Movies Unit

For the last several weeks, first grade classes (remember, this is high school's first grade) have been doing a conversation unit about movies. After learning and reinforcing a lot of key movie terminology (based on the good work of our friends at Lanternfish: www.bogglesworldesl.com), we started applying it.

For example, in lesson three, half the sudents watched a Mr Bean vignette, then have to describe it to the other half, who had been sent out of the room. I provided vocabulary on the board, stopping and starting the video to make the plot and ideas clear; then, the co-teacher and I go around asking a few pointed questions of the ones who did not watch: What was the setting? What's the first thing that happened? What was the climax? Why didn't Mr Bean just walk back down from the high diving board? (Mr Bean at the Swimming Pool) Why was Mr Bean popping paper bags anyway? (Mr Bean on the Airplane), etc.

This week, lesson five, begins with a fifteen minute review of the movie terms, using a new methodology I found quite effective and will use again. To wit: I previously prepared a set of questions on little chits cut out from a Word doc, and put them in a container. The co-teacher walks around the room and randomly (more or less) selects a students to stand up, pull a question, and read it aloud. If the student reads it loudly and clearly, there will no repeating. I then pull a student ID number from my magic English cup for the student who answers.

If the student answers correctly, we all cheer and move on to the next question. If he doesn't know (or wasn't paying attention), the student remains standing, and will get a chance to answer another question later on. This was extremely effective in getting the question-askers to be loud and clear, and getting the rest of the class to shut the fuck up and listen carefully!

Plus, it can be used for lots of types of interactions: complete the sentence, vocab review, grammar points, etc. The key is not to allow your co or yourself to repeat or rephrase, as we so often do. How it took me so long to reach this formulation, I don't know, but I'll be using it regularly!

The main activity of this, the final lesson of the movie unit, is "Create Your Own DVD", an idea I stole from Eat Your Kimchi and modified to suit. One big difference is that my DVD template is actual size; anyway, the idea is pretty clear: students will design and execute a DVD cover for a favorte movie or a movie they'd like to make or see. I set up certain requirements of what it should consist of, requiring application of the things we've learned in the unit, like plot, genre, critic's reviews, stars, setting, etc. I show a couple of real samples, pointing out the features I'm talking about, then let them get to it.

The results range from the ridiculous (click to see full size):


... to the sublime:


And a few more examples, for posterity:





These projects are not, however, representative, in one main way: the majority of students spend all their time on the front cover, the graphic in particular, and hardly do anything on the back, which is mostly about writing in English. That is, after all, the pedagogic function of the activity.

I don't know the solution to this, since one justification is that it allows the weaker English student a chance to be expressive in class, a class in which they usually understand about one tenth of what's going on. I get that.

What I don't get is how they managed to make it into high school English without one iota of actual English.

Lesson Plan: Quidditch Rules

"Very funny, Teacha!" was the typical assessment of this new lesson plan (and "funny", it should be noted, is Konglish for "fun, or enjoyable"). And if my goal is to hear students speaking English, which it is, then this lesson worked well.

I teach at an all-boys high school in Seoul. Two generalizations about my boys: 1) they love sports; and 2) they like the Harry Potter movies. Combine those two, and one thing emerges: a lesson on Quidditch, the sport played by wizards at Hogwarts School.

This is an information gap activity in two parts, enlivened by some videos. Class begins with a YouTube mash-up I found of flying scenes from the movies with Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrTjaknIgPo.

Now that I have their attention, I can explain the first part of the drill: each team (or table) has a set of materials:


A and B cards each have half the rules of each category. Each list of rules has missing information--those blanks on the A card can only be filled in by information on B's card. The A and B pair sit across from each other, read their lists aloud and fill in the other's missing information. They practice until everyone knows the rules--well, the rules of their category.



Meanwhile, the co-teacher and I circulate, helping with vocabulary and quizzing them on their set of rules, to prepare them for the next phase. Before we move on, though, we watch a video that might help make things clearer for them; I put (not very good) titles on this scene from the first movie, where Oliver explains the rules to new Gryffindor Seeker Harry (or watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcpbSsv-pQ4):


At this point, students should be well-familiar with a sub-set of the rules; I created seven sets of rules cards, incuding: the pitch, the balls, the players, the broomsticks, game progression, rules of play, and fouls. I decided not to use Fouls with my students, as there are a lot of made-up words, and I don't see any up-side to confusing them: Quaffle, Bludger and Golden Snitch are quite enough.

