Korean Job Discussion Forums

[captain kirk]

Our school has these student books that contain the characters Zeeto (an alien, this is for grade three), Tony, etc. For Grade five it's Nami (girl, always wears a reversed baseball cap with a bang of hair sticking out forward), etc. Do these sound familiar? These books don't really have a name, so I can only describe them by the characters. Anyway, these books, their lessons, are boring as coprolites (fossilized dung).

So how do you beef up your classes, abandon the books after token once-over? It has to be done. Before I was hired the Korean English teacher, who is now my co-teacher, went strictly by the book and, I strongly suspect, bored the electricity out of the kids until there was nothing left but kiddy remains of brains. Under her tutelage English class, following strictly/solely these books and CDs, was like rowing in a Roman galley to the beat of a slave drum, I'm sure. Of course she wouldn't suggest to leave the books because her English level doesn't allow her to. That would be like jumping ship without a life preserver, suicide!

Do you make handouts? Introduce new vocab and run away with that? Copy other books and make handouts that way? Nobody would object if I did any of this. It's my town and I can be sherrif, with the co-teacher my deputy.

[Junior]

I do the syllabus but also introduce a new, separate theme every week, with pictures, and design activities around it. For example, week A I introduce "transportation". next week could be 'fruit" or in the supermarket'- whatever.

I find 20 good pictures of different vehicles from the net and save them to file- eg train, bus, airplane,. skateboard, bicycle, speedboat etc. Then I make flashcards of them. I teach and drill them all, using the overhead projector too..
from there you have limitless teaching possibilities:

game1: Online hangman games to spell all these words.
2) Memory game: the kids have a minute competing against eachother to remember as many of them as possible.
3) miming game: divide class into 2 teams. each team mimes the word to their competitor who has to guess it while you hold the flash card over his head. its a race.
4) sentence making: fill in a grid with all the words. the teams have to compete to make accurate sentences and get 3 in a row, a bit like block buster.
5) touch game: write the words randomly on the board. In two teams competitors have to race to touch the word that you call out.
6) Spelling comp; 1 competitor from each team has to run to the board and spell the word you shout out correctly.
7)Whisper game: In two lines, the students must whisper the sentence you tell the first one at the end of the line first team to say the sentence correctly at the end wins.

etc etc. i have about 20 standby activities for just about any vocab situation. Thats what 4 years in korea does for you

[xtchr]

I just want to know what they thought they were doing with Julie's hair (grade 3 book). Everytime that poor girl is on the screen all the kids collapse in fits of laughter.

Haven't yet worked out exactly what I'm doing with my co-teacher. He wants me to do extra activities, but also insists on doing everything exactly as it is written in the teachers' guide, i.e play the dialogue exactly 3 times, get them to chant it back 3 times. There is no time left for other activities because he refuses to deviate from the tedium that is the book. One whole lesson was 'Hello, my name is ...'

Thanks for your ideas Junior.

[Junior]

[captain kirk]

That's great stuff, thanks. Here's what I stumbled into, staggering off the curriculum, finally. Gave them insect names in English, since that sort of fit in with the Spring theme.


Dragonfly Cicada Grasshopper Cricket Scorpion
Flea Moth Ladybug Centipede Roach Maggot
Silkworm Firefly Wasp Stag Beetle Water Beetle
Mantis Stick Bug Tarantula Worm
Mosquito

And a few more I can't recall right now. I'd write them on the blackboard and a student would be up front, standing on a chair to reach the blackboard high bit, writing the Korean equivalent in hangul while the students copy the English AND hangul equivalent into the margin of the texbooks. The Korean co-teacher patrolling around making sure the 'would be tuned out' boys in the back are writing it all down, too.

Then I give them a hint, hands go up, I select someone, and they say what bug. The class is always, from the start, divided into two teams. Points go to the teams, dashes in chalk, beside their drawn team mascot of the day (pig, cowboy, etc.).

Clue; 'this insect has four wings'. 'Dragonfly!'.
Clue; 'this insect is a vampire' 'Mosquito!'

They eat new vocab UP like this. I was going by the book for the first month, but they were like, as soon as I went off the book, suddenly Lawnmower Man, with accelerated learning ability, not the same students at all. They just weren't getting stimulated by the mundane LOWEST common denominator zombie food in the textbook.

Next time I checked and they knew (this is grade five) much of what we did the class before (above insect names). We did birds next. And the last class, sport names. They know almost all of the sport names in English already, but are highly thrilled to talk about sports.

