Korean Job Discussion Forums

[emichelle18]

I've started filling out the SMOE application for the Aug. start and have been asked to submit a lesson plan as part of the application. I plan to write a lesson for elementary school; the problem is that I'm not sure exactly what level elementary school students are at. My biggest question is in regard to reading English. It seems like many Korean schools are focused on conversational English. At what level are elementary school students able to read English?

[Hightop]

At the moment the Seoul curriculum dictates that we start to teach reading and writing in 5th grade. 3rd and 4th grade learn phonics and a whole lot of listen and repeat and maybe some small words to recognize on sight.

[egrog1717]

The suit that looks at your application will probably speak less English than the kids you're coming to teach... Don't worry about it too terribly... Class lengths are 40 minutes, and in elementary school most of that 40 minutes is taken up by the CD-Rom (at least at my school...) so it's not like your plan is probably ever going to be actually useful, lol...
Intro, target vocab, some sort of practise, maybe throw a game in there and you'll be golden...

To answer your question though, I had my high level 4th graders reading Stuart Little and Charlotte's web this last year... Most of them did fine with the reading itself, though comprehension was a little slower at times due to the vast cultural differences between the books and the students' lives...

With that said, my lower level students have a hard time remembering to chime in with the whole "I'm fine thanks and you" mantra that every Korean is injected with at birth

[winterfall]

That lesson plan is just to make sure they don't always need to hold your hand. First time around with no teaching exp that plan took me almost 5 hours to make.

[smee18]

You are asked to create a lesson plan ... that is so emblematic of the stupidity of the system here. Our job, as university graduates in whatever, should be to teach an established curriculum. As Uni grads, we should have decent English. In no way are any of us qualified to create curriculum, and we shouldn't be doing it. Its negligent IMHO. People with Masters and PhDs in linguistics and education should be writing the curriculum we teach. It's like with these stupid camps. Why are we asked to just make it all up, with no centralised planning, no curriculum? It seems like busy work for the sake of busy work more than anything. I mean, were you given the curriculum to write a lesson plan for, or is it just "make up some stuff?" I'm assuming the latter. In that case, make up some random BS, it will prepare you well.