Now a pair of students will share their rules with other pairs of students. "A" students will go first, receiving a worksheet with six categories of questions, as seen below:


My powerpoint for the lesson has a rotation diagram to move the "A" boys from table to table. They ask their questions and write down the answers they are given by the "experts" in the sub-topic. A timer goes off (100 seconds, for my guys) and they rotate to the next rule category. Watching the classroom clock, I have them do four or maybe five rotations.



Then the "B" guys get a question sheet and the process is repeated. As I said, this lesson worked quite well; one class had trouble with their behavior during the "rotation" sequences, acting like hooligans, but even they spent a lot of time actually speaking English!

This lesson preparation was extensive: first, I found the rules of Quidditch at a Harry Potter Wiki site (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Quidditch, though this page has changed since then); then I had to select and simplify the rules, eliminating as much lingo as possible; divide the rules evenly between A and B; provide "information gaps" to be filled by the other card; create two sets of question worksheets, with three questions on each rule category.

I made the cards and rules topic signs to look as polished as possible and printed them off in color (a moderate to-do at my school) and since I had gone to that much trouble, had them laminated. Now I had to work out the logistics and procedures, and voila, many hours later, another lesson for the files!

While I did this lesson with my second graders (high school juniors), it would also work with the first graders at my school. A great deal more simplification and selection could make this doable at the upper middle school level--and I think it would be worthwhile.

Sometimes a great lesson plan is an idea, a handful of words and a great motivation. Sometimes, it is a well-put-together powerpoint or a couple of songs and a piece of paper. Other times, though, it is a meticulously prepared set of materials, specialized technological resources and an exactingly executed implementation plan.

An Argument for Streaming

I have not been a very good blogger of late, and for that I do apologize to my regular reader. I do have a few reasons/excuses, just as a preamble to today's post:
1) Nothing big to blog about of late, things have mostly trod along on an even keel;
2) School and job-related activities have picked up, what with school going back into session, my extra class for Nambu district requiring some evenings and most of Saturday;
3) Other projects in the sitting at the computer and writing vein, having reduced my will to continue at the same for blog purposes.

And here we are again; nothing much to report, except I had a bit of a fracas with one of my co-teachers last week. As background, let me remind the reader that one of the key classroom management techniques I use here is "the stopwatch", something suggested by Dave Deubelweiss during my initial training by SMOE--so it has the imprimatur, as it were, of my employer. We have fifty minutes of class; when class begins, I start the stopwatch, and when the stopwatch (a big red one with one-inch digits) reads 50:00, class ends. If students won't stop talking, are misbehaving, egregiously off-task, etc., I stop the stopwatch (beep) until they get back to what they should be doing.

Another management technique I've picked up is the "exit pass" or "exit check", where students have to show they completed the written work before exiting the classroom; my co-teacher and I each cover a door and mark them off as they leave.

One of my co-teachers has a tendency to leave class either right at ending time or even a few minutes early. On Wed., he left so early he didn't know I was doing an "exit check" (this is usually only done when a class is not being diligent), putting me in the position of checking all forty students' work alone, and making some of them late for their next class. Unfair.

I happened to catch him in the hall on Thursday and mention to him that he left early, leaving me to do the check alone, etc., etc. He said, he needed his break time before the next class, that he thinks I should only follow the bells, and he recommends that I not use the stopwatch method.

I pointed out that this was the technique I had used since coming to Korea, and no other co-teacher had suggested it was a problem, what was ...--

He said, he could not adjust to my teaching style and if I had anything else to say, I could say it to the Principal! He walked off, leaving me to marvel anew at the psychic treat that is the passive-aggressive.

We co-taught three periods together all last semester, I asked him for his comments and suggestions on my lessons on several occasions, he has my email and phone number, but never once made a suggestion or comment. We were to teach first period together the next day, so I went round to his office when I arrived at school, bearing a blueberry pastry and a bottle of OJ from Tous les Jours. I asked if there was a time we could get together to discuss the problem he told me about, since after all we have practically a whole semester left, and I wanted to make sure he knew how important his contribution was ...

So we sat down after first period and I asked him to help me figure out what we could do about the issues. His only problem, at least that he is admitting to, was not following the bell schedule. I pointed out that since the construction of the new gym outside my very windows, we could no longer hear the bells anyway, so I used the classroom wall clock as a guide.

I asked him to consider the teaching situation from my point of view: I have no power over my classes. If I use the discipline techniques that other teachers use, I could easily be deported for assault. I do not assign grades, and the conversation that is the key aspect of my teaching is not even covered in testing. Just about all I have is to make them stay after class a few minutes when they misbehave.

I agreed with him that yes, it is an inconvenience to the co-teacher, but no more than it is to me, and the whole point of it is to be an inconvenience to the students. Hopefully, they'll remember staying after class and losing their break time, and won't repeat the behavior that led to that outcome.

