Meth - Final Practice Stage

Values in My Teaching Development

Life is a funny thing. Sometimes you have no idea where it will lead you or what you will end up doing. This holds true for me. Back in college, before I decided what I was going to do with my life, I promised myself that I would never become a teacher. Look at me now. In the past five years I graduated with a degree in education, hopped on a plane to teach English in Korea and now I am planning to start a MA TESOL program. Life is a funny thing.

I suppose I always looked up to teachers. When I was growing up, I would barely see my parents. They were too busy working and saving up to make sure that my brother and I could have opportunities that they never had. At school, I saw the teacher as a role model, a friend, a mentor and a parent. Maybe this is what drew me into the teaching field. I knew that a teacher could change and impact the world. I decided that I wanted to leave a mark in peoples’ lives, even if it was at the cost of economic gains.

I can still remember the moment when I told my mom and dad that I wanted to be a teacher. My dad was in clear shock and disbelief. He was an Asian parent to the core. He thought that I was going to be a doctor or some type of businessman, but I didn’t want that type of life. I knew that no matter what, I was going do what I wanted. And my mother, who is one of the closest people to me, said something that I will never forget. She said that it’s your life and you should do what will make you happy and she will support me to the very end. There is nothing like a mother’s love and support… nothing. So, on I went to become a teacher.

The year of student teaching was not fun. It was hard and mentally stressful. There were so many people, including veteran teachers, who said that I shouldn’t be a teacher. That it is a bad career path in these modern times. Hearing this wanted me to prove them wrong. I have always been a person who does things the hard way, and I took this as a personal challenge. I promised myself that I will use my teaching degree for something incredible. I wanted to prove that the field of education was not a dark pit that people fall into.

To this day, I still get odd looks when I tell people that I’m a teacher. I wonder if it’s the fact that I’m a male, or the fact that I’m Asian. You really don’t find a lot of male Asian teachers in western education. But here in Korea, it’s a bit different. Teachers here are a bit more respected and held to a higher bar. Yet, I feel like sometimes I’m not taken seriously due to the fact that any native English speaker can hold a similar title as I do. I guess this is one of the reasons that I am pursuing my MA in TESOL. I am still trying to prove my worth as a teacher and make my mark in people’s lives.

ICC MT [Presentation Stage]

When creating my lesson plan, I wanted to challenge myself to create an activity that I could use in my own classroom and not just a ‘one-shot’ lesson. I decided to incorporate a cultural aspect with my 5th graders textbook unit on ‘time’. I thought that it would be interesting for the students to experience the lives of two different high school students. At first I was going to compare two non-Korean high school students, but then I thought that my students would gain more meaning if one of the students was from Korea. I found two videos of high school students. One was a Korean male and the other was a Finnish female.

At the start of the lesson I had the high school students’ picture side-by-side on a PPT slide. I asked the class what they saw and then had class pair-up to decide which country the students were from. So I started off by showing the Korean high school student’s day. I wanted to show his video first because the class can gain an instant connection with the Korean student. After the video, I wanted the students to use the TLC intended for the lesson. I had the students to describe what the high school student did by eliciting the third person form. Throughout the lesson, I wanted to produce as much opportunities for my class to practice English, so I had them ask and answer phrases such as, “What time does he get up?” and “He gets up at seven fifty.” I followed the same procedure with the Finnish high school girl (watching her day and breaking it down by time) and had the class practice asking and answering again.

The last part of the activity is where the cultural discussion comes into play. In the MT, I didn’t have time for the class to complete the Venn diagram. The students were supposed to discuss in pairs for about 5 minutes to come up with similarities and differences with the two high school students’ day. A full class discussion will then take place by asking why and how are the cultures different and what might be the expectations of the parents and society for the students.

In the practice and producing part of the lesson, I would have the students interview each other about their day. The students would have to report back and state their interviewee’s day using the third person. I could also give the students an assignment to research a family member or a celebrity’s daily routine and then have them present it to other students in the class using the third person form.

I think that for my younger learners, the little ‘C’ aspect of the cultural lesson might be harder for them to be aware of than big ‘C’. I have to also realize that my students are still growing and gaining life experiences, so focusing too much on little ‘C’ might lead to some confusion. I would also have to point out to my students that both of the videos are extreme models of the two cultures and that not everyone has the similar routines.

