Korean Job Discussion Forums

[prince of hockey]

As school passes into a holiday stretch, I decided to give a word search with an opening talk of Korean and North American holidays. I did get criticized for this from a Korean co-teacher. I know that word searches aren't all that valuable but is there some merit for them?

[Yu_Bum_suk]

They're a low-yeild excercise, imo, but not a waste. They're useful for teaching spelling, can reinforce vocab, and students of all levels can do them.

I use wordsearches / crosswords when I go around to check the students' pronunciation in pairs, which I do about once a month. I put a crossword puzzle on one side (for the brighter ones) and a wordsearch on the other (for the not-so-bright ones) so that everyone has at least 15-minutes of stuff to do while I can each pair of students a minute or so of individual attention. It also helps keep them quiet.

[Woland]

YBS is full of good advice today across a number of threads.

Here's a way to increase the yield of wordsearches slightly by adding a litle extra challenge to them.

Use the wordsearch at the end of a unit as a way to review vocabulary. Design the wordsearch so that it includes some but not all of the vocabulary from the unit. Do not give students a list of the words it contains. They have to remember the words and find them. Make sure the puzzle also includes good fakes for the missing vocabulary. Have the students complete the wordsearch in 10/15 minutes, as you normally would and go over the results collectively (a projected answer key or what not). With one point for every right word circled and a half point off for every incorrect word circled, find the winner(s) and give them a small prize.

Then, give the students 1 minute (or maybe 2), working in pairs or small groups, to come up with the other vocabulary from the unit that wasn't in the word search. After time is up, have one group read their list and you write it up on the board. Ask each following group to read their list. As they do, cross out words that are repetitions and add their new words in a separate column. When each group is done, the group that has the most words that no one else thought of wins a prize. (Doing this in groups gives weaker students a chance to win by mixing them with stronger students.)

Another way to do this is use some closed set of words in the wordsearch, like the numbers from 1 to 10 (spelled out), but leaving one number out. Make the puzzle and give it to the students, telling them what the set is and that one number is missing. A prize goes to the first student who can find all the words in the puzzle and correctly identify the missing item. (I've done this with beginners with great success.)

I've mentioned giving prizes here, but I'm not a big fan of giving prizes all the time. I think it would be enough sometimes (most of the time?) to just acknowledge some student(s) as the winner(s), let them take a bow, give a round of applause, some praise for their effort and go on from there.

[Yesanman]

Another good way to make a wordsearch useful (if you have a computer in the classroom) is to have the students make the wordsearch. I have my kids choose their own words and type them into the computer. It's good for typing, spelling practice and it's fun.

[Pak Yu Man]

Koreans might think it's a wast of time...but when you walk by a kid and he's mumbling the spelling over and over while he's looking........

Make sure they have something to do with what you previously taught.
The high school I was at last year loved my lesson plans and stole them...along with the final crossword or word search.

Koreans also hate "watching movies" as a lesson plan.

Best plan I hade was a 4 hour plan involving "The Incredibles"
The K-teachers were giving me the evil eye when the kids watched that in class. At the end there was 10 questions.

1) Mom's name/super powers
2) Dad...dito
3) son...dito
4) daughter...same same
5) super villian (wow they learned a new word already)...dito

2nd lesson...talk about super powers and super heros in movies. get them to make up some super powers or powers they'd like.
The best power was "Super fart KO power"

3rd lesson...talk about symbols..on heros and around Korea. Bring in a bunch of pics.

4th lesson was a writing exercise about the above stuff.

Seriously try this one. Even the kids who never speak a work or try will give it their all in these classes ( then go back to being a log in the corner).


So what am I gettting at? Most Korean teachers can't teach English worth a damn. They should just STFU and mind their own beezwaks!

[riley]

What Pak Yu Man and others are saying is, it's all in how you use it, and how often. If you're the teacher who just gives wordsearches every lesson, then that's bad. I've used wordsearches as something for students to do after tests, something to help with spelling, and end of the class 10 min. remaining out of 2 hours activity.

[ChopChaeJoe]

For pre-literate and beginning-literate students, I'd say that word searches are valuable. After that, they're entertainment at best.

[jajdude]

If you have to give tests that students finish at different times, word searches or some other filler is good to have.

Crosswords are more easily defended, more knowledge of English is required.

Even Sudoku can be a filler I guess.

If you teach sessions and have finished the book with a few classes to go....

If you want 5-10 minutes of peace because you have a headache and the kids are not into regular study....

Plus some kids just love them, and once they figure they can get them from you, they'll bug you. It's not so bad to keep them happy sometimes.


Watch out for potential complaints from parents or your boss though, if you use them too much.

[bosintang]

You mentioned co-teacher, so I assume that means you are in a public school?

In that case, I think word searches are a waste of time. The students only get 3-4 classes of English a week and only one of them is with you. If the students are going to get anything out of having the opportunity to interact with a native speaker, that native speaker really needs to be efficient with his time.

But that being said...maybe I'm being too harsh here. I could see a crossword game that is set up properly being a good warm-up activity for a class and a good introduction to target vocabulary. But I would not let the activity take more than 5-10minutes.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[Gwangjuboy]

You can also give them hints like "it's south west" or it's "east." etc

[Kimchieluver]

I use wordsearches to reinforce vocab on a certain topic or theme. The Korean teachers can't/won't make them and the students love them. They KTs understand it is my class so I can do whatever I want. I don't recommend doing them to often. But you can do an entire lesson and then whip out a wordsearch based on the lesson and watch the kids try their hearts out to be first to finish.

[krjames]

I do the occasional word search. I do give them the words to find, in korean, so I feel it is a relevant vocab revision exercise. Nothing more. The words come from their vocab lists for the last month or two. Sometimes an older word that I feel is worth keeping in the memory bank.

[prince of hockey]

I have only given two wordsearches since March while I work at a public middle school. The word search gave me the opportunity to go around the classroom, check on each student, and have pairs read aloud the dialogue in the text. It only took place in the last 10-15 minutes of the class.
I did this as there are only 3 days between mid-terms finishing and the start of the holiday and really no time to start on a full week lesson plan.

[Old fat expat]

Word searches have some use. See signal detection theory. Its about perception at the L-3 L-4 levels (as I remember). But certainly not all the time.
I use them but provide pictures for the words that are to be found. That way they must recall words from images, recall the spelling, and then recognize the letters while remembering the word. The pictures/words always relate to the weeks lessons.