1st class in the 5th Grade

I have a class of 5th graders who are the most wonderful class of students to have ever attended an Elementary school. 

 They walk into class and casually talk and the usual messing about while I greet them at the door, the bell rings and I walk back to the front of the class as I turn around they are all sat in their seats looking straight ahead in complete silence waiting for the lesson to start.

The result is that in the lesson we cover the book work, extend the language learning beyond that covered in the book, today we were studying about shopping and the book unit doesn't cover numbers but a couple of students asked about bigger numbers...

만 원 - 10 thousand, then 십 만 =100,000, 백만 원 = 1,000,000 and they asked what was next so I wrote them on the board I only went up to  10¹⁵ = Quadrillion, but for that they gave me a sincere round of applause, which I found highly amusing...  Anyway my point is we were able throughout the lesson to extend the learning from outside the boundaries of the textbook (and this is not the first time), have a bit of fun at the same time and still have time to play a game!

Be choir! And Bill Gates invented the internet!

Lunch 14-11-11

First here is a picture of my lunch - Awesome... LOL - this is published on our school website - 헐... -  daily...Today it was a radish (?) soup water kimchi Fried squid and a kind of  Bi Bim thing with of cours the Bap (rice). 



On Monday the Seongnam Metropolitan choir visited our school to give an hours performance, highlights for me were the School Mistress of Authority and Discipline Ajuma! (I don't know what her correct title is so I will call her that, MAD for short and a belting performance of  Nessun dorma by some guy who looked like the phantom of the opera without the mask...

After about 40 mins of rousing show songs and smiley dance routines the kids started to get a bit restless and started talking and playing with their smart phones... so MAD stopped the MC Mid introduction of a weak Solo number to take the mic and 'calm the crowd'. Now MAD does this by  picking on individual students and making them stand up and walk to the back of the room where they can sit down and carry on talking (This is OK because their sound is drowned out by all the teachers who are also stood at the back talking and playing with their smart phones.  As the performance resumed MAD weaved her way among the crowd to 'select' some more individuals for the comfort of the back of the room. Her selection methods ranged from a gentle shoulder tap,  a poke in the ear, a series of short sharp "HARD" taps on the head with a knuckle which was audible from across the auditorium and a kick in the spine that Messi would have been proud of. The kick launched the unsuspecting 6th grader into the adjacent row, Luckily the performance ended before there was more people at the back than in the crowd and before anyone was hospitalised.

The following day a grade 5 student asked me 

"Rob Teacher, yesterday... singing... enjoy?"

I replied "Oh, the Choir..."

He looked at me rather distraught and said "Be Quiet...  Oh Ok"

I apologised and explained that I had said 'The choir' and explained what a choir was... 

During a lesson this weeks the invention of the internet came up and students were guessing the year, They first thought it was around the year 2000 and they kept talking about Bill Gates. Bill Gates (see my recent post with another It was not Bill gates fact) didn't invent 'the internet' I said... "Really they replied" looking confused, I think one of them mentioned Steve Jobs... "No" I said it was a US university and it was then developed by the US military... 

They think I am mad, it has to be  either Bill or Steve they invented everything but bill won because Steve is dead!

New Books and basic skills lesson

 

New Books and basic skills

We have just had a set of 32 dictionaries delivered to my school at 30,000 Won each I thought we had better start using them. 

So, I did a dictionary skills class with 5th grade today, just to give them the basic skills practise. 


I gave them all a dictionary and after checking they had all used a dictionary before, I got them all to find the work dictionary, when they had found it I asked them what page it was on, then got them to tell me the Korean meaning of the word and I went through the examples of word usage in the dictionary.

The activity

I then split the class in to two teams and explained the activity.

1. I will call out a word
2. find it in the dictionary as fast as you can
3. raise your hand and shout out the page number
4. I will then ask you to tell me
1. the meaning
2. read out the 1st example sentence
5. Your team gets 1 point

I gave them the following words to find, selected (almost) at random:

1. impact
2. forgive
3. transform
4. wink
5. container
6. memory

Surprisingly engaging activity

They really enjoyed the activity far more than I expected. They wanted to continue playing, which really surprised me.  I was so proud of them, even my noisy classes (2 & 5) got on with the follow up 'individual' activity to find and write the definition of 12 key vocabulary words for Lesson 12 of the text book.

Never a dull moment

The dictionaries that we have also have a Ko -Eng supplement. One girl stayed behind to look up the word "Chubby" so that she could say "Rob teacher that is you..." 

Thanks a lot, she learnt a new word, at least!

Why I hate Waygook.org

I know I am not alone in this but this site is depressing, racist and most of the stuff on it with the exception of a couple of power point games is a bit rubbish.

This irritated me today.....  Where do you self centred people think you are living, adapt or move on despite the big US influence in Korea... this is not America!

A bit further down the page

I am also constantly irritated by the old women who push you on the subway, but this is their country. They are probably constantly irritated by us.

This is just typical of the mindless crap posted on Waygook.org.  And they recommend this site at GEPIK orientation...

I wish someone would create a similar site without all the bullshit...  Oh, you have - thanks Shane!  - ESLHERO.COM