W5 Game Day

My W5 class maybe one of my favorite classes!  They are a mix of 5th and 6th graders with mostly girls and sadly only 2 boys.  They are very good at English and can hold conversations well enough that we can free talk about almost anything.  This also means that unlike my other classes when the complain the almost always do it in English.  They are a very smart class and work really hard; however once in a while they will get talkative or lazy and just not want to work. Lately that have been on a "Game Day" kick and tried to convince me that once a week should be "Game Day" and I had to break their hearts because well we only meet twice a week.  So right now I am working on a compromise of every other Friday.

A few weeks ago they all wrote me short little notes about why we should have "Game Day".  Just thought I would share a few because they didn't do a half bad job with writing them.

Here is the deal I am thinking about offering them:

W5 GAME DAY 

• We can have 2 Friday Game Day's a month.
• Every other Friday
• We can only have Game Day if we stay 1 unit ahead of your Grammar Lessons.
• In order to stay ahead we will have to work the full 45 minutes all the 3 classes leading up to Game Day.
• We will only play English word games.
• You can come up with new games and rules if you would like. 
• You can also ask to play special games.
• Please email me all request or new games a week before Game Day. Mbartlady@aol.com
• We will NOT have a game day if:
• There is a lot of extra talking in class
• There is a lot of playing around in class
• There is a lot of sleeping in class
• There is a lot of complaining about working
• If there is trash from W5 left in my room
• If there is eating food or chewing gum in class.
• If you are behind on your homework book.

*Being the teacher of W5 I have the right to take away Game Day from the class as a whole or any single student.  I also have the right to move Game Day to another day or end Game Day early if the class is out of control or students are fighting.  I also have the right to cancel Game Day indefinitely due to different circumstances.


Ok so the point of this was to find out if anyone knows of any fun English games!  I am open to all suggestions and ideas!

Marketing and Science Demonstration for JCK

Well update time and if I do say so myself this update is not too late!

This week we have been getting stuff together for the kick of off the JCK program.  The rooms are finally done and put back together; however mine is now strictly for kindergarten because they have the little chairs and tables in there and well my older kids just don't fit so I have permanently moved down the hall and well can't says its to bad because now I have a nice big window to enjoy. The new rooms are cute and colorful with wood floors and bookshelves.  They have cute little windows that are different sizes and shapes from the whole back glass wall before. 

On Monday Ryan and I had to come in at 10 to help with marketing.  For once I got to use my degree in a totally legit way!  If you have not read in my main blog one of the first few weeks we were here our boss took us over the the elementary school one morning to hand out Hello Kitty suckers as kids came out and once Ryan or I had the kids attention with the sucker the Korean teachers would come up behind them and slip a folder of information into their backpack.  We also spent a day over at the middle school bribing them with notebooks to give us their information and take a short quiz.  I found this all odd because none of these were methods we covered in any of my marketing classes and seemed a tad illegal. 

Anyways this time we got handed a huge bag full of handouts and tape.  I got to work with Grace Teacher, Ann Teacher and Jessica Teacher over in some of the nicer apartments in town while Ryan worked with Jasmine Teacher and Keven.  Grace and I went off in one direction as Ann and Jessica went in another only for Grace and I to find out we needed a key to get into these apartment buildings.   So for the first one we just rang the bell and Grace spoke to someone on the other end saying something in Korean that worked because then the door opened.  Once inside she dashed for the elevators and up to the 21st floor we went.  Once in the elevator she told me she lied and we needed to do this quickly.  Each floor had 2 apartments and we went from floor to floor sticking handouts on the doors as fast as we could.  Once back outside Grace called Ann who let us know she had a friend who lived there and would get us a key.  After about an hour and 4 buildings down we were out of handouts so we headed back to the school.  This way took more energy but it was much better than bribing kids and even more fun.  The only downfall was the dashing down the stairs from floor to floor as most Koreans store stuff in stair wells like bikes, grills, couches, and lots of ashtrays all made for perfect tripping conditions. 

Monday afternoon Ryan told me I would be doing a science presentation for some parents on Wednesday and that the science kits would be in on Tuesday so I could pick one.  The information he had and I later got from Keven was all very vague and left me a little nervous.  When the Fun Science kits came in on Tuesday Keven gave me one and told me to pick one of the four projects to present to the parents.  Some of the projects were really cool.  They had one that was magnet soccer and another that was a propeller car.  I opened it up to find all the pieces I needed and some instructions but not much information about how the car worked or why it worked.  Ryan told me to come up with my own things to say to teach the science part of the project freaking me out a little bit because the adults don't know much English and well I don't really know much science.  I asked Keven what he wanted telling him the projects didn't really have much to do with science.  He more or less told me it was kindergarten and left me even more confused. 

I did the presentation yesterday and remembered to talk very slow, smile, and hold everything up and explain what each part was and what I was doing.  I did some of the vocab/main words to show how their child would be learning English with the project. A few parents got into it and repeated after me nodding their head to show they understood how the flashcards worked and made me feel a little better.  Most parents just looked board and unamused.  Over all I don't know how it went and have yet to get any feedback however I feel it went pretty good and think it helped that once it was over I had some of the older kids who where there come running over yelling "Megan Teacher Megan Teacher" to play with it and ask me how it worked. 