Overall, I thought the lesson could have a better balance of TLC and cultural discourse. But again, combining these two with the class textbook is difficult. I tried to make it as student centered as possible but looking back at only the video, I would have say the ratio might have favored the teacher 60:40 in terms of discourse (not including the Venn diagram activity).

My main focus during the MT was to practice different MIC’s and to refine my ‘Top Down’ instructions. I thought that I had a good amount of MIC’s through the activity. Also, I thought my explanations have improved a lot more since starting the STG course. I find myself not having to repeat my instructions a number of times, but rather stating them simply and efficiently.

At the start of the STG course, I (and I’m sure that I’m not the only one) thought that incorporating culture into an ESL lesson would be a piece of cake. Well, I can now say that having gone through 14+ weeks of ICC, it’s pretty damn difficult to fit culture into young learners’ lesson. Trying to incorporate different cultural aspects within a specific unit of a lesson is daunting. But it's definitely a learning skill that will need time to develop.

Expectations

This week was an interesting one for sure. With my 5th grade class on Wednesday, I had to stop an activity and have a one-on-one with the class. This first half of the year has been hard, rough and frustrating. The 5th grade students are ill-behaved, not just in my class, but throughout the school. After trying to settle down the students for maybe the 5-6th time during the class, I stopped the class and asked them "Why do you think we learn English?" I got a wide range of responses:

"Because you are a teacher."
"You need money."
"Because we have to go to college and read English books."
"We need it to travel."
"We learn English so we can talk to other people."
"We have to take a test."

I told my students that all of these are correct answers, but then I rephrased the question to "Why do you think Lena (my co-teacher) and I want to teach you English?"

At this point, the students weren't sure how to answer, so I told them:

"I want to teach you English so you can have a better chance at doing other things and experience the world. You have a great opportunity to start a language at a young age. Most people in the world do not get this chance. So, I know that English is hard and I don't expect you to memorize 1,000 words and I'm not worried about your test scores. I just want you to be able to use English to enjoy your lives. Just try and learn at least one thing in English and I'll be very happy for you."

The class went silent and the message seemed to have gotten through to some students. Hopefully, it will stick to some students and help them focus a bit more in class. It was interesting the expectations for the teacher and student can get lost or not even established at all. In this case, it happened with me.

Pronunciation: Repeating (1st Grade Lesson on Weather)

This is was the first time that I taught 1st graders a lesson on weather, so I had to make sure that the first lesson used a lot of repetition. I didn't have time to find a video to elicit any schema, so I thought the best thing to do was to just think out loud and ponder the question "How's the weather?" and have the students repeat. Then continuing to the next slide, I would elicit and have the students ask me "Victor, how's the weather?". I would show the next slide and say "It's sunny". I would have the students repeat "How's the weather?" and "It's _______." for all different types of weather. After the repeating, I had the students finish a worksheet that linked the types of weather and pictures.

Looking back on this, I should have reviewed with a different and clearer schema. The repetition seemed successful at the start, but the follow up activity was extremely weak. The students didn't practice what they have just learned, so it didn't stick in their long-term memory. We basically just looked at pictures of the weather repeated and then moved on, never to speak what they just practiced. The follow up lesson to this should hopefully address all these problems.

Pronunciation: Chaining (First Attempt) (5th Grade Lesson on Time)

So I had a change two weeks ago and performed my first attempt at chaining (front and back). The unit was on telling time and then practicing the chunks "What time do you ____?" and "I _____ at [time]". I wasn't actually planning to do this with this particular lesson, but as I was introducing the new phrases, it seemed like a great chance to try it out. I didn't have a chance to practice, but I think that back-chaining produced a better flow for my students than front-chaining. Here's examples of how I did it:

T: Have breakfast.
S: Have breakfast.
T: What time do you.
S: What time do you.
T: What time do you have breakfast?
S: What time do you have breakfast?
T: Do homework.
S: Do homework.
T: What time do you homework?
S: What time do you homework?