Besides, I asked, more or less rhetorically, how often have I kept a class late? It's pretty rare, he agreed. He also agreed that he was displeased with his students' behavior in my class sometimes, but he could not stop it. The problem is, he explained to me, while I choked on irony, is that some students are able to get along perfectly well in my class, but some of them do not understand anything I say. They are bored and act out. Wouldn't it be better if each class has students of similar ability?

I sighed. Yes, yes, that would be better.

This Week in English B

This week my classroom was converted into the Exhibition Hall of the Young-il Job Fair. This is one of my favorite lessons, and one of the students' as well. It comes from BogglesworldESL, but it has to be beefed up for my classes since I need 10 HR reps and 31 job-seekers in order to accommodate 40+ students.


The activity is essentially the same as described at the website, but I increase the range of skill sets, and sneak in a lot of names that Koreans aren't used to pronouncing--lots of l, r, f and consonant blends. I also use a wider range of companies, including Korean chaebol like Hyundai Heavy Industries and Dongwon FB, and some internationals like DDB Agency and Chevron. Each company has two job functions to fill, so the interviewers have to use the information they learned from the applicant to decide which job to tell them about.


I made a couple of "Welcome to the Young-il Job Fair" type banners, and arranged the classroom as you see in the photos. My co-teacher chooses 10 students to man the interview booths, and gives instruction to the job-seekers in the hallway while I go over the duties of the company reps. "The success of this activity," I intone, "is all up to you. If you are serious, and if you make the others speak and listen in English, this will be a great lesson." Even high school boys respond well to being put in a position of trust and responsibility.


Once that is done, the lesson runs itself, except for guarding the entrance door to ensure an orderly process, monitoring conversations, and checking that interviewees are writing the information they learn correctly and in English--spelling doesn't matter in my class, but not writing in Hangeul does.


Monday 5th period was the Open Class for my contract renewal process, and I was told to expect several members of the administration as well as English Department members to observe. Only the vice principal showed up, walked around for about ten minutes, and left. I was told he was "very pleased". He is rising to become principal when Mr Jun retires in August, so that's a good sign.

SSGT Reckless, Korean War Hero

Last week was a lesson on Sports in my first grade classes, which is mainly a survey activity: teams are given a specific topic and they work together to devise three good survey questions to elicit the opinions of their classmates. Topics in sports include favorite sport, attendance at sports events, women in sports, etc. This year, gambling and game-fixing was included, due to the K-League scandal.

And Animals in Sports. I make that team ask some form of the question, Is it morally right to use animals for our entertainment? I make them ask because I want to know what Korean students think on this issue. I myself am a bit conflicted on it: I love the circus, elephant parades, dogs pushing prams and lion-tamers included, I have been to the racetrack a few times in my day, I even saw the cobra show in Thailand last month and uploaded video to Youtube! But I'm always a bit je ne sais quoi: it's one thing to use them for sustenance, another to force them to perform just for the purpose of relieving our ennui. Of course, being wild creatures, they'd probably be dead otherwise, rather than, say, populating lawn chairs at a clean yet inexpensive resort.

Interestingly, my students seem to be divided right down the middle: 50%, more or less, think it is uncool to treat/mistreat animals like this. Fast forward to today, when when one of my old (well, thirty or so) students posts the link at top on his FB--he's a horsey type from way back.

I'm wondering what my current students would think of this use of an animal, or this particular animal. What do you think? You can read more here: http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/mascreck.html

It's quite a story, but it ended pretty well for SSGT Reckless. One cannot say the same for many other animals drafted for military use, particularly bomb-carriers like the Soviet anti-tank dogs or the USA's Project Pigeon. Go to this Wikipedia article, scroll down to "As living bombs"--is a content warning here really necessary?

A Fable of Aesop

One day, an ESL Teacha was thinking of ways to make his conversation students actually speak English in class. The Teacha thinked and thinked until he was all thunk out. "Oh well, I guess I will just repeat the Aesop's Fables lesson plan I have done before. It wasn't too bad, and some students did actually speak English." In the lesson, teams of students performed one of Aesop's fables in front of the class.

The Teacha also knew that this lesson plan forced students to wrestle with English comprehension in a way that was new to them--they had to simplify the language of an old-fashioned story and make it clear and easy-to-understand.

The time came for the lesson to be implemented. In the first session, teams of students got an Aesop fable of their own to read and simplify, and make into a script. The story was already in English and students were told to rewrite or restate complicated words and sentences in easy English.

