Frustrated Teacher
 

Does anybody have any ideas? I have been teaching in South Korea for 6 months now, but I still get frustrated when it comes to teaching 1st and 2nd graders. My course content is alright, but i can't seem to keep them inline. It's very hard to try and explain the activity when they will not listen. Any help if necessary would be appreciated. How can I make if all flow so they can enjoy the class?


Sincerely,

Frustraterd teacher!

Re: Frustrated Teacher
 

Are you teaching 1st & 2nd grade in elementary or middle school?

Re: Frustrated Teacher
 

Hi Frustrated Teacher,
I am facing the same problem myself. In one school, the kindy teacher and 2nd grade teacher help me out by just being there. But in another school it's like fullon circus, with kids walking and jumping from desk to desk or just plain ignoring me. I wish there is a solution but before I find one, I'll just have to do what I can which is not much! But at least now I know there are teachers like myself here in Korea. If you think of a good method to teach these younger kids, do post it. I'll check back regularly.

Re: Frustrated Teacher
 

I understand your frustration completely. I teach a 1st grade bilingual class in the U.S. and 1st graders are at an interesting age. One thing to always remember is to have a way for them to know when you want their attention. I clap or count down. When I am teaching them ESL, movement on my part and their part is necisary. For instance, I am teaching them about communities now. I first show them an example using a student. Then I have them copy me and lastly I have them act what I'm teaching them to eachother. They can become a wild bunch so always limit their time. I hope that helps.

Re: Frustrated Teacher
 

:)
Hi. This is Jean. I just read your post, and I just wanna share something. I've been dealing with Koreans for 5 years now. The first thing that I noticed about them was that they are not so familiar with the English sounds. The sounds of Korean are totally different. So, you can start with giving them some of the critical sounds in both the English and the Korean Languages. Please give them comparative sounds analysis.
I hope this would help you even a little. Please feel free to write to me here if you need more tips. I've just registered few minutes ago. I just saw your post while browsing. I registered just to send you this note. Please tell me if this tip is useful or not.

Thanks!
Have a great day!

Re: Frustrated Teacher
 

Hi,

I've only been here for 3 weeks and am having the same problem! haha It's not too bad when the co-teacher's are there which is nearly all the time, but I just had a lesson where the co-teacher mixed up here timetable and didn't turn up and it was really noisy. I'm thinking of devoting a lesson for both 1st and 2nd grades next week to writing up the class rules (kids get to decide and make up a poster) and then telling them what will happen if they break them, or alternatively what the reward will be if they are good. I read somewhere about a system someone uses where they hand out 2 or 3 monopoly dollars (or something similar) at the start of class and the students lose a dollar each time they're naughty. If they have anything left at the end of the month they can buy a reward from the teacher. I don't really feel like spending money on them after the last class though! :)

To be honest, I partly feel like it's the student's English lesson and a lot of them don't want to be there so if they're noisy then why should I care...I'm certainly not going to spent the whole class asking them to be quiet. But then I suppose it's up to me to at least introduce some rules and see what happens. I have a feeling they've become used to talking in Korean and being noisy with their Korean English teachers as they've had no native teacher for a couple of months. The time my co-teachers want me to take to do an activity is ridiculous as well, with a 5 minute activity in the early part of the class taking up the whole class in some instances as they drag it out and we don't get to go on to something that might be a little more fun. I get bored along with the students.

Well, anyway, that's a long response! I hope things go better for you, and I was heartened to hear that the teacher teaching here before me had similar problems as you always think it must be solely your problem.

Good luck!

Re: Frustrated Teacher
 

I teach in China to kindergarten aged kids and some classes really can get annoying, I think it depends on how good the Chinese teachers are mostly. Anyway, here's some things I do. Make students switch seats so they aren't sitting with their friends. Make students sit apart from the class. Have students sit near you. Take away students chairs and tell them to just stand.
If you can communicate with them in a meaningful way you have more options. I find my students like me and yours probably like you too so tell them you don't like it when they do whatever and they will probably make an effort not to do it. When you punish them tell them why they are being punished.
Try to be consistent in how you deal out punishment so they aren't left guessing what is acceptable and what isn't.

Re: Frustrated Teacher
 

I used to teach a class of Tibetan monks that were mostly first and second grade aged. They were absolutely crazy for the first few classes. I couldn't get them to be quite or pay attention. After about 5 minutes, they would get really fidgety and I couldn't do much to calm them down.

So, then for the first 5 to 10 minutes of class, I had them play a game to burn off some of their energy - stuff like tag, Simon Says (where Simon was always running and jumping and hardly ever standing still), duck duck goose, red light green light. (If your kids like songs, you could do something like the Hokey Pokey where they can dance around and shake.) Once they were a little tuckered out, I'd start class and they were much more well behaved.

I teach elementary school in Japan now, and my kids **love** learning new games. You could approach the games as a sort of cultural aspect of your lesson to introduce them to what games kids in other countries play.

During the part of class where you're teaching the new vocab, you could have them repeat in different types of voices. The kids will always try to mimic you, so you can talk in a weird voice or say the word really quietly and then have them gradually get louder and louder and then bring them back down to soft again. Whatever you can do to vary it a bit and make it seem more fun.

Re: Frustrated Teacher
 

Getting your students to burn off some energy before the start of your lesson is very good advice.

The following ICALwiki articles will give you tips and ideas on how you can do that successfully.

The Warm Up Game - ICALwiki

Simon Says - ICALwiki

Miming can also be a useful technique to get their attention and keep them involved.

Miming in Class - ICALwiki

and, if it all fails, you try this:

Red Card Yellow Card - ICALwiki

Re: Frustrated Teacher
 

Good tips!

Teaching young children can be both more satisfying and more stressful than working with adults or college students. They just have too much energy and too little "need" for English!