So, I'm trying to prepare some stuff for the impending start of the new school year. For those of you who don't live in Korea and already know this, March marks the start of a new school year, so I will be getting new 1st graders starting March 2nd, and my 1st and 2nd graders will now be 2nd and 3rd graders. I am really looking forward to the new semester, mostly because after having been here for 6 months I am starting to figure out what kinds of things work well with my students, and what kinds of things simply do not work at all. Mostly, though, I just really like teaching, and I really like learning how to be better at teaching.
Unfortunately, my school gives me virtually no guidance regarding the information I should be teaching. Additionally, I don't really know what kinds of things my students are learning in their other English classes. Moreover, there are no universal requirements across middle school education in our district or whatever, so I can't even look at a master list and say, hey, I need to cover simple and continuous present past and future, adverbs and prepositions of movement. Instead, I'm left to my own devices to decide what the students should learn. This is frustrating and difficult.
I spent much of last semester attempting to create basic conversational lessons (talking about weather, making plans, etc.) but found that students had often learned a different (and often equally appropriate OR wildly incorrect) way of responding. As such, my one day lesson only served to confuse them further.
So, I've decided to thoroughly change my approach. I'm considering spend about 3-5 weeks (depending on student interest, difficulty of grammar, variety of applications) on a single grammatical construction such as the past tense (simple and continuous) or questions (yes/no and w-questions) and extending the lesson on said grammar rule to various applications. I'd also try to maintain a primary and auxiliary grammar focus. For example, I would spend the first week introducing vocabulary that will be used in the upcoming lessons, and discussing the basic grammar rules. I would probably include some sort of basic vocabularly reinforcement game like bingo/word search/crosswords/jumbles/etc this week. The following week, I would introduce the grammar (simple present) and discuss how to make it, blah blah blah, then do some sort of activity for the majority of the class. The following week I'd add the auxiliary topic (adjectives or frequency words, or transition words) and do another speaking activity. The last week, which would be optional, depending on interest, would be some sort of fun review game or something.
I just feel like the students need more time with each grammar topic than my once/week lesson can provide. My biggest concerns are as follows:
1. How do I make week one, which is mostly vocabulary and review and introduction, more fun?
2. What kinds of topics do I prioritize?
3. How do I analyze the efficacy of my lessons in this way? How much is too much of the same topic, and how little is too little?
4. How the hell will I find ways to teach the progressive tense in a practical/useful/fun manner?
Since I learned this stupid language from birth, the progressive tense was just meta-cognitively added to my grammatical repertoire, and so teaching it seems so exceptionally difficult.
God, I need to somehow learn how to actually teach English.
Please pardon my word vomit here.
xoxo,
A
