Korean Job Discussion Forums

[I_Am_Wrong]

I need help badly with this class. What I was told was an advanced public elementary class is actually a mixed class of students from age 7 to 12 and ranging in English ability from beginner to fluent. I honestly am not sure what to do with this class and there is no book to work from. I figure that I should enter each class with a theme (sports/hobbies/food etc.) and that I should have different exercises for the advanced students and the beginner students. I also think it would be good to have the more advanced students help the beginner students. What they want for the class is to improve listening and conversation skills, but the resources I have available to me are extremely limited. As well, time I have for prep for this class is very limited. Any good ideas? thanks.

[peppermint]

You've got these kids a couple of times a week, right? My suggestion is to have theme weeks- so they get lots of time to practice the vocab and structure at hand- You see how the curriculum beats them over the head with stuff, take cues from that.

If you're going to do food- bring in some stuff- do a kind of taste test or something- little samples of fruit and have them guess what it is.

I'd suggest not so much different exercises, but additional ones for kids that finish early- the distinction between who's smart and who isn't is very keenly felt here, and if I kid feels lumped with the "dumb" kids, he might get discouraged

[I_Am_Wrong]

thanks, the idea of simply having additional exercises for when they're finished the first should work well. I only have the class once a week for an hour and there is no curriculum to speak of....

[d503]

I deal with similar classes except I get to see them three times a week. I find that instead of just having extra work for the kids to do. I like to make the work able to handle different levels of students. It reduces prep work for me if instead of having to make up a stack of work sheets I can make one that a 'dumb' kid will only do the most basic of, like identify and spell out all the food, but the 'smart' kids can do things like write complete sentences, make up dialogues etc. Not that I usually don't have a something extra to do for the real fast kids. Also if your class is supposed to focus on speaking skills and stuff a way i find to cope with the different kids level is to have a couple different levels of readings prepared for kids to do, give the harder ones to the advanced kids to do and the easier ones to the lower kids to do.
Now if only I could get the kids to stop copying from the advanced ones.....

[TheDonnasTurned21]

Wahhh!! Emperor Tomato Ketchup!! One of my favourite albums ever. Nice one.