During the chaining, a few of the students went off task and started talking. You can clearly see my frustration at around the ~6 minute mark. So, it was definitely not the smoothest, and I should had the students chain with hand motions. I really think it is something I have to start using this more, because it seemed to create a flow and rhythm with the students' pronunciation.

1st grade lesson on number + schema (animals)

This was a 1st grade lesson on numbers. After the warm-up songs I used common zoo animals to activate schema. I had six animals on a PPT slide and quickly showed students the pictures. I asked the students to talk in their groups and discuss what animals they saw on the slide. This worked out better than I thought. Even thought the majority of the language was in Korean, the students were interested in talking about what animals they saw. I asked the students what animals they saw and 'how many [animals] were there?' I then started to elicit where they can find all these animals, but that attempt failed. The students didn’t have the word ‘zoo’ in their vocabulary yet. The funny part was that the students knew the way it was supposed to be spelled. I proceeded to let the students know that we were counting animals. As we went through the PPT slides, the students repeated the numbers and animals:

T: “It’s a monkey.”
S: “It’s a monkey.”
T: “One monkey”
S: “One monkey”

Looking back on this part of the presentation, I think I may have confused the students going into the practice stage. That is where the lesson goes a bit south. In the practice stage, I had two students model a card matching game with me. The activity is to hand number cards for students (1-10) and have them mix the cards and lay them on their desks. The students have to turn two cards over attempting to find and match identical numbers. For example, as the students pick up and turn around each card they have to say “it’s one” or “it’s four”. I knew as the students started playing the game, many of the students were just saying the numbers without using “it’s”. My intent was to have students say a complete phrase instead of just the number. So, I’m going to count this as a learning lesson for next time. I need to be more consistent in what TLC I want and expect the students to say, and to scaffold the lesson a little more smoothly.

Week 13: I’m losing my passion for teaching…

Now heading into the 13^th week of my STG-TESOL course, it has been full of downs and only a few ups. My passion level for teaching is at an all time low. My students are sucking the life right out of me. I find myself wanting to quit the field of education (or at least teaching children) more and more.

I started the STG program with high enthusiasm. I decided months before the course that I wanted to dedicate and shift my career from elementary education to TESOL.  As the STG course started I learned quickly that the last 4 years of my ESL teaching was ineffective. When I dedicated my life to education, my biggest fear was letting students down.  I desperately wanted to change my teaching style and develop a new philosophy in my ESL instruction. With the help of the instructors I learned so many new things that I wanted to implement into my classroom and student discourse.

Here is where I hit a major roadblock. This semester I teach 1^st, 3^rd and 5^th graders. The students that I have are really giving me (and apparently every teacher in the school) problems. Many of the students in the school are ‘behavioral problems’ and can’t seem to focus during class. The school’s test scores are close to the bottom when it comes to elementary schools in Seoul. To add to the problems, a good amount of the students are from mixed ethnicities. And talking with a few teachers, I found that for some students, Korean is not their first language. Nothing seems to be working. I try to activate schema, use CI’s, MIC’s, talking in pairs, seating arrangements… nothing. Any ounce of freedom these students have and they go insane. I waste a lot of time trying to get them back into focus (And yes, I give them time limits). At some times I really think that a monologic teacher-centered dynamic is what will really work, but I know that is not the way I want to move forward. The students are used to teacher-centered classroom for years. I really wonder how much difference I am making by trying to create this student-centered discourse in my classroom. Every time I try, it feels like the students are fighting with me, almost taunting me to go back towards a teacher-centered role.

…Or maybe the problem isn’t the students, it’s me… I don’t have the time to plan lessons that I normally would anymore. Or maybe my expectations are too high for these students and they are shutting off. All I know is that some days I feel like a breakdown is coming soon.

ICC Cultural Lesson #2: Food and Countries

I taped this lesson about a week and a half ago as a test run. I wanted to use this lesson with two students so I could establish some sort of discourse. So, I totally failed to round-up two students for this lesson. I was stood-up at least twice by different students and couldn’t tape a new lesson.

This cultural lesson focused on learning about different countries and their foods. The lesson started out with learning the different countries; China, Korea, America, Spain, Italy, France, England, Australia, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, India and Canada. The student labeled the map as a review activity. If I had two students, I would have them review and work together to complete the map. The student then repeated the names of the countries as I showed PPT. Next the student was shown the flags and pictures and had to guess which country it was.

