Archive for the 'Fun things' Category

May

ABC – Come On Sing Along!

I’m teaching one class of 7-year-old (kindergarteners) once a week. Right now, they’re still working on learning the alphabet. I was at Home Plus (where else?) on day and saw a bucket of alphabet magnets. The price wasn’t too outrageous (about what I’d expect in a US toy store) so I bought a set. It worked out perfectly. There were 4 sets of letters and 4 kids in the class. As they learn new letters, I add them to a plastic bag.

At the beginning of each class, we sing the ABC song a few times as a warm up. Then we do rock scissor paper (to avoid fighting over colors). When that’s all done, each student has a bag of magnets. They go up to the board and have to put them up in correct order. They struggle with things like the b and the d and the q and the p, so we sing and look at our big ABC poster.

Here are a few pictures of them from the first time they did the activity.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Games,Language,Maple Square,Phonics,Pictures,Students and have No Comments

May

Yes We Would

Thankfully I don’t have anyone who’s past writing the five paragraph essay. But oh, when I was a TA in grade school. I remember your lazy butts.

Credit: Abstruse Goose

posted by Kathryn in Fun things,Reality and have No Comments

Apr

The Spaghetti Song

I love singing songs with my kiddos. The lower level course books usually have OK songs. This one is from “Let’s Go 2″ and is teaching ‘like’ and ‘want’.

The video features Winter Class, 4 1st graders and a kindergartener. Brian, Ella and Joy were in Maple Kinder. Amy and Juliet are new students.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Daejeon,Fun things,Maple Square,Music,Students,Videos and have No Comments

Apr

Foods – Countable and Noncountable

Polaris Class is studying countable and uncountable nouns using foods. Their latest activity was to draw some foods on a table and the write sentences about them. For example… There is an apple on the table. There are three bananas on the table. There is some cheese on the table. I simply took the book activity and put it on the board. After cutting out various foods from flashcards each student came up and added one picture to the table on the board. They had to write a/an/some/number by the picture. When everyone had a turn, they had to write the sentences on the board. Then they repeated the exercise in their books on their own. repetition is the key to successful second language learning. By doing it as a group first, the class didn’t even realize they were doing it more than once.

Enjoy the pics!

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Games,Maple Square,Pictures,Students,Teaching and have No Comments

Feb

Why of Course…

You Are a Noun

You are very concerned with the material world and what is actual.

Facts interest you, and it’s likely that you keep up with the latest news.

You do well with ideas and concepts you can actually see. You are a very visual person.

You are the type who knows every person and place in town. You’re very well informed.

What Part of Speech Are You?

The First Rule of Blogthings Is: You Don’t Talk About Blogthings

posted by Kathryn in Fun things,Grammar,Off time and have No Comments

Jan

Irregular Verbs

One of the things my advanced level students hate the most is irregular verbs. Well, actually all my students hate them. I don’t make them memorize them, but the Korean teachers do. They have a huge list of base/simple past/past participles that they have to memorize. In all fairness, I don’t think I’d do too well on one of their verb quizzes. Sky class had a bit of leftover time the other day so I decided to try to find a fun way to help them recall the verbs.

What you need: a list of irregular verbs (example pdf), a soft ball (or something soft that can be thrown back and forth) and a die.

What you do: Start by passing the ball to a random student. The teacher then rolls the die. If it comes up 1 or 2 they have to give the base form. If it comes up 3 or 4 they have to give the simple past. If it comes up 5 or 6 they have to give the past participle. The teacher calls out a verb and the student with the ball has to give the form dictated by the die. Obviously the teacher should say a form other than the one the student should give. If the student is wrong, then have the class figure out what the correct answer is. Then the student with the ball tosses it to another student and the game continues.

Simple, less. But much more fun than drilling.

I’ve also found that many students can go in one direction easily (eat – ate – eaten, for example), but given the past tense, they can’t get to the past participle without going through the all three. In other words, given ate, they’ll think ate – eat – ate – eaten. Part of the point of this game is to make the associate between word and form more solid.

If anyone tries this, please let me know how it goes. I think the throwing the ball around part is the most fun for the kids. In fact, I’ve found that doing any sort of drill this way makes it a lot more fun for the kids.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Games,Grammar,Teaching,Teaching Resources and have No Comments

Dec

Old Downtown

A few weekends ago, I took a trip to Old Downtown (Eunheng-dong). It’s a neat area with good shopping and good food. If you wander over there, I definitely recommend “The Flying Pan” (yes, flying, not frying) an awesome Italian restaurant with pretty good prices. I got soup, risotto and a soda for 22,000 ₩, which I think is pretty darn good. I can definitely say the food is almost as good as what I used to eat in Little Italy in Cleveland. Enjoy the pics.