On Tuesday, a rare event took place, an event that only takes place once every three years. We selected new textbooks to use in our grade 3 and 4 English classes. Three of the other English teachers and I gathered in the Principal's office where a 12 books and Maxim Cup Coffees awaited us. The books' publishers were YBM, Daegyo and Cheonjae..Cheonjae included books published by Yoon, Lee, Han and Sohn.
We gazed through the books to see how they were. We were most satisfied with the Cheonjae book edited by Yoon. This is the book we were using previously so it met our standards and expectations regarding lesson formats and technical boredom. Most important the new edition made some changes to the things that annoyed us. Gone were the little frames around the tear-outs that would end up as garbage in a desk or waste time as picky children picked away at them. There was now a convenient pouch to store the tear-outs in the book so students are now classified as extra careless when they lose them.
The songs and chants have an activity to go with them and you can turn off the ridiculous characters dancing. There are less chapters so they have more content to work with and develop additional lessons around. Then there is the full two paged picture preview at the beginning of every chapter.
I can't wait to try these new babies out next year. Also changing the textbooks gives me a chance to really shake up my lesson plans. I can redesign them from the bottom up using my enhanced experience.
Open Class:
The reason I am not really reflecting on my other lessons this week is because there was only one lesson that mattered. Did I say one week? I meant one semester. It was open class day and everyone except the 6th graders were at their best behavior. Students were freshly bathed and dressed nicer than on Photoday (there is no Photoshop in real lief). Teachers looked like they were at a job interview or meeting their future in-laws for the first time. The halls and classes were so clean, the sticky feeling like trudging through mud was hardly noticeable and you could actually see out the windows. The washrooms were my favorite as I didn't need to put on the Hazmat suit to do my business.
I decided to teach a 6th grade class. Unfortunately 6th graders don't care and try to make a scene by being at their worse on OC Days, although that was half the fun. They sat in class doing nothing until the principal and vice principal walked in. They then proceeded to throw garbage around and shout out silly answers to questions as loud as possible while cursing under their breaths in an attempt to squeeze a reaction out of us teachers. The saddest thing is they failed on all attempts, we just taught like normal and smiled. "Hey kid at least I'm getting paid, you are just wasting your time, good luck on the test". Little do they know that OC isn't an evaluation it's for the parents. Parents of 6th graders never show up specially during 2nd semester, they are more interested in shopping for middle school uniforms. This is why I chose 6th grade, I didn't want any parents watching. My alternative choice was 3rd grade, no thanks. I made that mistake my first year and set a record with a ratio of parents to students being more than 2:1 which implied some strangers just showed up out of sheer curiosity.
The lesson I chose to do for open class came straight out of the textbook, with a little tweaking of course. A sample dialogue from the activity goes as follows:
S1:
You know what?
S2:
What?
S1:
I went to the bookstore by subway.
S2: What did you do there?
S1:
I bought a book for my mom.
S2:
How nice of you Dasom!
S1: Thanks / Huh?
Basically the students have to guess the name of the character saying the lines while looking at a very obvious picture with 90% of the script written below the character's picture and name. The highlight of the activity is when I give the students a sheet of paper to write the 6 names on and then cut up so they can randomly select who they are. Like usual the basic task of writing down six names and then cutting the paper into six pieces took up the majority of the lesson time. Normally I would have prepared the materials or forget about them because they aren't truly necessary, but I decided to stick to the book. The only tweak I made was to make the final line more natural. The response changes based on whether or not S2 gets the correct name. Originally S1 would respond Bingo! or Sorry. "Sorry?" would have made some sense if S2 spoke again, but like usual the conversation was awkward and unnatural. For grade 6 students who can usually do better than this it is sad. Keeping this in mind I rarely teach from the textbook for grade 5 and 6. Even when I tried I had to change something.
I also forgot to mention that asides from this activity I presented the language. Basically the focus is not on where you went or why, but how you got there. Transport. They are using 'by' for every thing you ride and 'on' for walking; I decided I could also add 'in' and explain this. The lesson was going way over most students' heads, so I said never mind cases for using 'in' versus'on', let's focus on 'by' and the single case of 'on'. These lessons are designed as simple as possible for a reason. I asked them about different mode of transit. I received some interesting responses: by dragon, by spaceship, by flying penguin, by mother , and by {student's name]'s butt-hole. The latter was said in L1 preposition, and I was tempted to correct the preposition to through. I felt like denying them the fact that I understood. And, I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of getting a reaction out of me by scolding them. Lucky for them the VP and Principal weren't around anymore and my co-teacher was in the hall discussing the highlights of her portion of open class with another teacher.
Overall I would say Open Class Day was a great success. I received some nice compliments about my class from the principal and VP about being able to manage the mess that is called sixth grade. I also received some student feedback. 15 students didn't bother to fill out a comment form. 5 students wrote insults included 3 brave enough to write their name. These were sent to the principal. The other 4 students wrote comments. 3 were positive or encouraging and 1 was a little critical. The critical one said, "You need to do a better job at punishing the students who ruin class for everyone else". Unfortunately my punishments are limited to withholding stickers, making them stand up (sometimes at the back if they are extra naughty), or in extreme cases informing their homeroom teacher. Part of the problem with mandatory public education is I can't expel them so easily or tell the disruptive children to leave. The children are most effective at what I like to refer to as peer control.
As a final thought I think I will explore notions of peer control next week. For example in S1 and S2 are not paying attention and being disruptive and dirty looks from the teacher and other students aren't working, the following will be attempted:
T: S1, Please tell S2 to be quiet and apologize.
S1: Be quiet and apologize.
S2: I'm Sorry.
T: S2 tell S1 to be quiet and apologize.
S2: Be quiet and apologize.
S1 I'm Sorry.
T: Good job!
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