Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Not Angry]

Ok. I have been at a public high school for about 3 months now and am having some difficulty coming up with decent lesson plans. The problem as you know are the large class sizes and the mixed ability levels. My school is in Cheongdamdong so many of the students have lived or studied abroad as well as the kids who shouldn't be here but their parents bought their way in. About 5 or six students in each class speak English very well. Another 10 or so have absolutely none. I teach each of 15 classes only once per week and I do not use a book. Everything has to be original and entertaining. I have tried activities and discussions and nothing seems to be working as well as I want it to. Some students are engaged but in my opinion, far too many aren't. Anyone been here? Have any ideas? Thanks in advance!

[caniff]

I can relate to your situation. I have been doing that sort of a gig for almost a year now, and have been pulling stuff out of the air to do it. Here are a couple things that worked for me (for a short time, anyway):

Brain teasers that you explain in English, drawing them up on the board. The student who gets it has to explain the answer in English (or try to). Works good if you find some interesting problem scenarios, I have found. You could also make a contest out of it.

Listen to a couple songs with the lyrics provided. You can ask them what they might like to hear (they will know some English language music), but alot of the suggestions might not be great for an actual lesson about the vocab. You might have to come up with some yourself that you feel comfortable explaining after the class listens to them.

Personal past experiences. I have a ton of amusing stories from my earlier (and sometimes present) days. Of course, many are edited for content - nothing too outrageous or bizarre, just funny stuff.

Talk about the differences between western and Korean high schools. I know my students were pretty surprised by some of the stuff (vacation, daily schedules, discipline, etc.).

I know it can be tough to come up with new and entertaining stuff all the time. I don't even call them "classes".. I have 3 to 4 SHOWS a day.

Maybe this suff can get you through a few classes. Cheers.

[Zyzyfer]

Yea, I've been there. And it's a pretty difficult situation, especially when you're not given any sort of material or specific goal for the students.

What got me through my year was the usage of class projects. When the lesson on food came up, I had the students make recipes and use recipe vocabulary (add, mix, stir, et cetera). When the chapter on rules came up, I had students get into teams to design countries, and assign rules for their country. Sometimes I would give students a journal assignment of some sort and have them iterate it to everyone in the next class. I even had my own version of Jeopardy, which probably was the most successful lesson I came up with, since most classes liked it. However, I did these lessons for a middle school.

It's really hard to keep everyone's attention and get results from all of the students. Don't beat yourself up too much over the lost causes, or you'll end up losing the better students in the process as well.

[peppermint]

I saw a good book of English brainteasers a couple of days ago at Costco.

[Crois]

Is anyone leaving their public school job in Septemebr or November and want to give it to me?

[ghostshadow]

[Tinyteg]

I teach at high school aswel and I found that the website www.onestopenglish.com is a good website which is updated regularly and has printable lesson plans. You can submit your own lesson plans and get some decent free books. I have won a couple of books already. Good luck

[ThePoet]

A note: I have not done this in Korea, but it has worked well in English, Drama, and Phys.Ed. classes back home.

One of the best ways you can effectively teach a class with different levels of ability is to use a strategy of giving the students with higher ability more responsibility and priviledges. I used to let the higher ability students become "mini-me's" in a way. There were a couple of ways I did this:

1. Call them group captains or assistant teachers (whatever makes them feel the most pride) and then assign them a group (2 - 4) of lower level students. I always tried to assign the absolute best student to the absolute worst and then going down the line until the 4th or 5th good student had the highest level of the worst ones.

Once that is done, you can assign a variety of tasks to the group captains including:

* Translating down or back up
* Helping others with written work
* Organizing any group work

You can fit the tasks to your circumstances of course. In any case, you assign points/prizes for things like:

* Most improved group (however you want to define improved)
* Highest team score (again, however you want to score/mark them)
* Highest participation levels

and you can also individually reward the assistant teachers -- not with prizes that the other students can see, but a heartfelt thank you, or "attaboy" or "you really did me a big favor today -- I really appreciate you" sometimes goes a long way.

You can even give them team names and award points for the better achievements. The thing is, if you seem enthusiastic about it, and don't look like you're merely trying to dump your workload, it can really be a source of reward for you too.

I hope this helps, or at least gives you some ideas of your own.

[Flex Bulkchest]

man, i slugged through my first year of this, and was always worried about what i'd have to plan next. i think it's funny you called them "shows", i used to call them "performances".

I do think it got a lot easier, especially as i met people who gave me more and more ideas i started introducing one come ice breaker, for me it was camp songs, taught them four, then at the start of every class we sing one...really loudly. you could do the date, weather and such..phonics, kills 5 minutes, wittles down the time. minimizes the concentration time for the lower level students.

if you pm with an e-mail address i'll send you a couple lessons that got rave reviews and basically taught themselves.

good luck

[rapier]

I'm going off the idea of teaching at a public school more every day.
At least my hagwon has a proper schedule with books, to follow. I hardly even have to think about it. There's no way I'd do the whole make my own lesson plan thing again....
Also, I'm a bit put off by the idea of huge classes.

[Flex Bulkchest]

yeah, it's definitely a little more work to come up with lesson plans, but at least for my situation, the students are far more receptive than a hagwon, you get them in the morning when they're more awake, and you can fully discipline them, throw cell phones in the lock up for 2 weeks, give them detention, everything, so they're super well behaved.

that and the 3 months of paid vacation....that's pretty good, too

[crazylemongirl]