Alas, some of the ESL Teacha's helpers "helped" students to rewrite their story in Korean and then translate it back into English. Using "grammar-translation" like this impedes fluency and should rarely be done according to modern language teaching theory. When the Teacha found out, he chewed up the bad assistant helpers into small pieces, spit them out, and buried them behind the library in a kimchi pot, never to be seen again.

In the second session, the students presented their stories in front of the class. As the teacha expected, some of the teams just stood in front of the room and took turns reading parts of the original story without much change. But many of the teams stripped away arcane language, found the key parts of the story and acted it out so other students could understand it! Also, they enjoyed themselves a little bit.

The moral of the story: "Aesop's fables are still accessible today--2500 years and 10,000 miles away!"



I've montaged together one of the stories above, the Bear and the Two Travelers, and will do the same treatment to two or three others if I have the energy. However, I would appreciate feedback on whether you were able to hear and understand the story as told this way--does it need subtitles or captions? Thanks.

For the record, I started with a version of each story at www.aesopfables.com/, then did some amount of editing and simplifying myself before printing out two copies per team. I chose stories on the basis of: 1) did I like it? 2) did it have some action, not just dialogue? 3) did it have some dialogue, not just action? 4) is it short? 5) could it be staged sensibly, with just a desk, a chair and some paper plate masks? 6) did it have 4 characters? (I also have one story with 3 and one with 5 to cover my bases.)

Survey Says

I have been doing the same lesson back-to-back in my first grade classes the last two weeks. Well, it isn't the same lesson, per se, but the same activity--a survey of habits and preferences of other students in the class.

Each team has to create three survey questions about their specific topic, then spread out and find their classmates' opinions, habits, preferences, etc. I give them a form, thus:

Curiously, there are a few difficulties with this form, experienced by more students than I would like to admit: 1) writing their questions along the slanted lines--some students ignore the lines and write horizontally; b) trying to fill in the answers to the three questions going down a column, rather than across a row (??!); 3) writing their own name repeatedly in the space labeled Name. So I have created a mock-up version to illustrate how to complete the form. In fact, I have a whole notebook filled with mock-up versions of different hand-outs for my lessons.

Each team is given a specific topic related to the general unit topic. for instance, last week we finished the cell phone chapter, so topics included: game-playing; camera; parents/punishment/restrictions; statistics. This week the subject is food, and topics include fast food, genetically modified foods, Youngil school lunch, snacks, cooking, etc. My classes have 40 students, or ten teams of four, and thus ten topics, but you get the idea. The co and I move actively from group to group helping them with their questions. Then they spend ten to twelve minutes going around the classroom, asking their questions and answering other students'.

At least, hopefully. Korean students have a real desire to please the teacher, which means to them completing the worksheet. If there are twelve slots to fill in, they must fill in ALL twelve slots. They know it would be impossible to do this in twelve minutes by speaking their questions in English, waiting for their classmate to process and answer the questions, then understand the answers and write them down (which is exactly what I want them to do), especially if they than repeat the process in reverse.

So they tend to do two things which utterly defeat the purpose of the activity, no matter how strenuously and clearly they told NOT to do them: a) give their survey paper to the other person, let him read and write his own answers (see, they read and write English quite well--they just can't speak and listen. That that fact is why they have this class doesn't seem to register with them in their zeal to complete the assignment); or b) read it in English once, then translate into Korean for the sake of expediency.

During the last phase, they return to their groups, combine the data and calculate the results; to wrap up, I ask each group a question to see what they learned about the class's food preferences, like: "Team I, what percentage of students think the school lunch service is delicious?" and "Team A, what is the favorite fast food in this class?" For MI Theory practitioners, this is the opportunity for the math/logic intelligence to shine.

The class survey, pretty good lesson idea. It's not perfect--I don't yet have any lessons that are. It provides a focused, student-generated opportunity for conversation. It requires both teachers to actively listen and relentlessly correct during conversation, which makes it quite tiring.

But you learn things. For instance, very few students admit to having "self-pics" on their cell phone, and ice cream is easily the most popular dessert food among my students. Also about 70% are happy with the school lunch program, a turn-around from two years ago, when we ditched J & J Catering for Dongwon Food Service.

The funny thing is, Dongwon was so much worse, the situation became such that the faculty lunchroom was deserted because everyone left campus for lunch. Now, they have J & J back again, and people seem far happier.

Notebooks and Cellphones

Notebooks: On the bulletin board at the back of my classroom I have a list of class rules assembled from the "Class Rules" lesson the second week of school. One of the rules says:

I will come to class on time, with my materials, prepared to learn.

