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!
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