Week of May 11

This week was a disaster. I have a 3 week rotating schedule. Usually when test time comes, I don't have classes. And when classes resume, they will start on the next week of the schedule. Well, last week was test week, and I didn't have any classes. I assumed that I would have Grade 2 and 3. But they instead scheduled Grade 1 and 3. It was a mistake on my part; I should have asked. So on Monday, I had about an hour to put something together. On the downside, the lesson for Grade 2 that I commented on last Sunday, I won't be able to use because this was my last full week at my current school.

In the rush for 1st grade, the book had a lesson on prices, so I quickly put together a lesson about numbers. From previous experience, I know that Korean can have a difficult time saying numbers above 10,000. So after the warm up, and preview. The students did a brief listening activity. We did a SPEAKING analysis of the dialog. I tried to work it in. And then, I thought it would be nice to do some interdisciplinary work. I gave the students a math challenge. And then, to tie everything together, I had Power Point game: "The Price is Right."

The dialog went something like this:
W: "Excuse me, how much for this watch?"
B: "It's 3000 won."
W: "OK, I'll take it."
B: "Here you go."

The questions that I asked:
Where are they talking?
What is the first thing the woman said?
How can we make it more polite?
What is the last thing the boy said?
How can we make it more polite?

I tried doing this as group work, but the students didn't seem to understand. I highlighted polite. Asked them what polite meant in Korean. One or two students were able to answer that question. Obviously, the TLC was "Please" and "Thank you." So after the pair work didn't seem to work, I did this activity as a class exercise. Maybe I can come up with better questions. Oh, I didn't display all the questions at once; I displayed 2 at a time.

The math challenge I thought the students would enjoy. Each team had a small portable WB. I would read out the numbers.  The student with the WB would have to write the number down, and then do the addition problem. To decrease my talk time, after the second student in each group answered, I would have a student volunteer read out the number. The problem that I observed is that the student volunteer would read the number so quickly that other students could not understand. I had to tell the student to say it slower. I could do maybe 4 students before I had to change the activity, because they would start to get restless. Each group had 6-7 students.

The Price is Right game is always successful. The students enjoy it. It gives them a real reason to use numbers. I got lots of output from students. They would scream out the answers. I would let students self-correct. For example, if the item was 120,000, but they said 12,000. I would write 12,000 on the board. Obviously, this was incorrect in their mind, and they would throw a protest that the number I wrote was incorrect. I this case, I would  write 120. I would get them to say 120. Then I would add 000. Then they would said "thousand." I like having the students fix mistakes themselves. Their mind has to work a lot harder having this type of feedback rather than the teacher just directly correcting them.

I think on a short time frame, this was a decent lesson. I would have like the SPEAKING section to have gone a little better. I'll probably have to experiment a little more with this idea before I have it nailed down.  I would have liked some pair work, but with numbers, you either say it correctly or you don't.

I'll comment next week on Grade 3. I probably won't have classes next week as I am changing schools. I am scheduled to start at Sejong Boys' High School in Cho Chiwon. This is about an hour south of Suwon by train. I am excited to be starting at this new school. I talked with teachers there, and the native speaking teacher doesn't have to follow the book. So I will have a lot more flexibility to do speaking activities.

Next week, I'll comment on my culture lessons that I did with Grade 3. The first one was probably in the beginning of April, and the second one was last week.

I should add a sidebar about vocabulary.  I don't usually teach vocabulary in my classes. The only time that I cover vocabulary is if I'm doing a listening activity, and the vocabulary item is necessary for understanding. This past week, after my culture lesson was over, I figured I would have about 10-15 minutes that I would need to fill. So I thought it would be fun to do a pop song. We listened to "Love Story" by Taylor Swift. This song has a long narrative feel to it. For the part that we listening to, I judged that there were 3 or 4 items that the students might not understand. One of the items was "flashback." I gave a synonym memory. The students could understand that. The next item was "balcony." I showed them a picture of a balcony. The last item was "Scarlet Letter." So, I had to explain what scarlet was, and then the book. I showed a picture from the movie. I ask the students "A long time ago, was it good for an unmarried girl to have a baby?" They would say no. And then I showed them the meaning, "Scarlet Letter is a sign of dishonor."

Some of the difficult words I didn't go over like "ball gown." They had to fill in the blank for gown. I asked them if they knew what it was, and obviously they didn't. So I said that it was a fancy one piece.