Korean Job Discussion Forums

[poet13]

I like spelling X's and O's for my small classes. Make a grid six by six or so, and challenge each student in turn to spell a word correctly. Make 3 or 4 in a row and you win. The helpful part of that game is I can tailor the difficulty level to each student. It helps keep it fair, and there are different winners all the time. The kids also really like the strategy challenge of blocking and leading...

[ChopChaeJoe]

I teach two hourly, daily classes -- a class for six year olds and a class for five year olds (or whatever that age is in Korean 7 and 6?).

I start the classes by asking their ags and how to spell their names. I continue with a few more questions -- favorote food, color, toy, their age. I change the questions every day, sometimes I add a new question when they are ready.

After that I teach them numbers 0-2000 for the six year olds, 0-50 for the five year olds. We go around the table, each stuent saying the next number with me writing it on the whiteboard.

Then I review the previous vocabulary and grammar structures in question-answer format. I might do an interactive activity such as having each pick a flashcard out of a vase and ask, what do you have? (" I have a ...") or I'll use a stack of happy and sad face cards along with a stack of cards representing foods (I like..., I don't like....) or actions (I can...., I can't....) and I'll have them make sentences with the card combinations.

Then it's on to their student books, a song, and then work in their activity books.

I find it helpful to make a lesson plan for each class in a checklist format, any activities I don't get to I just put at the top of the lst for the next day.

Most of these kids learn fast.

[SPINOZA]

[SPINOZA]

On hangman: I forget who I stole this from, but multiple hangman is the best. At the moment, with grade 1s (MS), I have 8 words (7 with one in brackets). The words I'm using are seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, with 'time' in brackets - obviously the word in brackets being a general concept and hint as to the others. Make them ask a proper question when guessing letters ("SPIN, is there an 'a'?" "have any of the words got an 'a'?") and if they want to guess a word...."SPIN, is that word so-and-so?". They get 2 points per letter (2 a's = 4 points) and -1 point for 'no letter'. They get 10 points if they guess a word correctly and -8 points if they guess a word wrongly. They get -5 points if they ask incorrectly. Boys v Girls. Each team may guess a letter once and a word (if they want to) once per turn (alternate turns, boys then girls then boys then girls etc). I give them a relevant questionnaire when the game's finished: how many seconds are there in one minute? How many months have 7 days? How many seconds are there in one day? blah blah.

On Bingo (they love bingo): write the language of the day at the top of the page ("have you..........?", "did you..............at weekend", "do you want to..................in the future?") and the bingo grid have full of words (16 words, 4 by 4, so there's plenty) like married, church, movie, Itaewon....anything really. They must make a good sentence and ask teacher the questions, teacher giving either a 'yes' or 'no' answer (or bigger answers if you wish - probably best) and a yes = circle and a no = an X. The students (pairs to save paper) with a line of Xs or circles (yes's or no's) wins an all expenses-paid holiday in Mauritius.

[robot]

[SirFink]

Show up right as class is starting. Turn on the a/c and hope it doesn't blow a fuse.

Open book and ask "what page are we on?" Some kid says "pageeee uh... here teachuh!" and points. I kind of wing it from there. Some days are great and some days the kids get bored. I get bored. Lots of kids show up late.

With my classes there's no grades and no tests, so most of the kids don't really give a crap. Which makes me not give a crap. The kids that do care put the effort in to learning and I reward their effort with extra attention.

Between classes I sit and glance at the book and put together some idea of what I'm going to teach during the next class. I do this while half a dozen 10 year olds wrestle me, scream in my ear, jump on my back, tug on my shirt, etc.

Resources are very limited at my school. It's basically just a book, a white board and some dried up markers. I'm certainly not going to spend my own money photocopying hand-outs, laminating flash cards, etc.

Oddly enough I really don't mind and my good kids love the heck out of me. There are days we just have a blast and I'm literally tearing up from laughing so hard (with them, not at them).

They get rigidly-structured lessons from their Korean (i.e. "real") teachers, and in horribly-pronounced English I might add. I knew coming here my main job would be to simply get the kids' accents improved and to just get them talking. They hired me because I'm a native English speaker with a North American accent (and a pulse) and I'm fine with that.

[Homer]

That varies depending on what level you teach, where you teach, type of classes (reading and writing, conversation...)....hard to say and hard to tell if it will be relevant to your needs.

[jajdude]

My schedule isn't too bad though I'm dreading the upcoming summer seesion and getting up early.

Now I have 7 classes per day MOn/Thurs and Tues/Fri. It's a little hectic with 40 min classes and just 5 mins between 7 straight. WEd. has a make up class for absent students and sometimes another class for a student who only comes on Wed. Otherwise it's prep day plus a meeting. I do phone teaching too, 2 or 3 a day or more on Wed.

One thing that I'm getting used to is teaching 5 straight classes of beginners on Tues/Fri, kids who can barely answer "how's the weather" type questions, and then going into the most advanced class, teaching a novel (now it's 'Around the World in 80 Days'), and shifting into real English. Sometimes that puts my head in a spin. Otherwise I'm not really complaining about the job. It's not perfect, but better than average i guess.