Middle School Reading.....

From the past week from one of my higher level classes have been kind of strange.  They just finished up a book that was something like Reading Mate or something, and was made up of short stories, articles, and what not.  Just about all of them were full of facts about this or that and were quite dull and dry, more or less my kids hated it when we had to read. 

So one class last week the reading was on these topics:

We started with a story about Halloween that talked about different costumes like hot dogs, trash cants, toilet, killer shark with legs sticking out of the mouth, and well at the time this book was written Captain Jack Sparrow was the most popular.  This is really not that strange of a reading passage when you think about it except for the fact that Korea really don't celebrate Halloween and for the most part the only choices you have is be a witch or a superhero, however as I think back I don't think there were many superheros at our Halloween party. 

Next we read about something that I never even knew about.  It was about how people with different types of blood should eat different things and have different personalities.  Here is what we learned:

• People with type O blood are very active and should eat plenty of meat. 
• People with type A are calm and creative and should eat vegetables.
• People with type B are cheerful but sometimes selfish and should drink lots of milk.
• People with type AB should eat both vegetables and drink lots of milk.

These ideas come from a book called "Eat Right 4(for) Your Type" by Peter D'Adamo's and it is about the theory of "blood type diet".  These ideas are very popular in different parts of the world mainly Japan. 

The last one we read for the class was one that I am still puzzled over and for a few different reasons.  This one was about the "Guinness Book of World Records" and some of the crazy records in it.  The four records we talked about were some that I just really found myself wondering "who in the world cares?".

The first guy we talked about was Michele Santelia of Italy, and what makes him special you ask?  Well he typed 58 books backwards.  Then we moved on to Rebel XD who is a rapper who recorded 852 syllables in 42 seconds.  I don't know if I would think this next guy is really anything special or not but Tom Waes' in Belgian can eat a 30 cm pizza in less than 140 seconds (about 2 and a half minutes).

And the last one was one that really just made me wonder about the "Guinness Book of World Records".  Do you know about Michel Lotito?  He has the nickname of Monsieur Mangetout, meaning "Mister Eat Everything."  It turns out this man has eaten 15 supermarket cars,18 bicycles and a whole Cessna 150 airplane. 



Sorry I don't know about you but none of those look to tasty to me.  It turns out he has to cut up his metal meals into small pieces and washes them down with water. 

This last one I think really shouldn't be in "The Guinness Book Of World Records" because really I feel like this is now encouraging kids to go out and do crazy things (that could be harmful) to try to become famous. And on that note my friend and I had a very interesting conversation this past week about fame and is it really worth it, why people want it, and how it has ruined peoples life.   Something I keep meaning to talk to some of my older kids about and get their thoughts on.  I just wow really have not ever paid must attention to "The Guinness Book Of World Records" and after reading this passage about it I just cannot get over how dumb it seems and how it seems like it is encouraging people to go out and do things to see if they can get their name in there.  I now wonder how many people have been hurt by doing different stunts to get into the book. 

Sadly other than that my conversation classes have been more or less just playing word games like categories, word chain, and a knock off Scrabble game thanks to Bananagrams!



They seem to love this game and I do to seeing as how it makes for an easy class, well until someone starts to get upset because they are losing then there is a lot of Korean "bad" words getting yelled out.  Also this past week was full of kids crying come the end of the week due to "hallway time." Kids were crazy last week and I am hoping everyone had a good weekend and is in a much better mood!

Conversation Class Week 2

I am currently trying to rack my brains for things to do next week in my conversation classes.  I think my biggest problem is what to do with the younger kids beside play games and sing songs for 45 minutes.  On Friday I had told my older classes who are stronger in English to bring in something that is their favorite, or special to them to share with the class.  Now with this I had to give the order to please not bring in anything that is alive, anything that is dangerous, food (unless you have enough for the whole class), weapons, and no computers or Nintendo (that sadly is every ones favorite toy, either a computer or a Nintendo).  I am already trying to come up with a few back up plains in case this doesn't take long enough, kids forget, or it just turns out to be a mess.  However, for now I have my fingers crossed for now.

Last week's lessons were more or less made up of:
-The "Free Trip Plan" for those who hadn't done it yet, sadly I think that left maybe only one of my older classes who bitched the whole time about how dumb it was, yet got a little quieter once I pointed out how it couldn't be that dumb, seeing as how they all had tons of mistakes. 
-A project where students had to tell me their favorite animal and why, their favorite place to visit and why, and their favorite food and why, and then draw a picture of each.  This was for the younger kids, with the better English. The all did very well once I put "My favorite animal is a ___________ because it is ________ " and most of them just said because it is cute.               
-One of my older, but not very strong English classes did a project on the computer where they were asked to tell me 3 places they think everyone who comes to Korea should see, and then write me a short sentences about why.  They were also asked to tell me what they think is the best Korean food and how to make it.  Sadly even with Jasmine teacher also explaining the project in Korean, they didn't quite do it.  They claimed it was hard but sadly they are just lazy.   More or less I got where they want to go and a very bad translation after it had been dumped in to a translator, and most did not finish (I had them back to back so it was an hour and a half class). 
-And the last project of the week for the conversation classes was one I gave to one of my advance classes.  I gave them a list of maybe 30 questions and told them to pick 15 to ask another classmate.  Once everyone was done they were to come up to the front of the room and tell us all about their classmate.  This project went very well and I think most kids had a good time.  One boy even told me that his classmate John's favorite hobby was "hunting girls" and John was very embarrassed as I can guess from the look on his face that was not the answer he gave Frank. 

