Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jst]

Do grade 6 students act similar to middle school students? Or are grade 6 students, due to hormones and leaving elementary school, worse than middle school students?

[lowpo]

[jvalmer]

Once those 6th graders (who ruled over 5 whole grades for one year) start middle school, they are quickly put in their place by 2nd and 3rd grade middle schoolers.

[jrwhite82]

Yeah, there is for sure some "king of the hill" complexes in the 6th graders. And then they are back to the bottom of the heap in middle school.

I don't usually generalize, but comparing Korean 5th graders that I have taught, to the American 5th graders that I taught, there is a disparity in the level of social and emotional development. I find the Korean children to be more immature than the American children in this age group. (Not intellectually, but social and emotional) However, by 8th grade US/2nd Year MS Korean, they seem to have balanced out.

My students in the US rarely had problems working with the opposite sex. They didn't act out physically as much. The boys could mostly sit in a chair for 30 minutes without rolling around on the floors. Etc...I've had to make some adjustments since when I first started to how long I expect them to concentrate and I've incorporated a lot more activities that allow for them to spend that energy in a constructive way. But it surprised me.

[tomato]

My last job was in three rural elementary schools.
In two of those schools, the fifth and sixth graders deported themselves like perfect ladies and gentlemen.
In both classes in one of those schools, however, the classroom teacher left the room and allowed chaos to prevail.
If the students received any handout sheets from me or touched any of my manipulative items, they lined up at the lavatory and washed their hands after class. The classroom teachers had no objection to this.
The fifth and sixth grade teachers at this school were probably encouraging this sort of thing in order to get rid of me and hire a 27-year-old blonde.

Here is an earlier thread which some of you might be interested in:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=185223&highlight=

[Boating3]

Yeah, I would say 6th graders are pretty different than middle schoolers. 6th graders have the superiority complex, as mentioned above. It's worst at the end of the school year when they are done with elementary school and wanna just float by to middle school. 1st grade middle schoolers are at the bottom of the stack, so they are kept in line by the older grades. 3rd grade middle schoolers are mature enough to sit still and have to focus on the high school entrance exams, so though they have the superiority complex as well, they understand the importance of school, to some degree. 6th graders are just at a very different point in their life, so I don't think they are close to being the same.