I ask them several times in the first couple of months exactly what materials that is talking about. They know it refers to a) notebook, to write things in; b) pen or pencil, to write things with; and c) brain, to know what to write. (While the class is Conversation, writing things out first gives them greater confidence in their generated language, especially early on.)

Despite all this, many classes have about 1/3 of students show up with no notebook. What's up with that? Well, anyway, this post is not going to complain, it's going to celebrate those who do bring their notebooks, particularly that genre of notebook with sappy or nonsensical English printed on them. To wit:



"Take you wonder by wonder; Open up your heart and greet the world as it is. We can always find joy and love wherever our eyes rest."



The small print makes up for the macro gibberish, being quite profound in its odd way: "We all have our own ability. The difference is how we use it.  If it's your limit, you can't exceed it; if you exceed it, it's not your limit."

Remember, a high school boy picked this out.

"A champion is someone who has won the first prize in a competition, contest, or fight."  Fair enough.

Cell Phones: Chapter two in our first grade textbook is about cell phones, so I've begun a three week unit on the topic.  Actually, this week is mainly an opportunity to do some research in Multiple Intelligences Theory, thinly disguised as a lesson on cell phones.  It is a follow-up to the research review I did in lieu of a winter camp when not enough students signed up.  The first activity is a dreary, lengthy inventory to help classify students in terms of their stronger/weaker intelligences (again, do find out about this theory, from Howard Gardner at Harvard, if you're unfamiliar with it.)

I introduced the activity with a Kim Yun-a Samsung Haptic commerical, seen at YouTube; Yun-a is Korea's figure skating champion, and a national heroine.  The point of the ad that I try to bring out is that she is not only a skater--she writes, she sings, washes her dog, and rolls around in her bed.  We all have many abilities, or kinds of "intelligence", etc, etc ...

Part 2 of the lesson is some light-on-the-English fun sparked by this Korean cell phone commercial (thanks, Nck!):




Thinking about their responses on the inventory, they are to create their own ideal smart phone with the features that they want most to have.  I give them a hand-out with a sort of blank cell phone on it, and they invent new apps and create icons for them, and provide English labels.  Of course, they're supposed to chat with each other in English during this process.  Here are a few results from classes so far:

Finding a person I want to meet, doing exams instead of me

"19" refers to restricted movies, a common meme, there's also a hotpack and a fan

Instead of an Apple product, this guy likes Grapes

I like the "sleep well" app (and its sheep icon), and the secrets box

Some of the more inventive apps include the anywhere bathroom finder, plastic surgery detector, find out if someone likes me, and the "heartbreaker".  "You sure you mean beartbreaker?" I asked.  "You want to leave sad, desperate girls behind as you go through life?"

"Yes," he said, with what I think he imagined was a rakish grin.  "They can lov-uh me, but I can heartbreak."

Tuttle Update

Well, week one of classes for the 2011 school year is finally over. Nineteen to go.

A few observations about the new crop of "freshyear" students: they seem on the whole a better prepared lot, in their English at least, though also freer, more talkative and less scared than previous groups; of 560 of them, 26 or maybe a few more are left-handed, a percentage which seems to be increasing every year; alas, nary an interesting pencilbox to be seen.

I have almost an entire new crop of co-teachers, only one returning from last year. One of the others has been at the school for a while, but never co-taught with me before. The rest are all new teachers. This is good and bad: good in that they have no baggage about what they should do and don't seem inclined to sit at the back and "take a rest" or read the newspaper; bad in that I cannot necessarily rely on them to keep me in the swing of what's going on at school--cancellations for standardized testing, meetings and such.

For the next month or so, my lessons will run from Thursday to Wednesday, so I have two new lessons tomorrow: first grade (remember that means 10th grade to USAns) will create our class rules; and second grade will learn about dating--Korean girls are more attracted to boys who can speak English, according to a survey. Part of this lesson is watching a video and answering questions about it.

Alas, my classroom sound system wasn't working on Monday (though it was fine on Friday afternoon), so the dude came to fix it this afternoon. During a class. And failed.

One of my new co-teachers, Mr Kim (who also works part-time for the tech desk, he told me), tried to switch out the amplifier with the one in the other, seldom-used, English classroom. But that didn't do the trick either. So my Plan B was just to hold 2nd grade classes in that room until the problem could be worked out, and Mr Kim returned the amplifier.

Now, that classroom has a much more complex sound system (though the identical amp running the PA) because it is essentially a listening lab, with student headsets and microphones wired up. Once he hooked everything up again, we now had two non-operational sound systems. Plan C, find some speakers and run them directly off my classroom computer. (Plan D would be make up a new lesson.)

