anyway. If you lock yourself into extended thematic units chances are both you & your students will get bored. Mix it up. Be flexible. Do occasional quiz activities to revise.

Also from the outset I initiate a 5 or 10-minute small-talk intro to every class (without fail). The usual stuff -- What did you do on the weekend? etc. Simple questions, no wrong answers, talking about themselves. Calling on random students to stand & respond, then volunteers. If you do this consistently, with humor & sensitivity toward the individual students, they come to enjoy it. It really helps with their confidence.

Confidence-building is key. After a few weeks of noisy fun focused on words I start putting more emphasis on having them speak in simple sentences. They can do it. Its gratifying to me & I think satisfying to them. By the end of the first semester, I expect most of them to be able to listen to a question from out of the blue & articulate a simple response in a sentence.

2nd semester I try to build on that. I aim my activities to have them produce short simple narratives of 3 or 4 steps or more. Small-group work is important -- each student can contribute ideas & a mentoring student can put it into shape. Contrary to a lot of comments I see on this forum, Korean students have active & funny imaginations.

But we'll keep doing easy one-word & just-for-fun activities on occasion too. It keeps the stress down & keeps the lower level students engaged.

I know I'm not addressing the OP's question directly, but my basic suggestion is this: think of a school year as an opportunity to help a bunch of kids over their crippling selfconsciousness about speaking english. Think words, sentences, stories, in an easy natural progression. Meanwhile too they're getting a nice chance to hang out regularly with a foreigner which could well affect their world-view in profound ways.

[d-rail]

wow, all great answers. thank you so much. i was just feeling so overwhelmed with the task of coming up with an entire year of material. Now I atleast have some things to think about as a starting point. thanks!

[Ya-ta Boy]

I can't tell from your post if you are using a Korean English text or an English English text...or neither. My advice: get your hands on any text that is appropriate for the level of your students. Then look carefully at Unit 1. Make a list of what is being taught...grammar points and vocabulary.

From that framework, come up with a weekly (or whatever) lesson plan. It is my assumption that the authors of Side By Side and Interchange and the rest have tested their material in real classes and found the structure to be a workable one. I find that adding spelling, pronunciation activities, dictation, sentence-making activities (mostly as games) adds the desired variety to whatever the book has to offer.

By using the internet resources for activities, you will have a wealth of different activities. Save some for review activities for the following weeks and months.

My biggest pet peeve is the inability of Koreans to switch from their numbering system to ours, so about once a week I add a short math activity, so they have time to learn to think in the decimal system.

[Squid]

Simple advice:

Take (or choose) a base text you're happy with.

Divide the units (or chapters) into your schedule.

Integrate addendum materials.

Plan lessons according to objectives/aims per unit.

If you want to be a good teacher, then ask your colleagues what they're teaching each week and select your addendum materials accordingly where possible.

Time it correctly and it's like clockwork.