EPIK teachers: Does your class count toward your students' grades?

[gksgangchu]

In the past my classes on counted toward participation grades (a small portion - about 5%) and a few questions on each exam.  This year it's a different situation because I am the only English teach so I actually have to make the mid-terms and final exams.  Now my class counts for 100%!

[Jozigirl]

I am just a little puzzled by the participation mark mentioned so frequently.

1. What exactly does participation mean?
     - to give the answer the teacher expects
     - to be the first hand up
     - to be the first to blurt out the answer

2. Are these participation marks awarded based on equal opportunities to respond?

3. How is this orchestrated with large class sizes, so that each student has an opportunity to score these points?

4. Is a student who says "I don't know/I don't understand" participating or not?

5. Does participation favor extrovert type personalities?

I most certainly encourage students to participate by responding but shy away from using this as a reward system. Interactivity and participation can be deliberate and planned for in many lessons and thus becomes part of the teaching strategy. Why hang on to a clipboard to record anything, or worse yet, trying to remember individual participation after the lesson ?

My participation mark is based on how involved they are during the lesson. ie. Are they working or sleeping, do they attempt the exercises even if they're difficult, do they participate in games, do they do the group work - what do they physically do during the class? It's doesn't favour extroverted students if you monitor yourself. 

[aramella]

Speaking Test once a semester.  It's worth 10 percent of their English Grade.

[jimmyjamison]

I have separate English notebooks for my English students. I also give them grades. I would suggest you do not wait until the end of the semester to grade their notebooks. No teachers do this from your home country, and no teachers do that here. It would be so overwhelming and stressful to check that much material at the end of the semester.

Here is what I do that might work for you:

I teach 9 weeks of lessons. The tenth week is grading week. I put on a movie and grade each classes notebooks during class time! Then I teach 9 more lessons (lessons 11-19) then the 20th week is grading week...and so on. It is nice because I can gauge their progress during the year, and honestly, it is nice for me to finish my grades during class AND let the students watch a movie and relax for a bit.

In my class, we do a warm-up, a tongue twister, and a new idiom every week. Then we move on to the lesson for that week: inventions, bucket list, numbers, food...whatever. I cut the board in half at the beginning of every class. The left side of the board contains the material they need to copy in their notebooks. The right side is just notes they need to see but not write down.

I make a gradebook, and before I grade their notebooks, I make a list of all the things they need to have in their notebook for each week. Example:

Week 1: Under my skin (idiom), Idioms-->2 meanings, Warm-up 1, list of 9 idioms and their English meaning

So for week 1, they should have 4 things in their notebooks. In my gradebook, I count the material they have for week 1. If they have all 4 things, they get 4 tic marks in week 1. If they are missing 1, then they get 3 tic marks....so on.

at the end of the semester, I am going to count their total points for all the weeks and factor that into a grading scale. 75-82 tic marks = A, 68-74 = B, ......

Maybe this will help. Good luck finding a system that works for you!

[KLM]

@jimmyjamison How many students do you have, i.e., how many notebooks do you have to grade? The notebook idea sounds great, and I want to do it at my next school. Did you ask the students to buy their own notebooks? Did you specify what kind of notebooks they should buy?

I teach at a private, all-boys high school. My classes don't count toward students' grades. During my first semester at this school, the head of the English Department refused to send co-teachers to my classes, and he scheduled half of my classes with the art teacher or the "skills" teacher, neither of whom speak English (and neither of whom attended my classes). Needless to say, the lack of co-teachers and my students' extremely low English skills led to totally worthless classes.

Now I have English-speaking co-teachers, but when I saw the students' schedules for this semester, my class was listed as "Ethics" and not "English." It seems that the English Department convinced someone to let my students' classes count as "Ethics" instead of English.

The English Department head, for some odd reason, has told me not to plan lessons with any other English teacher; my class is supposed to be its own thing, totally unrelated to any other English class. The only other advice he gave to me about my curriculum for this semester was, verbatim, "I want the students to play the Monopoly game." Considering how expensive English-language Monopoly sets are here, and how unlikely seems the prospect of the school paying me back for buying ~10 Monopoly sets, I haven't heeded that piece of advice.

[annewn]

I do speaking & writing performance tests (worth total 20points) once a sem, and my coteacher would give plus or minus points to students according to their behaviour and participation during class.

[southernman]

At my last PS I took regular speaking, listening and dictation/spelling tests that did go towards the students grades.

This year it's been speaking and dictation/spelling tests.

I agree with others though,  there should be a standardised system throughout EPIK whereby we do give tests and they count for a certain percentage of the final grade.  This would probably only work at Elementary and Middles schools.  As i understand from friends that the High School English classes are not graded in anyway,  as the emphasis is on passing the national English tests.

[jimmyjamison]

"@jimmyjamison How many students do you have, i.e., how many notebooks do you have to grade? The notebook idea sounds great, and I want to do it at my next school. Did you ask the students to buy their own notebooks? Did you specify what kind of notebooks they should buy?"

KLM, give or take a few, I have about 700 kids that I teach in my school in one week. Each class averages between 30-40 kids. I asked my students to buy their own cheap crappy notebook. As long as it was bound, and had paper in it, and was only for my class, they could use it. All of them brought one. I dont have one kid without a notebook. But, like I said, I grade all their notebooks in their class, so the most I have to grade at one time is a class of 45 1st grade girls.

I stagger my lessons. If a class is cancelled or a whole day is cancelled, i just let that class fall behind and use the lesson they would have learned the next week. That way I get variety in my plans throughout the week. I do not like to do the same lesson 23 times each week. I get so burned out!!! This week, for example, I will teach 4 different lessons. Some classes are ahead of other classes, some classes are behind other class. Once a class gets their 9 lessons, the 10th lesson is always graded. So you don't get a whole week of grading, you just get a grading period here and there.

If you want more information on the notebooks, pm me. There are things I would change If i could do it again, and I can let you know what I would do now if that would help you out.

[GLondonful]

Here is what I do that might work for you:

I teach 9 weeks of lessons. The tenth week is grading week. I put on a movie and grade each classes notebooks during class time! Then I teach 9 more lessons (lessons 11-19) then the 20th week is grading week...and so on. It is nice because I can gauge their progress during the year, and honestly, it is nice for me to finish my grades during class AND let the students watch a movie and relax for a bit.

This is a great idea... I love the idea of a grading day.  How do you manage lessons that take up more than one class period, though?  Do you just make each class period a separately gradable entity?

[GLondonful]

-GLondonful

In regards to your 'fun....photocopiable worksheets, games..etc', I think they are doing that for the 3rd and 4th grade already. There are different publishers(more than 10)-you should have many books on pretty much the same topic. If you look through them, you can get more game ideas to choose the games you want to use... Some books focus on reading and writing, you can just scan them and give them to the students?

With certain publishers (like Chunjae), they give a resource book (different check up tests for each chapter other than the students' book etc). I'm just trying to give credit where it is due. I know there are crappy books too.

I'm thrilled for the years to come, since I think the 5th and 6th will follow suit as the 3rd and 4th, giving us more ideas for our lessons.

I went up to Seoul a few months ago and hit as many major bookstores as I could reach, and most of the booksellers there told me that there are very few books designed specifically for teaching speaking to middle schoolers.  There are reading, writing, and listening books galore, but speaking has somehow been very much overlooked.  The few books they did suggest were bad English or ugly.  If you know the titles of any good books/series, please share!

The best series I have been able to find so far has been the Smart Choice series from Oxford.  It is designed for college level learners, but can be adapted for younger students as well.  Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are all covered, but their speaking activities are more natural and interesting than most, making them ideal for use in a NET class.  There are four levels, with a student book, teacher book, and activities book for each level.

[jimmyjamison]

Yea, each lesson if started and finished in one period. This week is actually the first lesson that spans two weeks. I think when i get around to grading it, I will just cross week 12 off the gradebook, and just count both weeks as grade 11.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

-GLondonful

In regards to your 'fun....photocopiable worksheets, games..etc', I think they are doing that for the 3rd and 4th grade already. There are different publishers(more than 10)-you should have many books on pretty much the same topic. If you look through them, you can get more game ideas to choose the games you want to use... Some books focus on reading and writing, you can just scan them and give them to the students?

With certain publishers (like Chunjae), they give a resource book (different check up tests for each chapter other than the students' book etc). I'm just trying to give credit where it is due. I know there are crappy books too.

I'm thrilled for the years to come, since I think the 5th and 6th will follow suit as the 3rd and 4th, giving us more ideas for our lessons.

I went up to Seoul a few months ago and hit as many major bookstores as I could reach, and most of the booksellers there told me that there are very few books designed specifically for teaching speaking to middle schoolers.  There are reading, writing, and listening books galore, but speaking has somehow been very much overlooked.  The few books they did suggest were bad English or ugly.  If you know the titles of any good books/series, please share!

The best series I have been able to find so far has been the Smart Choice series from Oxford.  It is designed for college level learners, but can be adapted for younger students as well.  Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are all covered, but their speaking activities are more natural and interesting than most, making them ideal for use in a NET class.  There are four levels, with a student book, teacher book, and activities book for each level.

This is quite true, especially when it comes to low-level speaking and phonics. There are heaps of stuff for little kids and adults, but very little geared specifically at MS-age learners. This is why I often find it better just to make my own.

[slimreturns]

Speaking Test once a semester.  It's worth 10 percent of their English Grade.

Exactly the same as my school. I and the other foreign teacher design and administer our tests as we like. We are finishing the speaking tests now, just after the midterm exams.

[CellarDoor]

Well, this morning I voted "No, but I wish it did," but as of this afternoon, I found out my answer should more accurately be, "Sort of, the material I teach goes on the test."  I was actually pretty thrilled.  Apparently all the Korean English teachers had had a meeting and one of the topics they discussed was student attention levels and participation in my class.  They weren't happy with the students, and to motivate them, the teachers decided I should be allowed to write two of the final exam questions with materials or vocabulary from my course.

I suspected something was going on yesterday when my class of advanced-level girls were all taking notes studiously.  They never do that, so I guess they got the memo a day before I did. :)  As I said, I'm very glad of this, since I do think it'll help at least a few of the students to stay more focused.