While Mr Kim trotted off to find some ordinary computer-type speakers, I double-checked his work and found he had plugged the speaker cord in the microphone jack. Back to Plan B, I guess, and there's 45 minutes of my life I'll never see again.

Still, it's hard to fault a guy for trying to help, and I can say that he has great promise as a co-teacher, having in one week shown himself very quick to pick up on when to speak, when to move, how to interact with me as well as the students.

Also, did I mention the "touch" part of my big touch-screen is on the fritz?

First Day of Classes

First day of classes under the belt, so to speak, and all's ... well, much the same. Which isn't bad.

My schedule consists of 20 class hours, 14 HS first graders (i.e. sophomores) and 6 "second graders, known in the US as juniors. The typical class (if today was any indication) will have 40 students who are not placed according to English proficiency, and a co-teacher I've never met before.

Well, that last isn't entirely true, as co-teacher par excellence Mr Wright was one. Two of the others were brand new to the school, and made a point to come by and ask me what I expected of them. Off to a good start with the scary waygookin!

As I have done for three years now, the first class with me begins with a quote on the board, to copy into their notebooks:

To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks. --A.A. Milne

When we get down to what that means, all about symbolic representation and language, etc., I draw other configurations of three sticks on the board. Most are meaningless but I put in the Korean character ㅋ which is the k sound, and an H.

That segues into speaking English in this class, entering the "English Only Zone" and not worrying about grammar and accuracy. "It's okay to make a mistake," and so on.

Then I draw on my Multiple Intelligences background of Howard Gardner et al (look it up, it's definitely worth your time as a teacher) by doing some math. "How many minutes in an hour?" I ask, and put the response up. "How many hours in a day? How many days in a week?"

"So, how many minutes are in a week?" --10,080.

"How many minutes are you in this classroom?" --50.

"You can speak Korean out there"--sweeping gesture out the window--"for 10,030 minutes every week. I only ask you to try to speak English FIFTY little, teeny minutes when you're in this classroom." (Granted, I leave out the fact that this means I am likely to have little to no impact on their ability to speak English ...)

Anyway, I've just had the idea that I'm going to put great big block numerals of 10 030 up in key locations of the classroom next week.

So, Part III of Lesson One: Introductions. I provide a little biography of myself and my background, concluding with three (cherished) similes about myself: My friends say that I am as smart as Einstein, as funny as Jim Carrey and as kind as Mother Teresa."

Believe it or not, only thirty minute or so have elapsed by the point the students get to this, their first speaking assignment. They have to write three sentences about themselves in the format: "I am as (adjective) as/as a (famous person or animal)." Before the end of class, everyone will have to read one or more of their sentences. ("I've told you about myself, now you will tell me about yourself.")

Before they begin, we list on the board some adjectives that describe people's bodies, circumstances and personalities, then match them with famous people or animals, etc. As rich as Bill Gates, as strong as Hercules, as tall as a tree.

By now (I just calculated this: I have done this lesson almost exactly this way 52 times here at Youngil-go) I get a little feel for the class based on their best adjective/noun pairings. In the past, some of my favorites have been as silent as space, as kind as the KFC grandfather (aka Col. Sanders), as passionate as fire, as delicious as Britney Spears.

It's interesting sometimes, the different impressions people form: students have been as lazy as a dog, and as energetic as a dog, as outgoing as one, or as happy as a puppy. Today a student was a modest as a pastor. But the winner was as noble as a unicorn. I'm not sure what that means, but I like it.

A New School Year

Back in the US, the new school year traditionally begins the day after Labor Day, which is the first Monday in September. They still do that in some places, but in much of the country, the school year starts earlier and earlier, nibbling away at the "three best reasons to teach" (June, july and August) until there's only two and a quarter.

Korea has a similar scheme, with the school year beginning on March 2, the day after the Sam-il (3-1) Independence Movement holiday, commemorating 1919 demonstrations against the repressive Japanese occupation of Korea.

So, tomorrow begins my third full year teaching Conversational English, although actually, the day consists of (if it follows form) a couple of faculty meetings and an all-school assembly in the hall on the fifth floor of my building, where sometimes students dribble basketballs during inclement weather.

This is to be Principal Jun's last semester, and I understand everyone is waiting to find out who his replacement will be, although I don't expect that will be announced tomorrow. I can say I have appreciated his support and regard.

I went in today to get my classroom ready, mainly cleaning two months of Seoul city grime off all the horizontal surfaces, trimming and placing my plants and fixing up the bulletin board. I also got a couple of weeks worth of lesson plans squared away, though that's iffy due to the fact there has been talk about streaming the classes--if they've actually done it, I'll have modifications to make. I'll make them gladly.

