Archive for the 'Language' Category

Jun

Spring Open House 2009

It’s over. Oh thank goodness it’s over. It’s definitely been a stressful few weeks for all involved. Open houses here are always interesting. I kind of prefer the way we did it at my last school. They were just open classes where the parents dropped in. We knew when they were coming and planned an extra special lesson. It’s nothing like the scripted, focuses, presentation type stuff we do at Little Campus. Don’t get me wrong. In the end, it’s worth it. The kids have a good time and the parents are generally pleased.

This year had a science based theme. There were two separate “classes”. One was about butterflies and one was about food and nutrition. The kids learned about the body parts and the life cycle of butterflies for the first class. They learned about the food pyramid for the second.

I only have pictures for the one food classes. The other times I was busy teaching. These are pictures of Edison Class. They are a group of seven year olds. They’re not the best speakers in the world, but their English is better than my Korean.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Language,Little Campus,Pictures,Science,Teaching and have No Comments

Feb

Save the Words

see more puppies

I came across “Save the Words” a few days ago (warning, obnoxious website). The premise is that words that are less common in every day language will be removed from dictionaries. The people who made this site want to save those words from exclusion. I doubt the site would do much to save some of these words. However, it could serve as an interesting teaching tool for advanced students. Many of the words can be analyzed to find their meaning from the word roots. This is something I’ve worked on a bit with some of my more advanced students.

Personally, I adoped “nidifice” (noun: a nest)

posted by Kathryn in Fun things,Language,Teaching Resources,Web sites,Writing and have No Comments

Jan

The 12 Days of Christmas — Korean Style

On Christmas Eve, I took my turn in the cycle of teaching Ivy. Not wanting to do a boring discussion class (oh how I hate trying to get teenagers to talk), I decided to turn them loose on The 12 Days of Christmas lyrics. We listened to the song a couple of times and I told them they could work in pairs or small groups to come up with their own lyrics. The catch was the things they used as gifts had to be tied to Korea in some way. Here’s what we came up with in the end.

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a big pot of spicy kimchi.
On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me, two shots of soju.
On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me, three orange restaurants.
On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, four Taekwondo belts.
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, five hand phones.
On the six day of Christmas my true love gave to me, six lovely hanboks.
On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me, seven rolls of kimbap.
On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, eight bags of ramyan.
On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, nine taxi drivers.
On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, ten chewy rice cakes.
On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me, eleven English hagwons.
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, twelve bowls of rice.

I think it’s really cute. True, some of the things aren’t unique to Korea, but they are popular here. Try to find anyone over the age of 7 without a hand phone (aka “cell phone” to you westerners). I’ve seen quite a few elderly men and women with them. And the taxi drivers? Well, that was my contribution. Every time I get into a taxi I say a quick prayer to get out in one piece.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Holidays,Korea,Korean Vocabulary,Language,Little Campus,Lyrics,Music,Students,Teaching,Teaching Resources,Writing and have No Comments

Dec

Eric’s Commercial

The C1 Speaking and Writing class has been reading James and the Giant Peach with me for the last few months. I’ve decided to take it slow and do a whole lot of fun stuff with it. I’ll outline those activities in another post. In our last couple of classes we’ve been doing advertisements to see the Giant Peach before it rolls off on its adventures. One of those things we did was make commercials to get people to come see the peach. This is Eric’s commercial. He is a third grader. His commercial seriously cracked me up, especially the “la la la” part.

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

Dec

Coming Attractions

I’ve somewhat lax in keeping my blog updated. I do have stuff to post. I’ve just been insanely busy. So here’s a sneak peek.

Birthday Friday photos
Food pyramid poster
Holiday photos
James and the Giant Peach Activities
Random student photos
And probably more stuff that I can’t think of off the top of my head

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

Dec

The Little Things

I have a few of my classes turn in journals each week. I give them an easy topic to write on, for example, “My favorite food” or “All about me”. They have to write about five sentences. For some of the kids, it’s a real challenge. Others write me a mini novel each week.

I have one student in C5 named Colin. Colin is a bit of a firecracker. He used to be in C4, but because that class was so small, they split the kids up between C3 and C5. Before getting Colin, I had heard nightmare stories about his behavior in class. He can be a handful sometimes, but his behavior has been improving in the last few months.

I started journals with C5 about 3 months ago. Until yesterday, I had not recieved a journal from Colin. Every week I asked him and every week he told me he forgot it at home. Whatever. I can’t force the kids to do their homework. The ones that are most serious about their English studies are usually the ones who hand in their journals each week. At the beginning of the week, Colin promised me he was going to do his journal for Friday. I simply told him, “OK. I’m looking forward to getting it.” and left it at that.

On Friday, Colin comes down to our office so he can get my books to take upstairs. He’s only started that this week… I’m not sure why, but I do appreciate it. I go upstair to the classroom with him. He puts my books on the desk and then hands me his journal. Of course, I praise him like crazy. I collected journals from the rest of the class and tell them how happy I am to get so many this week. Usually when I collect them, I glance at them to make sure they did them. Sometimes the kids will think they did, but they didn’t. I understand that. I did that more than once in my academic career. Collin didn’t want me to look at his though. I wasn’t going to argue with him because it was time to get class started.

After C5 on Friday, I have a break where I usually grade their journals. This week I just chatted with a coworker. I decided to bring them home to grade over the weekend. No big deal as they only take a few minutes each. I opened Colin’s earlier today. The top he was supposed to write about was “My favorite food”. Well, he didn’t. I present Colin’s journal entry (complete with spelling errors) because it just made my day.

I love tacher is a kathrin tacher! ♥ kathrin tacher love a my! kathrin!! love O<!♥

Seriously. Isn’t that just the sweetest thing. Somehow I’ve sort of gotten through to Colin. He no longer gives any of his teachers a hassle. I don’t know much about his home life, but from the few things he’s said, it seems like he doesn’t get much attention. For many kids, the negative attention they get from acting out is better than being ignored. I’m really doing my best to praise him when he’s good. He still will act up in class. Now all I have to do is say “Colin, you’re having a really good day today. Keep it up.” and he calms down. I have to admit, Colin has grown on me. I’m proud of the progress he’s made.

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Language,Students,Teaching,Writing and have Comment (1)

Nov