The next step was to introduce foods from some of the countries. The foods were kimchi, poutine, sushi, curry, pizza, hamburgers, fish and chips, egg noodles, croissants and tortillas. The student had to match up the foods with the country using the phrase “(food) + is/are from + (country)”. I have been working with this student before about singular and plural words, so he was able to link the foods with the correct form. If I had the correct number of students to perform this activity, I would have had them pair up to complete the matching by creating the phrases in singular or plural forms.

Going through each food, the student was able to create the correct form and match the food with their country. For example, the students would pick up a food card and then say “curry is from India” and “hamburgers are from America”. The last part of the lesson was to go over the foods and check if the student matched up the foods correctly. I had the student repeat the phrases and self-correct any mismatched items.

My goal will still be to find two students to try this out. I think that the overall plan for this lesson is a good way to incorporate foods and the use of singular and plural words. 

ICC Cultural Lesson #1: Emotions and Masks

My cultural lesson used masks to convey different types of emotions. My 3^rd grade class was leaning about different emotions in their TB. During the previous lessons, the students learned the phrases “Are you sick/sad/happy/angry/scared/hungry?” and “Yes, I am” and “No, I’m not”. At the end of the lesson, there is a section in the TB that introduces a cultural connection with the material. This time the lesson involved face masks from Korean and they showed different emotions. I decided to take one step future and create a game (Jeopardy style) where they had to describe the emotions of masks from different cultures.

If there was a lesson where things went wrong, it was surely this one. At the start of the class, the students came extremely late. Due to this, I had to try to push the lesson in. This was obviously a mistake, because the students are low-level young learners and they need time to process things a lot more. Also, in the middle of the lesson, my co-teacher was called for other duties, so I had to teach the lesson without any translator, so it proved to be rather challenging to get some of the instructions across.

The activity started with a short video clip from the book. It showed different masks from Korea and explained the emotions that showed. The students were able to answer and identify which emotions the masks were conveying.

I started the activity by introducing what the game was, but I’m not sure if the students understood my instructions. On my PPT, there were two columns, ‘Asia’ and ‘World’. I tried to explain to the students that the masks are grouped in this way. As we started to play the game by showing the first mask, I asked the students to talk with their team. I tried to create some type of discourse and asked them to find two things. First was the emotion the mask showed and second was where the mask was from. The students didn’t talk much the first time and just raised their hands individually. After I kept drilling them to talk with their friends and gave them a time limit, they started to speak more and more.

I tried my best to elicit the phrase “I’m _____.” Usually the students like to give only one word answers, so my goal for the lesson was to have them use the emotions they learned and say the phrase together as a team. The big problem with this activity was the fact that as I was going through each team and asking them for answers the other students was doing other things. Many times during the lesson I had to elicit answers and other students were just sitting around doing nothing.

With the cultural part of the activity, I wasn’t sure if I created a strong cultural awareness for the students. I should have put on the three countries on the PPT for the students to choose from. This would have made it clearer for the students. Instead I just threw the terms at them and didn’t have them create an entire sentence. I did my best to explain some directions to the students and it took some time for adjustments.

Overall, considering all the things that went wrong, the lesson was not all that bad. The students seemed genuinely interested in the activity and where the masks were from. I had a hard time creating a real discourse, but I think for these low-level learners it was good practice and wrap-up of the terms and phrases that we have learned.

Vocabulary Lesson of the Week

This week my my co-teacher and I taught our 5th grade students how to recognize plural and singular words using clothing items. We started out by having picture cards for each item of clothing, this helped activating schema and making input comprehensible from the previous lesson (individual clothing items). We set up a chart where all the clothes were in the singular and plural sections. We asked the Ss what the difference was between all the words. Ss finally said (after eliciting) it was because the -s was at the end of the words. We explained that the -s will usually create 'more than one things'. We repeated the words with the students and created an activity with the pictures on the board to focus on the new rule. The students had to change the clothing items into both singular and plural forms. We had the students work individually and check in pairs to figure out how to change the words. This is something that I have been trying to have my students do more and more. I usually wouldn't have them work in pairs, instead I would just ask the students to raise their hands and ask a question like "who knows how to spell the word in singular/plural?" This didn't help promote any type of productive discourse and certainly didn't help the quiet/shy students in my class. Overall, I think I have to keep trying and letting the students have a chance to speak and figure things out by themselves first, then engage them appropriately.