Over all I am looking forward to teaching some kindergarten classes but I am worried with my lack of Korean that it could be frustrating to have kids crying and screaming and I don't have the slightest clue why. 

Wish me luck it is all kicking off in February 2011!

Wow I am an English teacher?

Disclaimers:
1) I am not the best at English so you will find mistakes in my blogs.
2) I am not a good writer and I am a lazy blogger.
3) I sometimes write these over a few different days, so if they don't flow that would be why.
4) I feel like a huge dork blogging however I secretly hope you enjoy!

For starters if you are new to the blog I am a 23 year old female who graduated with a business degree from the University of USC Upstate in 2009.  I have always loved learning but never been a fan of class; however there were always those teacher that I think made an impact on my life.  I cannot lie when I now say that I am shocked about how my life turned out for many reasons.  For starters the young girl who couldn't and still cannot spell is now and English teacher.  Secondly I am now living in Korea thanks to the support of an amazing family and my long time boyfriend Ryan who taught kindergarten in Korea last year.  With the way things are right now in the states and having fallen in love with Korea last year when I visited Ryan for a few months I couldn't help but sign on for a year and give it a shot myself!  I am loving life and cannot wait to see the world one country at a time!

Ok so I have no clue why I am starting a second blog when I can't keep the fist one up to date.  However I feel that I typically write about the all cute events that go on in our life and a few things at school and sadly find myself missing a ton of them in my main blog. Now I want to try to write about the classes I teach.
There is not much to say about the younger kids right now they love Ryan and I for the most part.  Every now and then they act out, we put them in the hallway and then the next class they are good to go again.  We teach classes like "Talk Time" and "Story Club" that all have computer programs with images that go with them to help get the kids familiar with the words and then use them throughout the lesson or story pages for the rest of the class.  Classes are normally 45 minutes long leaving about 5 or 10 minutes to play Hangman, do some free talking, play Bingo or another game depending on the class.  There is one class that I love full of mostly 6th graders that have amazing English and are great to free talk with and even debate with.

My middle school classes for the most part are sweet some days and then make me regret teaching on other days.  Sadly I don't know how many time I have been told "teacher I hate you" because I make them work or take away their phone and then "teacher I love you" because I let them leave 5 minutes early.  For the most part the middle school classes never want to do anything except sleep and complain about English being hard.  I pulled my hair out for the past few months trying to think of fun things to do and found out unless it has to do with sleeping, food, or free time it was not going to make them happy. 

Ryan and I tried doing free talk and they would always turn to Korean and make it into free time.  We have tried having them read 3rd and 4th grade level stores from home like Tom Sawyer and even found some books that were English on one page and Korean on the other to help them understand.  You would of thought we were asking them to cut off their leg or poke out an eye.  We have also tried giving them questions to answer about themselves and things they like.  The complaints that came and the answers we got to the questions were horrible.  It was yes and no answers to questions like what is your favorite food or tell me how you feel about having to wear a school uniform and what not. 

I am now past the point that they will never be happy as long as they are in English class.  For the past few weeks I did short reading compressive with questions and then gave them homework to write about something close to the same topic.  This worked out fine for 2 classes until I had time to sit down and read the homework that had been turned in. I found that most of them did not make sense and contained huge words, leading me to  start asking them to read their homework out loud in class.  One girl admitted that she couldn't because she didn't know what it said.  I have now learned that wow my kids can copy from the internet and that will get them no where.

I have now bribed them all with pizza and a movie and those that do all the homework for a month (about 8 assignments) will get attend and those than don't will work.  I am currently trying to think of something for them to do that will really make them heat life.  Evil teacher maybe however my students will either learn English or become stronger as they hold chairs up over their head in the hallway.

So far the assignments have been:

-Write 10 sentences about any animal.
-Write 20 sentences on a country. Please no Japan, Korea, or China.
-Write 5 sentences about your dreams.
- Write 15 sentences about your favorite food.
-Pick one photo of you and tell me about it.
 - Tell me:
 - Where the photo was taken?
 - When the photo was taken?
 -Who is in the photo?
 -What you were doing in the photo?
 - Why you were at the place the photo was taken?
 - How you felt when this photo was taken?
 -Why did you pick this photo?
 *Please us complete sentences.
-Come up with a list of 10 things that scare you. Pick 3 things and write 5 sentences about each.
*Should have a total of 15 complete sentences

And as of right now I cannot give homework for 2 weeks because they are getting ready for a test at school.

Ok for now I will wrap this up and add some of the lovely responses to the homework in the next blog.  Fingers crossed I can do that in the next few days! 

I am not train in teaching and would love to hear any ideas anyone has for homework or class work.  I also love having friends write in their answers to use as examples to show the class to help them get an idea of the assignment.  Sometimes things are lost in translation so pictures always help and I find myself asking the Korean co-teacher to help translate to make sure they understand.

Wow not a great wrap up but it will do till next time!