Hope everyone is having a great weekend and has a good week!  I hope to be back next week with great stories of conversation class and what everyone brought in to share with the class!

Humm I feel like I am forgetting things I wanted to share, but just can't seem to put my finger on what they are. 

Week 1 Conversation

Note: Longish, wordy blog to follow. 

This past week was the first week of "conversation" classes.  Basically it is just class where they want us to "free talk" and I know I have only been teaching for about 9 months or so but "free talk" is never a good idea.  So we were not to happy to find out the books we had been using were only to be used in one of the two classes a week, and some of the middle school classes we teach don't have have a book for either class.  To say the least this erks me to a new level and I now dread those classes, even the classes that I love.  

 

We started our new schedule on Wednesday and I got lucky and only had to teach one of my three conversation classes, due to students not showing up, and it went pretty well. The class was made up of students from one of my classes that does not speak, like at all, and some of my students who are very talkative but also very happy to come spend 45 minutes or so a week with either Ryan or I.  They are really not at the "conversation" level (most of our classes are not) so I spent the class reviewing things I knew they didn't know, like shapes (and I understand those are really never used in your daily life so they don't stick with them), antonyms and synonyms, and just easy questions about how their day was, what they did over the weekend, and so on and so forth. 

On Thursday I found out one of my conversation classes was going to hold over 14 students (our class rooms are only made to hold 10 tops) and it was going to be a mix of English levels, and ages.  So I took the beginners book Ryan used last semester for City Hall and ran off copies.  It could of gone better, with a class that large in a room that small some of the students decided they don't want to go along with the lesson it quickly catches on.  Some of the girls needed the review and did a good job of paying attention and trying to learn, where as the others just slept or did lord knows what.  I never wanted to be one of those teachers that just let students be lazy however I have come to realize that if at least half the class is learning it is better than holding up everything for those few who don't care. 

After my conversation class half the class stayed behind for their next class with me.  They all begged me not to make them do book work, so instead we did this:

First we tried to figure out what the "important" things in life are.  We went around the room and everyone had to tell me one things that was important to them.  You can see that list up in the left hand corner and as you can see I got some interesting answers. 

We then moved on to the whole "Your stuck on an island, you can only bring 3 things with you.  What do you bring?  You cannot bring a boat or an airplane."  Under every ones name you can see what they wanted to bring, I was a little tickled by some of these answers.  Once everyone finished, we moved on to talk about them.  I started asking what kind of food they were going to bring, and then once I got the answer that they were going to grow most of the food from seeds I agreed that food would work; however when they started telling me they were going to have a "mommy and daddy pig/cow/duck" we had a problem.  First off I had to ask them where these animals where, to which I got told they were in the "cargo hold" of the plane. 

We ended the class by doing a short project about going on a trip.  They had to tell me where they wanted to go, why they wanted to go there, what 5 (we started out at 10 but they talked me down) things they wanted to take with them, and why they wanted to take each thing.  It went pretty well; however as you can guess I got some crazy answers. 

Friday I had 3 conversation classes back to back with 14 plus kids in each with ages ranging from 10-16. The first class was made up of a mixture of younger kids who wanted to be there and then a group who didn't want to be there.  I decided to do something a little like what I did the night before and told them they all won a free trip!  They then had to tell me where they were going, who they were taking with them (4-5 people), why they were going to take those people, what 10 things they wanted to pack in their suitcase, and then on the back they had to draw me their suitcase and all 10 items inside.   Here are some of the answers I got:
For where they wanted to go:

• New York- To see the Statue of Liberty (One little girl asked me if they speak English in New York)
• The Sea- Pretty
• South Pole - Penguins
• Lotte Mart- Shopping (I think this one was a little confused)
• Manchester- Soccer
• Vietnam- USA (Also maybe a little lost)
• America - Movies
• Germany-
• Ski- Skiing is fun
• Italy- It is so-so
• Space- Very large
• Egypt - Mystery
• USA - Relative lives there

For who they were taking I got answers anywhere from Megan Teacher and Ryan Teacher, Mom and Dad, Grandmother and Grandfather, Friends, Brothers and Sisters ect.

Now some of the things they wanted to take with them really made me smile.  Here is a combined list of some of them.

• money- smart kids
• cell phone
• cell phone charger
• computer
• teddy bear
• bed - I tried to explain that most places had these
• pillow
• T-Shirt
• socks
• TV -I tried to explain that most places also had these
• Pants
• Nintendo
• Father, Mom, Friend - She didn't have room for them because she wanted to take Megan and Ryan teacher, so she just packed them in her suitcase. 
• Food
• Book
• Pencil Case
• Puppy
• Nintendo DS and Wii
• Notebook
• Soccer Ball, Basket Ball, Baseball Set, Bat
• Cookies, Dolls, Water, Bird- I think she was making a shopping list.
• Knife, Mind, House, Meat (beef), Very Big Ship, Very Big Airplane, Car (Limo) Money (999,9999,999,999,999......) Smart Phone - I found this list to be very odd.
• Coffee, milk, mirror, rice - I worry these kids think there is no food outside of Korea
• Flowers
• Underwear
• Guide Book -smart girl
• Legos- His favorite toy
• Fans
• Cap

The next two classes were made up of older kids who were not too happy to be there, so we spent our class time making list of things they want to talk about in the conversation class. I got crazy answers and sadly still don't know what to do with them, I have my fingers crossed that the books we ordered for the classes show up soon! 

Well that was last week, today starts this weeks crazy conversation classes.  I'll let you know how they went!