MT#2 Listening (Reflection)

(forgot to start video at the start of the lesson)

SELF-REFLECTION

My feeling about my MT:
1. I thought that the lesson was interesting for the students. The use of ‘real’ people is something different than characters they would hear from a book. I felt that the students could’ve spoken a lot more. I was in control of the conversation for most of the time.

Comparing with previous MT's, what style was positive?
2. I feel that I am starting to maximize the opportunities for students to speak English. Something simple like repeating instructions make a huge difference. I’m letting the students talk about the activity, instead of controlling all the discourse.

The classroom atmosphere:
3. I thought that the classroom felt relaxed and that the lesson was easy to follow. Although, I should have had the students work in pairs instead of individually. This way, students could help each other and focus on the conversation.

Did I use the WB as planned and MIC techniques?
4. Yes, I just wanted to show how to use the worksheet and to list instructions on what to do. I previewed the lesson that I was with my friends and I spoke to them about their week. I also used visuals to help back up the listening activity.

Did all the students have a chance to talk?
5. The students were able to talk to each other after each time they listened to the dialog. The students were able to discuss what they heard in each conversation.

Did I give the students a chance to speak?
6. No, actually I gave instructions for the listening activity only so the students were not asked questions at that point of the lesson. The students had to speak with one another after listening to each conversation.

Communicative T-Talk vs. Evaluative T-Talk:
7. The ratio didn’t really exist at that point of the lesson. The activity was a listening based, so the students were going to be asked questions at the end of the audio. 

What have I learned about myself as a person/teacher so far?
8. I learned that I could have had the students repeat and ask each other what were the instructions before they started listening to the audio. There are still many moments that I could have the students repeat and use English. It’s something that I have to get better working on. I am coming along slowly.

Listening Activity MT (Presentation Stage: starts at 8:40)

I need to start focusing on the positives of my development. I keep trying to remind myself that this is not a race and that there is no competition but myself…

The positives:

• At the warm-up stage of my lessons, the students are responding well to the speak-with-your-partner segments. At first, I thought that the students would shut down and not even attempt and dialog. After trying for a few lessons they are starting to get the hang of it. I’m happy when the students just ask the questions “How’s it going?” and “How was your weekend?” Even if they can’t speak entirely in English, the attempt means a lot… PROGRESS! 

•  I’m also trying to maximize the English speech in my class. I’m starting to have students expand phrases into sentences and repeat key words and phrases whenever there is a chance. Before, if there were directions on the PPT/WB, I would have just said it once, thinking that the students understood what I said. Now, I have the students repeat the instructions together, maximizing English as much as possible.

• In the listening activity, there were two things that went well. First, I used ‘real’ recordings with my friends and that gained the students interests. My friends are from different countries, so the students were able to listen to different accents. Second, I wanted my students to listen to the recordings for only one time. After listening to the first conversation, I found that many of my students were having trouble filling out the worksheet (too many blanks). I didn’t want to, but looking back at the lesson, I was glad that I played the recordings twice (and no more… BARGAINING!).

The constructive:

•  Watching my lesson again, I still controlled a lot of the discourse in the classroom. I need to maximize their English and not constrain their speaking time. Instead of stopping and letting them discuss the conversations one by one, I could have had them listen once (entirely) and then one more time straight through. Then give them more time to discuss with their pairs and then the entire group/team.

• I really need to work on my ‘Top-Down’ explaining. I am such a detailed person that I always do things from the ‘Bottom-Up’. I could’ve just explained that “We are going to listen to my friend’s today. We need to listen to these 3 things.” Explaining from the ‘Bottom-Up’ not only wastes time, but increases confusion.

Overall:

• Not bad, but definitely just started out of the running-blocks. Way better than when I started. Now if I can just be CONSISTENT with my lessons and teaching, I might not need to drink so much on the weekends (semi-joking).

