Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jadarite]

I was informed today by the head English teacher (Korean) that 1st-4th graders are not allowed to write English in class. I can only teach writing to 5th and 6th graders. Is this correct?

If so, what do elementary school teachers do then? This might explain why their writing is not only illegible but also incomprehensible (outside of a picasso like feel).

[Otherside]

It's the same at my school.
What do you do? Just follow the curriculum,

Ironically, the same teachers who say "NO WRITING" for 3rd -4th graders are happy for me to teach 1st graders writing in the after school programme.

[yeremy]

Your head (Korean) teacher is half right and half wrong. Third grade students here do not write, it's true. The official curriculum CD set, et al, was written for an audio lingual approach. However, fourth grade students do copy but, and here is where your head teacher is correct, they don't really write.

Don't take it personally. Some of the Korean teachers here take the official curriculum very seriously, so everything is very black and white to them. Other Korean teachers are not so dogmatic.

[Ukon]

This explains why it's just all audio/video in the third grade classes when I'm not there...I just assumed my co-teacher was being a lazy B*** and letting the videos do all the work

[Mochi]

I had a similar situation in Japan. I was not allowed to teach writing to grades 1-6. It limits what you can do, but there are still plenty of options unless you teach the same kid every day. Check Genkienglish.net for scads of amazing ES games that work very very well. Off the top of my head, the gokiburi game is one of the best.

[Xuanzang]

It`s true but that`s why hagwons offer writing classes in place of the shoddy curriculum.

[thatwhitegirl]

They told me the same thing when I taught in China. I still asked for notebooks for each child, and had them draw pictures of the vocabulary words and write the word next to it. I taught 1st-2nd grades, alone. It is very hard to control 30 tiny 5 year olds without help, or the benefit of the notebooks.
At first I only had the 1st graders draw the pictures (very simplified stick drawings). But after a few months I had them write the words as well. At the end of the year they could write a whole sentence. And that helped with their speaking ability as well.

So I would say that you should smile and nod, and then do whatever you want.

[egrog1717]

I have my 3rd and 4th graders copy things down from time to time anyway... Mostly they just write in their textbooks though... (fill in the blank, copy the words, etc etc)...