Friday, April 15, 2011

In the Classroom part 5 (New Material)

Hello,

My name is Wintermute and this is Dumbr, a blog about my time teaching English in Korea. This week we have discussed common classroom practices, and today we continue with how to introduce new material to your students.

Sometimes this can be a little bit more difficult than you would think. Generally speaking my method has always been to make sure you have the classes’ 100% attention the entire time, which I know you are saying “duh”, but it seems to go over looked a lot. I do not allow the kids to have their books or pencils out at all when teaching new material. Otherwise the kids will attempt to follow along or do it themselves and work ahead getting answers wrong, or fall behind the others and get lost.

Instead I spend the majority of the class period teaching, and then at the end let them get their books (no pencils), we do the page/s together in class, I ask if everyone understood, and then let them get their pencils and have at it. For me this seems to be the best method, it allows for no distractions on their desk, and they should know all the answers as we did them together.

 As I said in my earlier post not every kid learns and works at the same speed. This method is good because say you had the books out and tried to do it together in class, you will have every kid sitting on question 2 for 30 minutes when the greater majority could have moved ahead. You should not let one student force the others to fall behind, instead take the time to help that one student.

Something I’m sure few have thought of that I have noticed is presenting new positive and negative material at the same time. There will be moments when you will teach a lot of new words, and I found that depending on the order you teach them it can have very different results. Say you are teaching emotions, I find it better to teach the negative emotions first and then positive. If you teach negative last your students will leave the class feeling… well negative and go home to their parents yelling “I’m sad, hungry, and angry!” Same goes for weather, start with the dark dreary stormy, and then move into bright happy and sunny.

Hope these few tips helped a little, I tried to keep it short as yesterdays lesson ran a bit long. Do come back tomorrow where we will start our new segment on Discipline. Be sure to spread the word of this amazing blog Dumbr, as we want everyone here reading along.

Your Teacher,
Wintermute

29 comments:

  1. Very interesting. I would love to go to Korea one day to play Starcraft. Haha.

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  2. I'm Korean and I was thinking about teaching English there.
    Seems kinda stressful though

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  3. very insightful im going to school for education plan to teach english in india or bangladesh. followed

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  4. How is it to teach english to people from Korea?

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  5. It's great that you get the more negative stuff out of the way first and end on a good note. Don't need a classroom full of emo Korean kids going home to their parents.

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  6. Is it true, that all Koreans ar Starcraft Pro Gamer?

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  7. How is Korea as a place to work and live ?

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  8. I've always wondered if certain words actually convey certain feelings. I've heard if you shout negative words they'll actually have a negative impact on people hearing them.

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  9. Very interesting. I have teached English in Thailand for a while. But Korea is a different thing I guess

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  10. i missed a post! I hope its going wonderful for you, thanks for all the info this is very good reading

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  11. Very insightful about your teaching methods, I like what you do with the pencils, if I had the pencil I would be doodling >_<

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  12. One of my friends is living near Korea for schooling. I wish to travel one day. It is not Korea but I still want to see Tokyo.

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  13. very interesting that you make them learn without using their books first, making sure they have a good understanding of the concept before actually attempting it. great post, keep it up!

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  14. North- Or South-Korea? Isnt it a bit dangerous there atleast in North?

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  15. Another interesting post. Thank you for sharing!

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  16. I agree with you fully, especially the part about kids falling behind the rest of the class.

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  17. How is it to teach english to people from Korea?

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  18. Interesting, I'm following. :)

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  19. I bet it rocks there. Thanks for sharing!

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  20. It's really REALLY hard to keep anyone's attention for more than 20 minutes. It's a sad but true fact. In college I'd have 2 hour long classes. Sometimes teh teacher would let you have a break halfway through but the ones with no break were MURDER.

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  21. A lot like my old Spanish teacher haha

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  22. Many people take the activity of teaching for granted, but actually it involves a great deal of wisdom.

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  23. I've never thought about how the order you teach the words in would affect the kids, but I suppose it does.

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  24. very interesting, love your blog ;D

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