Dealing With Students That Refuse To Participate.

This week was a really tough week for me. I created a role playing activity based on illnesses and doctor's suggestions for my 5th graders:

• ‘I have a ________’
• stomachache
• fever
• headache
• cold
• runny nose
• earache
• toothache
• Take some medicine.
• Drink a lot of water.
• Go to bed early and get some rest.
• Wash your hands.

The students (in pairs) were given a symptom card and a doctor’s suggestion card. They had to play the role of a patient and a doctor. I wanted to give my students some creative license in role playing. Many of the students did a fine job, but there were some students who fought me every step of the way. One example was a student (girl) who refused to participate with her partner (boy). She wanted to role play with her friend. I told her that she needed to work with the partner next to her. She suddenly threw the papers on aside and ignored what I was saying. Out of frustration, I yelled at her saying “Why are you acting like this!?” That definitely was a ‘great’ way to start the Monday. The problem is that my Korean skills are limited and I cannot communicate normally with students in these situations. I know that yelling wasn't the best move on my part, but having patience on Mondays is not my strongest suit. Next time, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to let the students partner up with the friends they want, and the remaining students can be assigned partners.

My Warm-Up Micro-Teaching Lesson

Looking back at my Micro-Teaching lesson, I could have do so much more to promote English speaking in my class.I am still too controlled of my students. At the start of the lesson, it would have been better for the students to repeat the sentence strips on the board, but instead I jumped into the 'miming activity'. I still have a mental block when teaching English. I keep thinking that the students cannot perform tasks by themselves or with their partners. I want to make sure that I am holding the student's hands, but that will not help their development at all. Throughout the video and other filmed lessons, I am the focal point of the lessons. I need to shift the power ratio over to the students and get them move involved.

Warm-up Lesson on Numbers 1-10

My lesson this week involved teaching an after school class of 1st graders. With this class, I was given the green light to teach any topic of my choice. During first few weeks I taught the students phonics but this lesson moved onto numbers (1-10). I wasn’t sure if the students had prior knowledge of numbers in English. So to make sure that I activated schema, I put a number of different materials in four separate bags. For example, I had a yellow, purple, green and blue bag. The bags had an item inside that corresponded with a number. The yellow bag had two DVDs, the purple bag had 6 dice, the green bag had 5 balls, the blue bag had seven glue sticks, and so forth.

As the warm-up started, I place myself at the front of the classroom with the “mystery bags” visibly lined up. The main goal of the warm-up was to engage the students’ interests by activating schema. The students did not know what was inside in the bag, but they took some guesses, such as candy, pencils and scissors.

I had the students tell me which bag to open to see what was inside. I then pulled out the item(s) and elicited the students to count out loud.

Here’s an example from the lesson:

1. Me: [picked the purple bag and pulled out a glue stick]
2. Ss: Glue! [ in Korean]
3. Me: Yea! Glue.
4. Me: One! [took out one glue stick]
5. Me: Two! [hand motioning students to count with me as I pulled more out]
6. Ss: Three!
7. Ss: Four!
8. Ss: Five!
9. Ss: Six!

After we counted, I drew the items on the board to help build for the main activity.

I knew that I promoted monologic discourse with the students, but that was actually my goal. I had no how much knowledge my students knew about numbers, so I had to be extremely basic and monologic with my discourse. As an intro lesson warm-up I felt that I achieved what I set out to do for this lesson. Next time I could ask the students to guess how many items I will be pulling out to make sure that the students are active. 

My Warm-up Lesson: "Stop & Play" Miming

For my 5th grade warm-up lesson, I wanted to do three things:

1) Activate Schema
2) Create Interpersonal Connections
3) Relieve Teacher Control

In activating schema, I started the class off with a miming activity. 8 sentences were placed on the board for the students to see. This was to activate the schema that they were going to use these sentences for the classroom discourse. As my co-teacher and I started to to mime out each sentence, the students were forced to use any prior schema to help decide the order of the conversation.

After the miming, I allowed the students to talk in groups. The students activated their interpersonal skills to help negotiate and solve the problem. The students spoke for about one minute. It was great to see some students react differently in their groups. I could see that come students quickly became leaders while some students just listened. Some students started to present notes that they wrote down and talk about their findings.

