Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mellow-d]

My current situation: Teaching at a public middle school in Seoul with no textbook or curriculum. (It was suggested that I do not use the regular English textbook that the Korean teachers use). I am renewing for six more months and I'm starting to run low on good lesson plan ideas.

I've been given the opportunity to choose a textbook that the school will buy for the students in my class. I hope this will give the lessons more of a focus and will avoid the repetition of lessons every time a new teacher comes to the school. As well, I'd like to cut down on giving handouts.

I will be able to buy a class set of textbooks for each grade. I thought something like "Side by Side" would be good because it's mostly oral-the main skill I'd like to focus on. Then I came across this:

http://www.pearsonlongman.com/ae/multimedia/programs/SbS.htm

It's an interactive "Side by Side" program. I have an interactive touch screen so I thought this might be better to get the students involved. I could build my lessons based on the interactive lessons and then if necessary, provide supplementary material.

What do you think? Use this or get a class set of textbooks to use? I don't want the students to be bored with using a textbook and I like the idea of using my touch screen more for instruction. It would also be less expensive for the school.

Let me know what you think!!

[Epik_Teacher]

First of all, what are your goals for them? What level are they? What do you want to teach them? Grammar, writing, speaking or what?

If they are like most classes I've taught in the last years, there are a few good students (10-15%), a few students who can't do it (or won't 10-15%), and the rest who just kind of go along. One thing about Side by Side is that it gets boring after about 50 pages or so. I've found it makes far better supplemental material than main material than main a textbook.

If they need to concentrate on reading and grammar, especially sentence structure, I like to use Up and Away. It's a reading/grammar/sentence structure book. I usually do one unit a day, with a worksheet (work book) from the last lesson and the current one after they are done reading. Introduce the material by reading it, have students read after you, then go around the room and have students read a page. Go around again and have them read one more page. I usually copy rather than have students buy a book. They lose them, write in them, and the work books can't be used more than once.

You can do things like make puzzles from ABCTeach.com or Discovery Planet where you can find thematic puzzles (ACCTeach) or make them (Discovery). Let them work in pairs on all parts, try to put good with lower students if you can. And candy works well for behavior mod, too!

[mellow-d]

Thanks for the reply! I have about forty students of mixed abilities so it sounds a lot like your class. I would like to focus on speaking and listening since they do a lot of reading and writing in their regular English class and academies. I've already used many of the resources from eslclassroom and some of my own. I would love to have a good program to build some lessons on. I also have some of the same students as last year so I can't really reuse my previous ones. I think the students need more structure. Any good speaking programs out there?

[jrwhite82]

I've never used Side by Side, but I can vouch that Up and Away is really effective for grammar. There are a dozens of similar texts to Side by Side. If you go to an English bookstore there will probably be a whole wall of them that you can flip through.

I really liked your interactive class idea though. It sounds interesting and I can also vouch for the motivation factor of the touch screen. My kids love it. (5th graders)