Korean Job Discussion Forums

MissMaggie · Joined: 23 Jan 2009 Location: Jeju

So I am expected to teach first and second grade classes tomorrow. The school is horribly unorganized, but follows the national cirriculum. I have the teaching guides in English for grades 3-6, but they apparently do not exist for first or second grade. The problem with this is that the textbooks are all written in English, as is the teaching guide, and for the life of me, I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do when the teacher says to teach pages 4 and 5, and there is only 3 words on the pages: "Let's sing: Hello!". First off, I don't have any sort of CD-Rom, and I have no idea what this "Hello" song is. Secondly, it is supposed to be followed by some sort of activity, but from what I can understand, it's some sort of Bingo game, but with some sort of writing on the cards. If it's in English, the kids won't understand, they're years away from reading. If it's in Korean, I won't understand, and I have no idea how to lead an activity without knowing how it works or what is being written.

...as of now, my plan is to just show up and do what the Korean teacher tells me to, and to hell with her if she expects me to have somehow prepared a lesson plan without knowing what I'm supposed to be teaching or having the equipment with which to prepare said lesson plans.

Does anyone have any advice on teaching 1st and 2nd grade elementary school without being able to read the cirriculum?

Snowleopard · Joined: 27 Jul 2007

If it follow the national curriculum, there should be a copy of the English guide book on the GEPIK website. It's in an hwp format so you probably have to download it at your school.

MissMaggie · Joined: 23 Jan 2009 Location: Jeju

I have only found grades 3-6 in English. I don't even have the Cd-rom that comes with the textbook.

Juregen · Joined: 30 May 2006

There is no curriculum for 1st and 2nd grade

I have looked high and low, until my secretary pointed out it simply doesn't exist.

nomad-ish

Rory_Calhoun27 · Joined: 14 Feb 2009

I feel your pain..... my elementary school shrank from 18 classes, 1st-6th to one class of each, so I get to teach grades 1-2 as well as extra 3-6th grades.... Isues of longterm planning come to mind, as I would imagine I could at least share some of the really big elem. schools in the area if they knew this was on the horizon.

the book in use now for grades 1-2 is "Balloons," which is about as non-verbal as they come.... and I'm including the teacher's books in there.... so vague, even my new coteacher is lost on how to apply them in a meaningful way.

MissMaggie · Joined: 23 Jan 2009 Location: Jeju

The national cirriculum drives me insane: How am I supposed to spend 2 hours or more of class time on teaching these kids how to say Hello? There are only so many different ways you can present the same damn word!!!!

icnelly · Joined: 25 Jan 2006 Location: Bucheon

D.D. · Joined: 29 May 2008

If you look on youtube ther is a bunch of videos in a series called silly symphony which is Disney stuff.

I have kids watch them and we stop the video a lot and make a mind map. I try to get them to generate the words, but fill in some new ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APWOu41R4mg

Did this video today and the kids liked it from grades 1 to4.

Young kids learned the sea creatures and older kids started speaking sentences about the actions.

They also liked this Tortoise and Hare video and it stimulated a lot of talking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DrKmpuKhKE

Binch Lover · Joined: 25 Jul 2005

There is no national curriculum for 1st and 2nd grade.

I assume you will only see them once a week. If so, there's not a whole lot you can achieve. Make a list of what you want them to learn i.e. introductions, numbers 1-20, colors... and find easy songs that are on those themes. Use the songs to build interest and then look on the internet for games and activities that allow the kids to practice the language. There are tons of things you can do with simple flashcards for example.

A good way to find ideas is to buy a copy of a teacher's guide for a basic ESL textbook, i.e. Let's Go Starter, Hip Hip Hooray 1, etc.

Songs: http://jr.naver.com/english/list.nhn?id=dongyo&cid1=2

Flashcards: http://www.mes-english.com/flashcards.php

As for your regular 3rd-6th grade classes, there are many resources available. I don't have the links handy because I don't work public school any more, but you can start at http://eflclassroom.ning.com/ and search the resources and the gepik and smoe groups.

Good luck!

semi-fly · Joined: 07 Apr 2008

Can I ask why there is no curriculum for first and second grade? They can't really expect teachers to simply play games and sing to students, can they?

MissMaggie · Joined: 23 Jan 2009 Location: Jeju

As I understand it, they keep changing their minds about whether to start English education at 1st or 3rd grade. The cirriculum exists, just not in English.

Juregen · Joined: 30 May 2006

saw6436 · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Daejeon, ROK

I have the teacher's guides for both 1st and 3nd grades. Pretty useless. To teach those kids you are going to have to dig into your ESL bag of tricks and do as you please.

There are no standardized English testing for 1st and 2nd grade so do want you want. Previous poster mentioned "Lets Go". I second that. Join it with songs, TPR activities, games, etc and your good to go.

MissMaggie · Joined: 23 Jan 2009 Location: Jeju

I love the "Let's go" Cirriculum. I would love to use it for my other school as well, but they want me to follow this damn cirriculum that I can't understand. The teaching guide is literally pages and pages of nothing but Korean except for the dialogs, but even if I could read it, at that grade level it probably just says to explain everything in Korean anyways.