Teaching in Korean Middle School: Guess Who

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Next week we're going to be giving another presentation for the Gepik Orientation, so here's a video in the spirit of helping teachers. Here's another video of a lesson we do in a Korean Middle School Class. Like the last Battleship lesson, this is a class where the teacher does minimal talking and the students practice their English instead. It was a really fun class, so we'd highly recommend you try it out in your schools. As well, it's highly customizable, so you can make the questions fit whatever level your students are at. All of the materials in this lesson, including Powerpoints and Handouts, are available to download in Mac or PC format. While you're at it, you can check the rest of our ESL Resources here for other ideas. So, click on the picture above to see the video of Teaching in a Korean Middle School Class, or click on the sidebar for different formats. Oh, and - yes - I know I look a little bedraggled in the video: this was the last class in a grueling 6 class day. I'm surprised I still had enough energy to stand on two feet.

Middle School Christmas Jumble

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The exams are now finished at my school, and with the exams so are the textbooks finished. Yet, oddly, we still have to teach classes, even though no more marks are going to be input. The students already have their grades, and are still coming to class. So, to try to teach something relevant to the Christmas Season, since I can't teach anything relevant to the textbook, I adapted an idea I found elsewhere. This is a really simple but still fun handout for students. They are given the word "Christmas Tree" and have to rearrange some of the letters to answer 31 questions. For example, the first question is "Something you wear on your head." The answer is "hat," the letters of which are all in the word "Christmas Tree." Simple enough. It's available in both Mac and PC format, or just available flat out in our ESL Resources section. Give it a shot. Answer keys are included just in case you get stumped yourself.

Middle School Jeopardy Template

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There are a couple of factors that brought about a game of Jeopardy instead of something more fun. My English Classroom is being remodeled right now (my school has been given 60 million won to update it), so I no longer teach half classes of 20 in my room. Instead, I have to go to every individual class myself and teach a full class of 40. So, to keep everyone in their chairs and still entertained, I thought a game of Jeopardy would be fun. The other factor coming into play today is that the students begin their final exams on Tuesday, so a full review of this semester's material would be of use to them. So, here's a Jeopardy gameboard which I made from scratch. Click on any amount and it will take you to a slide with a question. Click on the question and the answer will pop up. Click anywhere else on the screen and you'll be brought back to the money grid. This Jeopardy board comes in two flavors, one for each level, with questions pertinent to that level. Head on over to our ESL Resources page, or just download the versions here. Level 1 is available in either Mac Format or PC format, while Lesson 2 is available in both Mac format and PC format as well. Even if you're not teaching those levels, the template is still usable, so you can tweak the questions as you please.

Middle School Password Games

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We've been mighty busy over the past week, so please forgive the lack of activity here. Most of that busy time was spent in tweaking this lesson. I used the same idea for both classes, but covered different materials for the different levels. The first graders are working on "I like drawing cartoons. I want to be a cartoonist" or "I like helping sick people. I want to be a doctor," so on and so forth. The second graders are reviewing for the upcoming exams, so we're going over passive structure again. For both lessons, essentially, they have to fill in the blanks to a handout, using only the words from the word bank. Every word has a numerical value as well. Once they fill in the blanks with the words, they have to plug in the number values into a formula. The results, when gathered all together from all of the different questions, form a "Password." I lock my computer with this password as well; the first student to be able to crack the lock on my computer gets the prize, which is just a small set of lollies. For the second graders, since they finish this game sooner than the first graders, I have a backup gameboard, similar to the past tense gameboard for level 1, in which - for every spot they land on - they have to form a sentence in passive structure with the supplied words.

If you're interested in these lessons, head on over to the ESL Resources section to check them out. Or, you can just download the Level 1 Lesson on Future Jobs in both Mac and PC format, or you can get the Level 2 lesson on Passive Structure in both Mac and PC format as well.

Middle School Hobbies Pictionary

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Here's this week's lesson plan, but first, a bit of explanation: there's only a lesson plan for the first graders, since the second graders are doing their oral tests this week. Next week the first graders will have their oral tests. It will be on their hobbies. So, this week's lesson will incorporate a bit of lesson 10 - The Use of Timestamps - and their Hobbies Lesson from a while ago. Essentially we're playing Pictionary. The class is divided into three teams. One person from each team will come up to draw what's on the card I show them. It will include a timestamp (such as Always, Sometimes, Often, Never, etc) and one of the hobbies from the gamecards a while ago (Cooking, Dancing, Singing, etc). First team to guess it wins a point. Hooray! Loads of fun. When we run through the cards, we play a sentence completion game. They're now in the mood to get up at the boards and perform, so in this game we keep it going. On the monitor I pop up three words and they have to make a sentence out of them. One of the words is almost always a timestamp. First one to write a proper sentence with no mistakes wins. Huzzah! If you want to download this yourself, then click here for either the Mac Version or the PC Version, or head on over to our ESL Resources page to find more, well, ESL Resources

Korean Middle School Halloween Bingo

Hopefully this isn't too late for those that need it. It's Halloween on Friday, so here's a lesson plan for you Korean Middle School teachers. Here are 20 different bingo cards, each with Halloween terms on them. The Powerpoint attached pops up these terms, but it's significantly nicer on a Mac if you have one: every card leads into the next by spinning all of the options on the screen, in a Wheel of Fortune kind of way, but without the wheel. This effect just isn't possible on a PC (re: get a Mac). If you have time left over there's a small wordsearch to calm everyone down (they're begging for more after the bingo). If you'd like to download this for yourself, you can do so at our ESL Resources page, or you can get them here, in either Mac format or PC format.

ESL Resources for Public School Teachers

After many hours of difficult work, the ESL Resources section is finally up and ready to go. We have compiled our lesson plans and materials, so that you could use them yourselves. We painfully discovered that finding resources online can be very difficult, as we have to sort through a lot of material before we find something useful for our specific classes. What we have here as a result is much of the materials we have used in teaching our classes, from the Powerpoints to the Handouts to the YouTube clips. The public board is supposed to be teaching a uniform curriculum, as all of the textbooks should be teaching the same content in the same week. And so - all of you current or potential GEPIK teachers - the week that you're teaching Comparative Adjectives to your second graders or Emotions and Gestures to your first graders, you should surely find something here of use to you.

The materials are free to download, in both Mac and PC versions. Only the Public Middle School section is up right now, but Martina's High School section should be up soon as well. Some materials from our Extra Classes are up as well, which are not as strictly textbook-based as the other materials. These lessons can be used in classes of 2-20, and can be used for any level. Let us know if these materials are of any use to you, or Contact Us if there's anything you need us to clarify. Finally, if these are useful at all to you, don't be shy to spread the word through the following links: