I'm a new high school teacher ..... HELP!!!

[Chuckthebear]

Hello, I've just recently joined this forum but I am a new teacher teaching just outside of Seoul.  I arrived but a few days ago and on the second day here I threw together an introductory lesson about myself etc after preparing a 'high school' focused lesson. 

I've asked the co-teachers about textbooks but I've been told there isn't one to use or something of that nature and that I am to create lesson plans from scratch.  It's not much of an issue however I have still yet had the chance to get a grip of the language skills of the classes I will be teaching, minus 2 of the several I will have.  The two I have had the chance to experience doesn't seem to have the level of English that the high school lessons seem to target or even a lot of the middle school lessons on this site.

I'm trying to find advice for maybe what I should try to focus on, etc.  This is my first time teaching in Korea and I really want to be able to do this well and help my students become interested or at least be able to stay concious during class.   Hopefully this is the correct place to post this sort of question and I appreciate any sort of response.

[c_makitalo]

First, don't worry.  Second, you should be blessed that you get to teach what you want and do not have to follow a really bad text.  I would say start each class with a hook, something to grab their attention like a video or song.  There are plenty of videos on this site that you can use to get students describing what they saw.  As for the sleeping thing, don't worry.  My teachers say to let them sleep although I try to not allow it. While my school emphasizes speaking, I'm not sure about yours.  I use set dialogue that they have to speak out loud and I work on their prononciation that way.  Best of luck!

[Harry Yeong]

Hang in there. It gets easier, do not worry. The first few weeks are a bit overwhelming, but things will work out. This site has many lessons and ideas that can be adapted to fit the purpose of English teaching.

The students levels may depend on how long they have been studying English and the English capabilities of their previous teachers.  Students here in Korea study in school, hagwons or at home anywhere from 12-16 hour days...They spend an enormous amount of time studying for tests....To some English class may be "nap time." Keep them active, keep them engaged. At the very least make it fun for them, it may be the best 45 minutes of their day.

[nancy]

I know exactly how you feel. I was told the same thing when I started. To get them talking. I found the students quite shy when they first met me. An early lesson I did was a culture class, introducing them to Canada followed by a class asking them to tell me about Korea. In my class the kids used  old newspapers and made collages about their culture. They had to include sports figures, politicians, celebrities, food, language and some historical information. As they were working on their collages I went around the room and sat at each table asking questions. They seemed more comfortable talking in a small group and were eager to share their culture with me. They then presented them to the class. Posting them on "the best of the best" wall really helped as well. They are very creative and artistic. I think it eased the kids into knowing me and made them more comfortable in my classroom.

[jglide]

I can relate.  I've been in Korea for over a month and half of my time is spent at an all girl's technical high school.  This means their level is extremely low.  I have elementary school students that surpass many of my high school students in terms English speaking.  I'm a 22 year old American man.  This has driven the girls crazy as I get marriage proposals and I love you remarks every day.  The students freak out and get so nervous even if I walk toward them.  It has been over a month so they are getting better.

No book and no guidelines as what to teach.  I've just been focusing on interesting topics usually preceded by a game and I try to get the students to speak as much as possible.  There are many topics you can try that are listed in the high school section.  Trial and error is best until you can grasp their English level.  Know that many can speak, but are just too shy.  Take them seriously and they will take you seriously.  Ask them what they want to learn.  Music, movies...  Weave in vocabulary and grammar into the interesting topics.  Ex. Fortune telling and future tense or Holidays and vocabulary.  Keep the class moving and keep the students busy.  If you just talk at them they will go to sleep.

Good luck

[kaymac]

It helps when their english level is shakey to have powerpoints explaining what you are doing. Many of the kids will have a hard time with listening but can read what you mean, or at least pick out enough of the words to grasp it. I teach alone and the whole whatever I want thing, so I usually get my point across for what we are doing with a powerpoint and the help of a higher-level students (and of course, awesome charade skills!) When you are choosing lessons etc. make sure you always have an example handy of what you want them to do, and for any writing, it will really help them to have sentences half formed so they just have to finish them/insert their answers. They almost never have to write in their curriculum, so they are at a loss when asked to make sentences. Getting one correct sentence can often take five of them together so unless it's a game, I try to make it really easy! Just try to keep it fun and a bit interesting, the longer you're here the easier it will be for you to play to their interests and such. Best of luck!

[Lee_Lee]

Hi everyone,

I am a brand new teacher, starting on Wednesday in Daegu, South Korea. I'm still trying to figure out what to do on my first day. I have a slide show, basically telling my students about me and where I am from. I was also going to do an ice-breaker and maybe a Q&A. Anyone have a good icebreaker for high school? Not sure what to do for my first real lesson. Any tips or suggestions would be awesome! Thanks!

[vitamin-d]

This works well for me: http://waygook.org/index.php/topic,4763.0.html
See if there's anything you can use and let me know...

[Dobs21]

Hi,

Good luck with your first lessons!

There's a nice activity that I got from this website, where you put a bowl of M and M's on each table and ask students to take some. Depending on how many they take, they have to say that many things about themselves, but dont tell them that till after they have taken them! You can also color code them so that red = say something about your hobbies, blue = dreams etc.

For my intro lesson ths year, I'm keepig it simple and giving a presentation about myself, class rules etc and then reading some statement and asking them to say if its true/false. If students can explain why it's false, they'll get a reward stamp.

Thay'll probably be really interested to learn about you and will get excited about the things you wouldnt expect them to! Don't be suprised if they don't ask may questions though, in my experience this is not because they dont care but because it's really hard to convert questions into English.

[roymelling]

Hello,

I will also start teaching High School grade 1 and 2 from Wed.  In fact, I will use vitamin d's intro ppt.  Or I'll be sure to make sure I have the ppt just in case.  I asked if I needed to prepare anything I was just told to be on time so I don't know if I'm teaching this week.

