Archive for the 'Language' Category

Apr

Hot Seat!

I’m a believer in using games to educate and reward. I have a class of first graders whose favorite game is a spelling bee. Who would have thunk it?

Hot Seat! comes courtesy of a coworker. It emphasizes speaking and vocabulary. It’s a simple game that uses nothing more than a marker/chalk, a chair and a word list.

I’ve played this both as a team game with points and a just general activity. Place a chair under the board. Have one student sit in the chair so they can’t see the board. Either the teacher or another student writes a word on the board. The students not on the “hot seat”. The rest of the students have to describe the word on the board for the other student to guess.

If you play in teams, put a limit on the time to give clues. I disallow sign language no matter what. Depending on the level of the class, the clues can be single words, phrases or full sentences. Sometimes it’s fun for higher level classes to be limited to one word at a time because they have to work cooperatively to give the clues.

When I teach domain specific knowledge, such as science, I use the chapter or unit vocabulary as the word list.

If you try it with your students, let me know how it goes!

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Games,Language,Speaking,Teaching Resources,Vocabulary and have No Comments

Nov

What Is It?

This is from a couple years ago. It’s an activity that focuses on speaking, especially asking questions and basic vocabulary. The idea is to blindfold a student and then give them an object. Another student asks the first what he/she is holding. If the student can’t guess, the other students give clues. It’s a lot of fun.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Games,Language,Pictures,Speaking,Students,Teaching and have Comment (1)

Sep

Tepees!

My D3 Speaking and Writing class is currently reading “The Indian in the Cupboard”. It was one of my favorite books as a kid and I’m excited to be able to share it with a new generation of kids. In the spirit of the chapter we’re currently reading, I decided to have the class make tepees. Now, understand, I’m not an art teacher. Oye, I’m the furthest thing from an art teacher. In fact, I had to drop the one art class I was taking in high school because I was flunking it. Yes. Flunking it. I couldn’t draw a stupid tree. So when I undertake anything that has an art bent, well, it’s at my own personal peril.

I Googled around and found some (reasonably) easy looking instructions. Craft supplies here are a mite more difficult to find. I ended up using chopsticks for the supports and some interesting brown paper for the tent part. I also found some burlap like string.

Before actually making our tepees, I had the kids come up with four animals and what they represent. For example, an owl might represent knowledge. Those were the symbols they painted on their tepees. This whole project took us about 2.5 hours (6 of their 25 minute class periods). It took so long because they took their time painting their symbols and because, well, I’m an idiot. It took me that long to decipher the instructions and explain them to the kids.

All in all, I think they turned out really well. Enjoy the photos.

: Eddie’s Tepee

: Hera’s Tepee

: Eric’s Tepee

: Flora’s Tepee

: Sally’s Tepee

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Language,Little Campus,Pictures,Reading,Students,Teaching and have No Comments

Sep

Travel and Tourism Project

D1 is one of the highly advanced classes in the school. It’s made up of 5th and 6th graders. They’re a lot of fun to teach. I do language skills with them. For me, that consists of a day of grammar, a day of writing, a day of reading and a day of project type stuff.

The project we just finished was to design a travel and tourism poster for a country (real or fictional). The class decided to split themselves into a boys team and a girls team. They boys decided to do a poster for the fictional “Buzz Island”. The girls decided to do a poster for Korea. I created an outline for them to fill out and help with their research and writing. Once that was finished, they wrote a one page summary of their country. They also used the Internet to find images that represented facets of their chosen country. Well, the girls used the Internet. Because Buzz Island is fictional, they had to create all of their stuff by hand.

Their country descriptions follow:

Buzz Island

Buzz Island is located under the Korean Peninsula. It doesn’t have a climate. It consists of water. Its area is bigger than China. One of its natural resources is hydrogen. The population is only 5 people, and they speak Korean. They believe in Christianity. Its industries are semiconductors, cars, ships and plastics. Buzz Island’s capital city is Buzz D.C. The currency is the Buz. Their national food is butter. People typically wear western clothes. One notable tradition is the festival of Buzz’s birthday. Major cities on Buzz Island are Buzz D.C., Buzzton, New Buzz, Buzzfort and Buzz Angeles. Some interesting places to visit are Buzz Street, Buzz Junior Island, The Yellow House and Buzz Vat.

Korea

Korea is located in Asia. It has four seasons, spring, summer, fall and winter. Spring is warm, summer is hot, fall is cool, and winter is cold. There are mountains and flat plains. It has an area of 99,900 square km. The population of Korea is 48,456,4721 people. They speak Korean and the study of English is popular. Korea’s religions are Christianity and Buddhism.

Our famous products are cars, plastics and semi-conductors. Our government is a democracy. The leader is Lee Myung Bak. Our capital city is Seoul. The currency is the won.

Our traditional foods are kim-chi, rice cakes and danganchigae. Day to day, people wear western clothes. The name of Korea’s traditional clothing is han-bok. Traditional holidays are New Year’s Day and Chu-seok. Major cities in Korea are Busan, Seoul, Ulsan and Kyengju. Busan is famous for Hae-Un-Dae Beach and Seoul is famous for Kyeung-Bok Palace. Kyeungus is famous for Bul-Gook-Sa and Ulsan is famous for Ban-Gu-Dae, which has many fossils.

~Come visit our country!~

Here are some pictures:

Buzz Island Poster

Nick, Buzz, David, Tommy, Arthur, Jay

Korea Poster

Rachel, Amy, Sarah

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Language,Little Campus,Pictures,Reading,Students,Teaching,Writing and have No Comments

Aug

Liberation Day

Happy Liberation Day! August 15 is the celebration of the liberation of Korea from the Japanese.

I recently read “When My Name Was Keoko” by Linda Sue Park. It’s a fictional account of a family living in Korea during the Japanese occupation. I highly enjoyed it and I think it would be a good book for advanced, upper elementary aged students. It has the potential to spark a lot of discussion. I’ve not tried it with any of my students, but it’s on my list. You can read the first couple of chapters at Google Books.

posted by Kathryn in Celebrations,Holidays,Korea,Language,Reading,Teaching and have No Comments

Aug

The Gingerbread Man

I just finished reading “The Gingerbread Man” with a group of my 1st graders. It’s one of my mini-traditions to have someone ship me gingerbread cookies/gingersnaps so my kids can taste them. I took some my Dad brought with him last Thursday. They were a big hit with the class. I passed out the left over cookies to the other teachers and random students who popped into our office.

It’s the little things like this that bring the stories alive. Plus it was a good way to make the kids behave all week because they were working toward a reward.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Food and Drink,Fun things,Language,Little Campus,Reading,Students,Teaching and have Comments (2)

Jul

A Sense of Humor

So I was in my Sha Sha class a couple weeks ago. I was passing out the books, and as usual, I was butchering the names of the kids. The kids who aren’t in the bilingual or the English imersion program don’t get English names, hence the butchering of their Korean names.

One of the kids had a family name of Won. As I slowly stumbled over it, one of the other kids standing there waiting went “Won, two, three!”. Yikes! A 5 year old with a wicked sense of humor.

posted by Kathryn in Fun things,Language,Little Campus,Speaking,Students and have No Comments