Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mistermasan]

is there any research showing the ideal physical set up for an english conversational classroom? in previous jobs, the circle of chairs worked great and things could easily be split into sub groups. in the current job, all the students sit at one table. 8 kids at one table. packed in tight. they hang their school bags on the back of the chairs and the chairs are always falling backwards. no matter how i try to remedy the situation there are always three students who cannot see me and all i see is the back of their heads.
things are going well enough, but there is always space for improvement.

your thoughts are appreciated.

[teachergirltoo]

I had the same problem when I first arrived - huge room with huge tables with chairs around them, that the students would have to shout across in order to talk. I explained to administration this was not good for teaching communicative English and showed them information in a Jim Scrivener book that I have speaking about proper classroom layout for teaching English. This helped immensely and even though they were reluctant they allowed me to push the large tables to the side of the room and create small pods for the students to sit in. Find a good resource to backup your thoughts, and emphasize that you are making decisions for the welfare of the students and you may find that your administrators also will work with you in creating a better learning environment.

[KYC]

I took the TEFL online course and it had a chapter about this. I have my students sit in a U-shape pattern and stand in front of the classroom. All the students can see me and I can see all of them. This off course only works with small class sizes

[halfmanhalfbiscuit]

That's the thing.Scriviners saeting ideas are for small classes- in an ESL situation at that.

Korean (large public schoolsituation),there are a 2 main options,I found

-Use a big room and group them randomly into large groups.You'll have to gothrough the same crap every time.Turn around.Turn around.

A headache for class explanation,OK for moving round from group to group.Depends how much you expect the whole class to make an effort.if you've given up on the whole class being interested(and this really can be beyond your control from the get-go)this can be Ok for short group work.Each group gets a concentrated 5-6 minutes.

-keep them in their normal classroom seating arrangements.Get them to make groups of 4 as necessary.

Elementary and middle School I'd do the former,HS I'd try the latter.

Smaller classes,experiment.It;s good to keep them on their feet a lot too.

[OiGirl]

I hate the university classrooms with individual desk-with-attached-chair units. I'm constantly covered with bruises from trying to walk between them. I really, really like the tables-for-two, kind of like a lab bench. Two can sit at the table and two can sit on the other side (although there's little room for their legs.) Great for all kinds of small-group work in groups of about 4.

[teachergirltoo]

I teach public school - boys - 40 per class. I put them into eight pods of five. It is easy to move through the class and using a microphone the boys have no problem hearing since the room is quite large, and they can do activities easily. I find that Scrivener's suggestions can be adjusted up or down depending on the class, but I am sure there are many other great author/teachers with good ideas.

[teachergirltoo]

I should mention also that since the pods do not have a table I ask the boys to use their Korean-English textbooks as writing surfaces.