[Binch Lover]

I see grades 4-6 twice a week so what I do is build on the structure they should have learned with the korean teacher in the first class of the week with communicative activities, and then do something else in the second class of the week. I have theme for each month which I cover in the second class lessons so there is continuity throughout the month. I never use the actual book, and sometimes use the cd-rom if the song is good. Gotta keep them entertained!

[tomato]

Hello, Captain Kirk!

I have been in similar situations.
Here are some ideas which are good for embellishing textbooks which are not stimulating enough to last the whole hour:

■ Personalize the sentences in the chapter.

Suppose that the book says "Nami has a sister."
Turn to the student on your left and say, "I wonder if Kevin has a sister. Kevin, do you have a sister?"
If Kevin says yes, rhythmically beat on the table and chant, "Kevin has a sister, Kevin has a sister."
If Kevin DOESN'T have a sister, use that as an example for the negative form.
If Kevin has more than one sister, use that as an example for the plural form.

■ Play Korean bingo.

For every 2 students in the class, take 1 sheet of paper, fold it into 16 equal units, and cut the paper in half.
Give each student half a sheet. This will give each student 8 equal units.
On the board, write 8 or more words from the chapter.
Each child will write 8 of those words in the 8 spaces, but not necessarily in the same order.

To begin the game, Kevin will call one of the words.
All of the students will cross out that word.
Danny, who is next to Kevin, calls another word.
Jenny, who is next to Danny, calls another word, and so on.
Any child getting 4 in a row cries "Bingo!"

■ Make and use illustrations.

As long as the Google search engine is on line, you will have an unlimited supply of illustrations.
Look up all the nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives in the chapter and download one picture from each search.
It might be good to copy the illustrations in the book, too.
You can make lots of sentences out of these pictures.

personal nouns and pronouns and verbs
Give all the personal noun and pronoun pictures to Kevin and give all the verb pictures to Danny.
Ask Kevin to grab a picture at random and hold it up.
Ask Danny to do the same.
Then recite whatever sentence would result from those two words: "Zeeto walks," "Tony runs," "Nami plays."
The student with the fewer pictures will continue reusing pictures until the other student has used all of his pictures.

personal nouns and pronouns and adjectives

Give Danny all the personal nouns and pronouns and give Jenny all the adjectives.
This will make it possible to construct sentences using predicate adjectives:
"Zeeto is tall," "Tony is short."

all three

Give Kevin the adjectives, give Danny the nouns, and give Jenny the verbs.
"The fat cat eats." "The big dog runs."

■ Use alphabet tiles.

The first year I was in Korea, I found a pile of small tiles, all of about the same size and shape, being discarded at a construction site. I bought paint to paint letters on them, and then I bought a plastic box to keep them in.

That small investment has paid off immensely. Sometimes I take otu the letters needed to spell a word. I mix those letters up and give each child a turn arranging them. You can do this with any word in the chapter.

For an additional challenge, you can throw in rhyming words also. If RUN is in the chapter, take out not only the R, U, and N, but the F and the S also. Mix up the five letters and ask the child to spell RUN, FUN, and SUN.

■ Make musical activities.

For this activity, you need a xylophone or a portable keyboard. Take any sentence in the chapter and set it to music. You don't have to be Beethoven; just set it to two notes. I usually use G and E.

Suppose that one of the sentences is "Nami hit a home run." That sentences has 6 syllables, so there are 64 different ways you can set that to music using only G and/or E. You don't have to go through all 64, but play several of these variations and ask for volunteers to play them back to you.

I promise you that there will be piano students in the class who will throw their hands in the air and cry, "저요! 저요!�

I hope this helps.

[luvnpeas]

I have the same curriculum, although I only teach grades 4,5,6. I've come to like the curriculum. The problem with getting fancy is that you lose a lot of kids that way. In my school, grades 3 and 4 have English once a week for 40 minutes. And some students in every class struggle with the basic material in the curriculum. Others of course whip through it, although most students struggle with speaking and writing. So my adjustments to the curriculum definitly don't include adding new material. Mainly, I am trying to think of ways to teach the same standardized material in ways that involve all students and make it fun. I also tend to emphasize speaking and writing more than curriculum, because I find the listening is usually so easy they don't learn anything from it.

[chris_J2]

Yes, I have the exact same public school curriculum. My co-teacher encourages me to supplement the course with other material. If I have time, I do.

One thing I noticed when marking test papers / exams, was that almost 1/2 the class is in the fail bracket, & the other 1/2 are high achievers with 8,9 or even 10 out of 10. There are very few middle of the road students sitting on 60-70%. So what needs to happen, is identify those students who are struggling, or simply making no effort (a blank test paper handed in automatically receives a zero) & move them up to the pass bracket.