One idea I've had is to do a bingo game...having (hopefully) been asked lots of questions.  I will write 15 key words on the board.  The students need to write down any three words. They play pass the ball and when the music stops a student needs to make a sentence using one of the key words from the board.  If they can do it everybody can cross out the word.  If not then that's o.k just continue the game.

The winner will get some candy.

[dostoevsky_21_81]

Sometimes Korean students can be really shy, so you'll probably have to call on them a lot if you want to have a lot of questions/answers. 

Just a heads-up to have a couple questions to prod them with.

And good luck on your first day.

[ToddWilliams42]

Play 21 questions...

60% of the time... it works every time...

[rustymcallister]

Hope things went well for you.  I'm teaching HS grade 1.  I had them break into groups of 4 to come up with questions for me, and then had one from each group stand up and say the question.  I'm not sure if it's ideal, but it worked really well, and I could generally get a few follow ups from the kids.

[kaymac]

I know this is late, but for this semester I have been doing an introductions worksheet, where the students interview each other, and then to finish the class off we have been playing "Two Truths and a Lie". It has been working great, although I have the usual candy incentive to keep kids speaking. You can find your own incentives, but as far as high school classes go, this is my third school year I've taught in, and across the board it's always easier if there is candy, or even the chance of candy.

[Lee_Lee]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I started out with a ppt and then played two truths and a lie. I added another simple game too and it's worked out well.

[kp]

I like the two truths and a lie game as well - it's also helpful to prep kids for true/false activities, if you want to use those later in the year.

Watch out with the candy, though.  I only use it as a prize for winning teams in big review games, and those happen maybe once a month, if that.  I prefer not to have my students expecting candy for simply doing what is required of them.  I know, it's motivating, but I've found my life is easier without it.  Sometimes a "Good job!", a round of applause, or the gratification of crushing their classmates (ha), works just as well.

(And just fyi, I teach low-level high school students.)

[Logan.kruck]

I'm a new teacher in Cheonan, working at a lower level high school, teaching 1st and 2nd years.  I talked with my head teacher, and he told me to just teach what I think should be taught.  I have some textbooks (in Korean), and I'm trying to figure out where to start.  The fact that I'm starting in the 2nd semester makes it all the more confusing. 

If you have any advice on where to begin, and how to build a coherent lesson map for the semester, please let me know.

[Jozigirl]

Decide what you would like your students to achieve/learn from your lessons.  ie.  What are you goals for the semester?  If they're low level, I'd aim for only 2 - 3 things (speaking with more confidence, linking ideas coherently, building vocab, etc.)

Once you've decided on your goals, work out how many lessons you have for the semester.  Draw a basic timetable showing the number of lessons and block out any holidays or lessons lost due to school events (some you'll only hear about closer to the time but ask your co-teacher for a calendar showing these events).  When you know how many lessons you're dealing with, place your 2 - 3 goals in the calendar and decide which one to work towards first.  Then, work backwards:  in order to be able to do y, they need to understand x - this is how you figure out your order of lessons (assuming you don't have a textbook).  A lesson doesn't have to be a new topic each week - topics can be used for 2 or 3 lessons and you can reinforce the same skill by simply altering the type of activity the students will have to do - Ex.  they can practise listening to something, then reinforce this by having them speak/read/write.

I aim for a little bit of reading and writing every second lesson and speaking and listening in every lesson.  You need a clear idea of your goals and how you want to structure a lesson before you can plan lessons.   

[Mifletzet]

I'm in a similar position where my co-teacher (who I have still yet to meet) has been away on business, and hasn't given any indication on what I should be teaching, and what he has taught the students already, so it's getting to the point where I think I should just make a semester plan.  Thank you to the previous poster for explaining how one might go about that.  Just one further question:

I have middle and high school students whose English actually seems very reasonable.  I was thinking about asking them about things they want to learn and things they think are important, since they already seem very keen students.  Unless, do you think it would be a bad idea to do so?

Thanks for any help you may have

[Jozigirl]

I have middle and high school students whose English actually seems very reasonable.  I was thinking about asking them about things they want to learn and things they think are important, since they already seem very keen students.  Unless, do you think it would be a bad idea to do so?

I tried this with students back home and it was helpful because I used it to choose comprehension passages about topics they were already interested in.  For ESL, I usually ask my students what their ultimate goal is in learning the language - they'll probably tell you they want to speak fluently.  I ask specific questions like: Do you want to be able to read English novels?  Do you want to watch English moveis without subtitles? Do you want to study at a foreign university?  It gives me an idea as to what type of language they would prefer me to focus on. 

As far as content is conerned, teenagers here aren't much different to teenagers back home.  Some middle school kids respond very well to k-pop, others could care less.  They're pretty curious about what life is like for teenagers in other countries.  I've taught a couple of middle school kids here and they've often commented on English tv programs (Glee is pretty popular), social lives of teenagers, differences in dating, differences in education approaches - stuff like that.  My high school kids are also pretty keen on some of these things but it definitely varies from school to school (based on economic status, location, proficiency, etc.).  To give you an idea, my kids were fascinated to hear about Amish people and it led to interesting conversations about modern technology.  We've done lessons on dating etiquette, superheroes, tv programs, extreme sports, movies, computer games, comics, etc. 

Ask your kids what they're interested in - it doesn't hurt to find out what they like and do some research when planning lessons.  What I wouldn't do, however, is become too focused on matching every lesson's theme to what your kids have said - sometimes they need to cover material they are not 'interested' in because otherwise they'd never be exposed to anything other than what they already know; plus, you would want to shoot yourself if you didn't have the same interests.