Korean Job Discussion Forums

celticjay · Joined: 27 Aug 2005

My Public middle school is having a test on whose classroom is the best and worst. We have one week and 20,000 won to buy things. I'm a male and I'm frankly without any good ideas on how to make my English room better. I'm in dire need of some artistic perspectives on what I should do. The only thing I've done so far is label all the objects in the class with their english name. Plus we have some of those lame ESL Posters with things like the days of the week, food groups, map etc.

HELP ME!

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004

Get your students to help?

I know what you mean - I have no artistic skill myself. Being a better drawer would actually really help with teaching EFL. If I draw anything it's usually more an ocaision for comic relief.

Hotpants · Joined: 27 Jan 2006

Exactly a/a - get the students to whip up some pictures and essays/poems that you can put on the wall. Get them to make things at home - parents often love to help out if there's some art project going on.
Hanging decorations from the ceiling can also have a good effect. Once I bought a set of paper lanterns and got the kids to write things on them with markers - revamped the teaching space entirely.
Rather you than me!

riley · Joined: 08 Feb 2003 Location: where creditors can find me

Do you remember what your classroom looked like in public school? If you do and you liked it, copy that.
My ideas would be to create a book corner where you make copies of book covers that you want kids to read. A grammar corner where you illustrate parts of speech (examples of nouns, show actions, diagram sentences). Make a student's work corner where students can pick their best and put it up. Basically, create themes for different areas of the room.
My suggestion is get a couple of eager beavers to help you out after school. Give them guidance and they can do the artwork.
I also found this, free stencils so you can make letters and such.
http://painting.about.com/cs/stencils/a/freestencils.htm

OiGirl · Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Location: Hoke-y-gun

If you want to go for "cute," and especially if color printing doesn't count against your budget, there are lots of resources at Jan Brett's website, especially on this page: http://www.janbrett.com/activities_pages.htm , where you can print beautifully illustrated basic English vocabulary.

celticjay · Joined: 27 Aug 2005

Thanks for the replies. One thing to note is I don't have a homeroom and thus no regular students. All the students are busy decorating their own home rooms, therefore I have no real man power other than myself.

Hotpants · Joined: 27 Jan 2006

Looking at 'oigirl's' avatar gave me an idea. Get some pix of yourself and your family. Blow them up on the photocopier - assuming you've got access to one. Laminate them and display them. Kids are sometimes pretty curious to see pictures of their teachers in different settings - especially if you've got some retro pix of you looking funky...