Today has been nice and busy, apart from just now when I have about an hour and a half to use up before my shortned after school class - which for some reason is only an hour long today, but not in a way that mean I get to go home early, in a way that means I have to sit here and start later to finish at the same time. So I'm writing my blog post.
I've just come back from another middle school about 20 minutes drive from Namsa. The school was so big and flash! And the English classroom was amazing! The had heaps of games of scrabble, and all this technology, and it was probably 1.5x the size of the classroom here. It was impressive. From what I heard though, our students are nicer and better behaved. I guess that's what comes from being at a smaller rural school. The class Mr Beak and I observed was one of five first grade classes! We only have two! Not even the Korean teacher at the other school knew who the students were. This is much better, I recognise nearly all the kids, and am getting there with the names (Ok, I don't know that many, but I will get there). So, any way, the lesson we observed was just as slick as the classroom - using flashy powerpoint presentations and all! It was a Korean teacher and an American teacher. One major difference was that the whole lesson was in 95% English. I thought this was really good! What wasn't so good was that there was almost no opportunity for the kids to speak. It was really more like a presentation of some language than an actual lesson. Even Mr Beak, the King of teacher talk said he thought the lesson was boring and that the kids needed more speaking and interaction time. Personally, I feel this was a massive case of the pot calling the kettle black, but I do agree with him.
It was good to go though. It's always interesting to see how others teach. I'm not sure I learned too much, other than a nice powerpoint looks good and that Korean kids love competition games (but I already knew that).
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Ok, I got half an hour of after school class. I have no idea why, but that was what I was told to do. I taught four third graders the same lesson I did yesterday with the first grade. They were so much slower to catch on! I really dumbed it down for them, and eventually they were (mostly all) making correct sentences about Lady Gaga being the most stylish, and the giraffe being taller than the man :) Towards the end of the lesson we did a gap fill activity I had made. It was a short, one paragraph story filled with spaces for superlatives or comaparitves (eg: Jake was the ________ boy at his school). One such sentence was "He lived in the _________ house in the area". They were totally drawing a blank on what to say (I would have been happy with anything - biggest, nicest, whatever-est. Lol, they'd already decided Jake was the "smelliest" boy in his school!). I was trying to prompt them, and asked, "So, what kind of house does Jake live in?". One of the boys, totally seriously goes "out". It took me a sec to register.... an 'out-house'! Jake's a smelly kid who lives in an out-house. You maybe had to be there, but this completely tickled my funny-bone. I cracked up laughing, and then they all cracked up at me cracking up. It was stupidly hilarious. Eventually we got back on track, and decided a bit more correctly that Jake actually lived in the 'biggest' house :) It was a good lesson.
Later, while I was waiting for the bus, one of the girls brought me a custard filled fish (shaped like one, not made of) cake. What a sweety! She told me they are called 'bungeopang'. Luckily she gave me the custard one... they also come (more commonly) in the dreaded red bean paste variety!
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