Tuesday, April 12, 2011

In the Classroom part 2 (Brain Exercises)

Hello,

            My name is Wintermute and this is Dumbr, it’s a look on my life and experience in South Korea teaching English as a second language among other things. I was going to talk about Discipline today, however after writing it all out it was about 5 pages long. So I will make Discipline its own segment. Instead I will change the topic; I got a lot of request to learn more about brain exercises to do with your students. So I will share you more of mine.

Acrostics

              Pick the first word, and let’s say something corny like SHARING. Write it vertically on the board and have the kids raise their hand and come up with a word for each letter of SHARING. My children loved this; they were literally begging to do more. Kids seem to really enjoy the simple games; their favorite gym game was the “sit down game.”

Story Game

             I would have the kids tell a story one word at a time, one word for each kid. Depending on their age and skill level you can have them repeat all of the former words said prior to that student, or if not say them yourself. Generally speaking I hardly ever got a real story out of them; it was just for fun. Things took an odd turn when a student spouted out the word panties; I allowed it as it made them laugh like no bodies business. 9 times out of 10 however, the story was “Wintermute teacher wears panties!!!” This helps them construct simple sentences, if it does not flow they must come up with a new word.

Memory Game

             I would draw a 4X4 grid (or such) on the board. I would place the 16 numbers in the grid, one number for each square in a random order, not numerical. I would have the kids look at this for a minute, then erase the numbers, then ask them where each number was on the grid. Good game for helping with their numbers and memory.

Tic tac Toe

             I’d draw a tic tac toe grid on the board, and play with one student. BUT, they could not draw or point to where they wanted their X. Instead I would put my finger in the middle; they would then tell me left down up right depending on where they wanted the X. This is a great game for helping them with their directions.

            There are plenty more games like this that you can play with your kids to help reinforce what they have already learned. I highly recommend it as it helps demonstrate and relate practical uses for what they learned. Come back tomorrow where we will talk about Art/Music and some other class tips.

Your teacher,
Wintermute

43 comments:

  1. The sit down game sounds like my kind of gym activity

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  2. An interesting way of playing Tic Tac Toe.

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  3. what classroom? i should do this with my kids. thanks man.

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  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  5. Great work! I love the blog style!

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  6. those games are awesome, how many kids are in your classroom?

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  7. I remember doing acrostics in school. Good times.

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  8. I think I will actually use this, ha

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  9. I like the number Idea, but i don't teach kids :p so it's not really useful to me :p

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  10. Dude, have you gone to any starcraft games?

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  11. haha - story game sounds fun

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  12. This will certainly be helpful sometime :).

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  13. I know we used to play the story game in our school :). The stories always remain quite short :D

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  14. waw pretty sweet methods! it must be great to have someone that creative as a teacher

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  15. These are some pretty good teaching methods. I wish my teachers used these when I was younger.

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  16. This is really cool, must make English a bit easier.

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  17. Wow! Nice, man! REALLY intuitive stuff!

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  18. That's really interesting, might try some of this out on my son

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  19. Your name reminds me of dumb and dumber or tumblr lol

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  20. I had a class where we played the "telephone" game. The thing that the first person had to remember ended up being about a paragraph long, a good 4 or 5 sentences, and at the end it was only a few words at most.

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  21. great ideas, real clever. Is "sit down game" as simple as it sounds? lol

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  22. That tic tac toe thing is genius!

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  23. Wow, you sound like a really cool teacher! :D
    My english teachers sucked balls really hard, I had to learn english myself

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  24. story game sounds like good fun. thanks. following. look forward to more.

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  25. Memory games always are hard for me. Following for more

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  26. How did you initially learn your basic Korean that allowed you to get your jobs?

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  27. I like the tic tac toe idea.. good work!

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  28. These games seem great for learning. Also on my blog you wrote I was sian or went to UCL. Yeah definitely White, middle class, computer sci major at LU.

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  29. Ohh, this is great! Aha will definately try it on some younger kids ;D Followed!

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  30. Hahaha amazing how boredom is sort off a driving for to invention
    How to Hack Life.

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  31. The Memory Game sounds like a fantastic idea. I was planning on heading to Japan in the near future for a year or so of English teaching, I've found a treasure trove of ideas on your site:)

    Keep up the great work!

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