I hoped to relieve some teacher control, but I surely could have done more. Though the warm-up was more on the monologic side, I tried to have students speak and interact with other students in different ways. At the end of the lesson, my co-teacher and I were calling on groups to put the sentences in order. Next time, I will step off the stage and let the students come up to change it themselves.

My Weekly Dilemma: ESL with Special Needs Students

In every one of my classes, I have a few students that are considered ‘special’. Just a few hours ago I had a 1^st and 3^rd grade after school class.  I don’t know why but during the lesson, I realized that I have not done enough to help differentiate activities for students with special needs. Non-special education teachers only briefly learn about taking care of these special needs students, but I can’t honestly remember any TESOL training that mentions this subject at all. Why hasn’t this subject been instructed in my TESOL training?

This week, a number of students tested every ounce of my patience. On Tuesday, students started to draw all over the desks and some got up and walked out of my room during the middle of a lesson. Today, a student couldn’t stop making disrupting noises during a reading activity. And to compound everything, their low-level of English creates a major roadblock in communicating any instructions. I really wonder what my special students think about English class and if they are gaining anything from attending. I often feel like I’m babysitting or talking to moving walls. I often spend so much time worrying about planning lessons for the mainstream students that I often forget and ignore the students that need special help. What have I done to help these students? Have I done anything to make English more enjoyable? Right now I have no clue, and I’m at a loss.

Module 1 "Light Switch" (Week 3 Reflections)

This week I think I am finally starting to understand what I am promoting in my classroom. I am promoting monologic discourse throughout the entire lesson. I really wonder when this change happened to me as I switched from an elementary school teacher to an ESL teacher. In elementary school (Philadelphia) I taught subjects by using minimal teacher centered lessons and gave a majority of the control to my students. The student-initiated interaction was exciting and meaningful to the students and myself. So, why have I not done this in Korea? Maybe in my mind I when I'm teaching low-level learners, I want to give them as much knowledge as possible. But by doing this, what kind of learning am I promoting? By now, I'm sure that many of the students expect the monologic discourse that is present in every lesson we will do. So, I am actually creating a group of robots that memorize phrases and not even know why they need it.

A lesson this week on numbers proves that my classroom is teacher dominated with little dialogic discourse. I taught my 5th graders numbers 1-30 this week with the phrases "How many ____ do you have?" and "I have #  _______." Not once during the lesson did I initiate any referential questions to the students. The students all sat and made  sure to memorize the key phrases on the board. I barely activated any type of  schema for the students. I only showed slides that had numbers with objects (i.e. the number 1 with an apple picture) and then asked the students to repeat "one apple".

I realize now so many more things I could have done to help the students make a connection. The next lesson I will try a silent role playing to help activate students schema and promote student-initiated conversation.

Homework, Preparation and Attitude

For my 3^rd and 5^th graders my co-teacher and I have a homework, preparation and attitude chart in the front of the class. The students are broken up into teams. Each team has the responsibility to do their homework, bring their pencil cases, notebooks and textbooks. If the students have these things they can have check marks for homework and preparation. For attitude marks, the goal can change from each class. For example, one class will gain marks for their concentration in listening, others can gain points for just turning to the correct page in the textbook. So, the attitude points are based within the mood of the class that day. 

The point of all this is to gain “magic balls” in their classroom jars. If you receive marks in homework, preparation and attitude for the day, the team will receive a sticker for each goal. At the end of the week, the team that collects 6 stickers will have gained a “magic ball” for their class jar. Unknown to the students, there will be a special reward at the end of the month for the each grade that has the most “magic balls” in their jar.

My co-teacher and I choose this set up so it holds the students responsible for doing their homework, preparation and to participate. We hope that this helps promote a long working effort for the students to better themselves each day. Not only does it provide teamwork, but also healthy competition among the teams within the class and the grades. 

So far, the system is working and they students are becoming prepared and raising their hands more during class time. I hope the moral message being sent is that each person’s hard work can benefit others as well. Also, working for a long term goal instead or being rewarded instantly helps them gain an internal perspective that the best things are ones you wait for. 