Yes, it creates more work for me, but if they won't give me smaller classes or more face time, organizing classes by English level is probably the most effective change they could make. The other thing the new Department Head hoped to work out for me was a team planning period with my co-teachers, weekly or twice a month. This would be great, as I expect I'll have a slate of newbies, given the way they rotate this duty--turns out, it's not seen as a chore by most, but as a plum. Not because of me so much as because it counts as a regular class assignment.

So, here we go again--off into another year with new challenges, new faces, new minds. The best time of year is the first day of school--when we all get create ourselves anew!

2010 Teacher of the Year

UPDATE: Korea Times profiled me on Wed, Jan. 5, 2011, click here.

Just to make it official, I had to go in to school today for the final faculty meeting and a free (delicious) lunch. I was one of five NSETs (Native Speaker English Teachers) in Seoul to receive the award.

It snowed again last night,so there was a fresh coat of snow on everything. Here are two views out of my classroom window:

Laura Ingalls, Lousy Teacher

I found this clip from "Little House on the Prairie" where Laura Ingalls, played by Melissa Gilbert, (unintentionally) showcases about six terrible teaching techniques in the space of about three minutes.

1) Although "cold questioning" can be useful as a way to open a lesson, it becomes immediately clear that she's asking questions about material to which they've never been introduced.

2) Her impatience mounts after one kid lucks into an answer; she seems to think that if one student has heard of one borough of New York, they clearly should all know all five boroughs--as if they are just refusing to answer out of obstinacy.

3) She allows the minor disruption of the spitball to take over and sideline the class activity, such as it is. Furthermore, she singles out and punishes Willy without actually knowing he did it--all the more reason for Willy to act out, if he knows he'll be punished anyway. (Self-fulfilling prophesy, anyone?)

4) Willy's question is a legitimate one, one for which teachers should have a ready answer. And she does have an answer--but does she have to be so mean about it?

5) When Willy confuses 'borough' with 'burro', Laura passes up the chance to conduct an interesting side-trip into homophones, so that she can instead belittle him and goad him into further acting out. Good choice, Laura Teacha!

6) It might occur to the students that the Brooklyn Bridge goes to Brooklyn if they had, say, a map; the bridge also goes to Manhattan, so why isn't it called the Manhattan Bridge, then? A map would also help in identifying the three rivers in question.

It's well and good to have high expectations for your students--I use the TESA model myself--but clairvoyance is a bit too much. Give them some tools, Miss Ingalls! A hand-drawn map on the board would suffice, since you probably didn't have a textbook in the 1880s.

Well do I remember the maps of Mr Ferguson, a big beefy guy who taught history at Chaplin School in the 1970s. Four color works of art they were, beautifully lettered, bold arrows illustrating troop movements, mountain chains so real you felt your chest tighten in the thin air. We were expected to copy them down in the first minutes of class. The rest of the period, Mr Ferguson dictated, and we wrote everything down. 45% was the passing grade in his class; I never knew anyone who got over an 80. He wasn't perfect, but he didn't expect us to know things before he taught them.

He set up his classroom with a big open space in the middle, through which he would pace, droning his dictation, with rows of desks on opposite sides, facing in. Dale M--- and I would spend most of class trying to look up Janet E---'s dress. I've never used that desk arrangement, and still blame it to this day for why I don't understand how the von Schlieffen Plan led to Germany's defeat in WWI.

KidPower ToyCon

Last week was the much-anticipated KidPower ToyCon (batteries not included), the annual convention of the Classic Toy Manufacturers and Retailers Association.  And the Exhibition Hall is right there in my classroom!

Better-speaking students man booths inside the classroom as representatives of toy companies, intending to hawk their latest new product; the rest of the class are "store buyers", the people that choose the merchandise that will stock their stores' shelves this Christmas season.  Each store rep. has a unique identity and set of requirements, given on his worksheet; each toy manf. guy has information he wants, too, in addition to selling his toy: store name, contact info, number of outlets, age range, etc.

Okay, so it's a conceit for an interview/information gap activity, but the two co-teachers repeating from last year claim it was their favorite lesson.  I mentioned previously the ways I've tried to improve it: a) simplifying the Q & A (too much information takes too much time and decreases the contacts); and b) increasing the number of toys, or booths, from 8 to 10.  Both moves were successful, so the average "interviewee/store buyer" got five or six interviews compared to three last year. 

