Korean Job Discussion Forums

[genaureliano]

Hello all. I teach 6 half hour classes of Kindergarten a week. The class levels range from serious babysitting to actually language teaching. I've just started teaching them and have been doing flash card activities and conversation drills. The school that I work for is a bit silly, I think because they don't want the kids to do anything with their hands while I'm there. Strictly conversation so that means no writing activities or coloring activities a at all. I want to add a bit of variety to my routine and I appreciate any advice regarding classroom managment for the kids that can pay attention for approximately 2.4 seconds if I'm lucky and advice regarding actual English teaching activities to these youngsters. Cheers.

ga

[alabamaman]

[ontheway]

There have been a lot kindi threads. Try searching. Especially look for "Tomato". He has a lot of experience and good advice.

[PaperTiger]

Songs, baby...gotta do songs. Keep in mind I never thought anyone would pay to hear me sing. Fingerplays with the little ones is good too, some classes would rather do nothing but songs. If you have a nice Korean partner or ally on staff, there's a site on Naver that has little movies that show you how to teach all the fingerplays and dances that go along with many songs and rhymes.

Stories. Get books. Read the stories and have them repeat the words with you. Then, since you had the good sense to buy a book that has big pictures, you can hold it up and ask them what the English words for the individual images are. Good times.

Do you have a space to play games? There's quite a few games we played as kids that involve speaking simple words and phrases at the correct time. TV tag. Red Rover. Duck Duck Goose. About.com has a long list of games and how to play them, look under "outside games" in their browser search engine.

If they know the alphabet get them to tell you words that begin with a certain letter and write them on the board as you go, you can keep score and everyone really digs getting points.

Hangman and variations of the game get kids to remember the alphabet. One variation was "Sharks"...I'd draw a big swimming pool and a little guy inside, when they got a wrong letter I drew another shark, after they got a certain number of sharks they lost. Monkey tree, same idea.

Flashcards. Play "Memory" using flashcards, it could be as simple as asking someone to tell you what a card is, or matching cards.

I dunno, buddy...teaching without books is like learning to drive but never learning to park. Lame. What kinda school are these charlatans running? Their only overhead is salaries and rent? What a screw for all concerned! I hope their not reaming you as bad as they're reaming the parents...do they even know they're not using books? Dude, that's totally un-Korean, not using books.

[Hotpants]

Yes, there have been a lot of kindy threads if you search for them. My 4 curriculum areas for kindy: songs, art, storytelling and play. If you have access to a class computer, there are many animated songs and stories that you can use with the class. You can also introduce single letter phonics - but I would insist to your manager that you need a book which combines phonics with at least coloring-in activities. Perhaps get a couple of books to show him, or present him with a curriculum and suggest the marketing advantages of a more rounded curriculum.

Check my link below for a list of good kindy sites (Look under 'K' for 'Kindergarten'.) PS - I spent 3 years working in a kindy, so I know how it goes.