At this moment, the biggest obstacles are students that do not participate or are dominated by more advanced students. Rules in this case can be changed for the students who do not actively participate. I could pick random “star” students from each team (making sure it was a low-participator), and the “star” student can gain 2 bonus points every time they try to answer. This way, they know that they are important and try to help their team.

New After School Classes = Burn Out

In week 3 of the young school year, I am still trying to adapt and pace myself. This year I have been given 4 after school classes (two on Tues. and Wed.). The classes are  relatively small (about ~20 students), but the real tough part is that the students are all young learners. I find myself for the last 3 weeks stressing due to the fact that my lessons plans have to be simple, relevant, fun and productive. The biggest hurtle is that I do not have anyone to translate English for me, so body language is a must in this case. Thankfully, my training as an elementary school teacher is slowly kicking in, but not fast enough. I realized that spending years in Korea as an English teacher rather than teaching a K-6 curriculum has drunken my skills as a teacher. It's time to sober up! Wednesdays seem to be the worst with having 8+ hours of full teaching (6 hrs school + 2 hrs tutoring). Hopefully, I will be able to get adjusted to everything that's been going on.

Changing the Discourse Dynamics.

After watching my warm-up #1. I found that I often rushed the students in producing speech. In my transcripts, the last student I was helping was having a hard time following the script that I had given them. When I approached the student, I saw myself dominating the dialog, almost allowing no appropriate time for the student to process and produce any thought. So, this week I tried to let my students have some more time after a question was asked or an activity was explained. This hopefully allowed my students to have more time to comprehend what was being said or asked of them.

During one activity, a student was not able to remember what sound the letter 'M' made. So instead of correcting the student right away, I gave him some time to listen again as I said "monkey" two more times. As I waited, I told him he could ask his classmates for help. A classmate was able to help him out and he then produced the correct sound. I liked the fact that I waited and that I only gave hints instead of giving him a direct answer.

Sometimes, the thought process is more important than the product.

Co-Teacher Interview + Transcription

I had a chance to interview my co-teacher during her busiest moment of the day! Here are the questions I asked with paraphrased responses (full answers are in the video):

1.     What’s your name?

A.    My name is Galam Kim.

2.     How old are you?

A.    I am 27.

3.     Where were you born and what’s your nationality?

A.    I am Korean and I was born in Korea, in Seoul.

4.     What is your profession now?

A.    I am an elementary school teacher. And I currently teach English.

5.     What grades do you teach?

A.    3^rd graders and 5^th graders.

6.     What is your native language?

A.    Oh yea, Korean.

7.     Do you speak any other languages?

A.    I speak… I can speak English and a little bit of Chinese.

8.     Did you learn English is school?

A.    Yea, when I was young. When I was in middle school, because when I was in elementary school, we didn’t have English subject in curriculum. So, I started learning English in middle school… officially.

9.     How old were you when you started learning English?

A.    Like personally I started learning English when I was ten years old, because my mom bought me some English video tapes… so I watched it like animation movies… yea.

10.  Why did you start learning English?

A.    Why? At that time I didn’t have like special motivations. That was just one of subjects that I have to study.

11.  Can you describe a typical English class when you studied in school? What did the students do?

A.    In middle school and high school… ehh… an English teacher just explains grammar points and some special important idioms, or vocabularies. And he or she explains how to translate it in English and all the students just write down in the notes. Not… really. But teacher can ask some questions, and what is the answer and the students will raise their hands. Answer A, answer C, multiple choice like unfortunately, I didn’t have that teachers.

12.  What do you do now to learn English?

A.    Yea, I listen to some English radio programs in my free time and sometimes I try to read English newspapers, or news articles on my I, my phone.

13.  Do you speak English with your siblings or friends?

A.    Eh, no at home with my family but sometimes when I meet my like foreign friends, yeah, I speak English.

14.  If I were your English teacher, what would you want to tell me about yourself, about how you learn best?

A.    If you were my English teacher. Eh… My interests is like traveling and movies and music so when it comes to traveling or movies or some words. Yea, I’d like to, love to talk about it. So, I hope to learn about those topics in English, and also I’m like a visuals learner, I like, like, watching movies or some pictures, so yea. If you use that.