It was a massive amount of work last year, mainly finding appropriate toys (no guns, swords or other violent toys, no movie or pop culture tie-ins, and ... no batteries required), then building a corporate logo, brand and promotional materials.  This year I did three new toys, but I kept the Scholas Pop Out World stuff intact, because, though it is a Korean company (owned by LG), the English was acceptible. 

This lesson does promote a good amount of English speaking, though vocabulary covered in the textbook, like retail (as in retail price) and promotional (as in flyer) were sometimes less understood than I hoped.  I also used my "teaching stick" to threaten students who said their email address AT (@) was pronounced dalbaengi 달뱅이, though I swear before I looked it up I heard it as 골뱅이, golbaengi.  However you say it, don't!  달뱅이 is a marine snail, a popular anju food, whose spiral-y shape resemples the @. 

To conclude the lesson, students look over their contacts and compare them to the specifications for their particular search--"Did you get a match?"   A student who visits five of the ten booths is almost certain to have at least one match.  One further change I would make is to add a column on the far right of the worksheet, to check off Match or Not a Match.

The Nice Catch Suction Ball Paddle Game from Whizz-O, above, was a popular addtion this year (though two broken paddles do not bode well for its longevity in the market, or indeed the KidPower ToyCon).  The Puzzlebox sets from IQ+, Inc. were also a hit, and were solved--in one sitting--by Yours Truly:




Okay, so I'm a big kid at heart.

School Budgets

About two weeks ago, I went to the annual SMOE NSET workshop, which I barely mentioned here because there was not much to mention. However, during the sharing session, a couple of people (these are all high school teachers) talked about their candy budget.

I had two responses to that: a) that much candy you need a budget? Seriously? For high school students? Whatever; and b) you have a budget?

So, this got me wondering, Do I have a classroom budget? Before I go on, let me clarify it's not that the school I am at is niggardly (with apologies to David Howard), as whenever I've asked for teaching materials they've always been very accommodating--but that's not the same as having a budget!

In any case, I pretty much have what I need: enough desks and chairs; heater and air conditioner; loads of lockable storage cabinets; a modern computer and sound system; and even a large touch-screen display. In fact, it's a rather nice room. Still, I buy things for my classes occasionally, like those witches' hats for the Harry Potter pictures. I generally just out-of-pocket the expense, and don't worry about it--what's a few thousand won here or there, right? (I know, I know, I'll never be a millionaire thinking that way ...)

But I also generally save the receipts.

I've wanted a presentation pointer for a while (the kind of thing that lets you advance Powerpoint slides and so on from anywhere in the room), but Miss Lee had told me that Korean teachers should buy that for themselves. At 75 to 100 KW (kilowon), I didn't want one that much. Well, I did finally break down and buy one just recently for use in my public speaking class.

Anyway, I asked around about my classroom budget, and got an answer today: 500,000 W. About USD 450. This does not include paper and printing costs. So, I go to my room and tally up the receipts I've collected since March 2: 88,420 W.

Yikes. Coming out of my pocket, that sounds like a lot, but coming out of a 500,000 won budget, it's not much. Therefore, I went to the nearby Daiso during my free period and bought twenty bucks worth of marker pens and plastic tubs to put them in, so there are enough for each of my student tables to have their own. (For a first grade lesson I'll blog around the end of the week.) 111,420 W. 388,580 W to go.

Serendipitously (with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke), when I looked through the papers this evening, what did I see but a story carried in both the Korea Herald and the JoongAng Daily about next year's budget from SMOE (my employer). Sez KH:

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education will almost quadruple the free education budget next year, officials said Monday.
The office unveiled its final budget plan for next year, which amounts to 6.6 trillion won, a 4.7 percent increase from this year.
A total of 249 billion won is to be allocated to free education, a 376.7 percent rise from this year’s 52.2 billion won, according to the budget plan.
Of that amount, 116.2 billion won is to be used for free meals in elementary schools,

The article continues:

The education support fund for low-income family preschool children has been raised by 51.4 percent from 29.5 billion won to 75 billion won, officials said.

Hmmm. Actually, 151.4% of 29.5 billion comes to about 45 billion. This would presumably be a typo by the Herald, as the JAD account gives the current budget number as 49.5 billion.

So, where is all that money coming from, if the net effect of these increases only raised the budget by 4.7%? Cutting back on native teachers, perhaps?

Maybe, but there's no mention of it. No, the big loser appears to be school facilities improvement, which KH calls "repairing and exchanging deteriorated buildings and facilities": down 27.1 percent.

The upshot is, then, that it is my school's plan to build an elevated gymnasium, rather than me and my measly 500 dollar budget, that will suffer from the cuts: click here and scroll to #4.