How to do that & retain their interest is the problem.

[captain kirk]

Thanks, though this is not 'my' thread (until I 'claim' it with my 4, lengthy paragraphs here, hehe), for all the replies. I have been the only foreign teacher, handed the curriculum, and have discovered that Korea is not only 'land of the morning calm', it's 'land of the unsaid' (I ought to have known that but I guess that fact just resided in my brain, 'unsaid', like 'huh?'). No-one said a thing about what to teach, just handed over the dishrag books. Isn't that weird? Yes, highly strange, by Western standards. But, because Korea is 'land of the morning unsaid', I guess, nothing could be said about 'supplementing' the curriculum because that would be an insult to the program, outrageous, asshat, affrontery.

Because nothing has been said about how piss poor the books are, I've stupidly been following them alone, my 'debut' in the public schools, busily stupifying myself and students when, I think, they hired me because I have years of experience. But they didn't say, 'listen, we hired you because you're a hitman, we want you to go off the curriculum, but don't tell anybody, ok?'. I guess that was assumed, and I missed the 'look', like, 'your mission is to terminate Kurtz's command'. 'Terminate Kurtz, you mean?'. Then the 'look'.

Anyway, the 'would be tuned out' boys at the back, I know what you mean (above poster) aren't following the books, dumb as they (the books) are, but the majority have it cased, especially the 20 percent of the class (if that) readily speaking. Some of the upstarts who readily shout out replies aren't, surprisingly, the hagwon-going kids (smugly yapping away as usual), but kids who want to take a swing at it for the heck of it, try the English-ee, which is great, seizing the moment and going for it.

What seems to drive this type is being kids and full of energy, so it's good (I hear what you say, above poster) about not losing such kids by beefing up the curriculum with drastically new stuff (perhaps out of their league). Grade 5,6, though, seem ready (all of them!) for new vocab, at any costs. By the way no-one, at my school, has mentioned testing. I assume it isn't done at my school. I guess some schools leave testing 'unsaid'. My school definately seems to consider English class an amusing novelty, and nothing more, because the Korean Way priorizes everything Korean. Until they hire a new Sherrif in English Town, me. What happened to the last Sherrif? Dunno.

[chris_J2]

The govt curriculum is not perfect, & has a few minor flaws. eg, last weeks lesson had a text box "the pencil in the pencil case". It should have read "the pencil is in the pencil case". And some of the chants are way too long (16 words plus). I break them down into 5 words maximum per group.

And the academy across the road from my Public school, has a large English sign incorrectly spelt "Acardemy". Which is probably why Native speakers are for the most part highly valued.

[patongpanda]

Did "Iiiii'mmmm MMMiiiiinnnnssssssuuuuuu" creep anyone else out?

[Junior]

[mountain goat]

I was just given that book and told to teach, I've never taught from a text book before. But like most teachers I was never bored when I could hear the sound of my own voice but these text books really dry my bones, to the point I really struggle to put energy into them.

I have tried a couple of times to introduce new stuff but my co teacher, tells me to stop and promtly returns to the text book and makes them just repeat stuff. So dull...

Worse still, I could teach my own stuff last year and I felt the kids really enjoyed my lessons and I am frightened that they will hate me because I have to teach boring rubbish.

BTW I was horrified by "jane from uganda" in the 6th grade book fashion show. Did anyone else find that racist or am I just being too sensitive?

[Wrench]

I got no prob teaching with the text books I like them to be honest with you. Ofcourse I have a wild imagination so I have no problem making the classes fun. I found the trick is to break the class down into 4 10 minute sessions, I do a 10 minute review and intro of new material. I use a ball name MR Ball and if you catch it you have stand up and answer some questions. 10 minutes on listening and understanding. I Also show them how to change the preset phrases to make new ones. 10 minutes on Repeat, I try to get their pronunciation as clear as I can I found that numbers are the best way to achieve that.. Ie today we are on page 34 so everyone put your hands in the air and lets count to 34. Then final 10 minutes on game/activity.

I also use chant like answers..

Like to get attention

Teacher: Are you ready Students: Yes I'm ready. (They touch their head, shoulders and hips for each)
Teacher: Do you understand Student: Yest I understand (Touch head, shoulder ears)
T:Are you finished S: Yes I'm finished (Head, shoulder, head)


Then Listening parts

T: Listen S: Carefully T: Listen S: Carefully
T: Be S: Quiet T: Be S: Quiet