On Thursday I teach an afterschool block for ~80 minutes.

The class is Grade 3, 4, 5, and 6.

On Thursday I'll have about ~16 students. Planning a lesson for that day is no problem.

The problem is Friday.

I have the 3-6 grade block again, but the number is drastically reduced down to a whopping 6 students.

2 of which attended the previous day's lesson, 2 of which want absolutely nothing to do with school, and 1-2 who weren't there for the previous day's lesson. As you can imagine, besides doing camp-related activities, I am at my wit's end. At the end of the week I have absolutely no idea what to do with Friday's class.

The two students who don't want to be there don't even try in their Korean coursework. The Korean teachers have lectured them time and time again but it does nothing. They will sit there, disrupt the class, or play on their phones. I can lecture and discipline until I'm blue in the face, or even call in reinforcements, but it does nothing. I involve them in games and do my best to keep them occupied and it tends to work most of the time.

The numbers for Friday can fluctuate because I'll have 1 - 3 who show up and then leave 20 minutes later to go to hagwon. I just smile, wave, and watch them go and ask myself, "why the deuce did you even show up if you're only going to be here 10 - 20 minutes?"

I honestly don't know what to do with this class. I'll have 4 students who do genuinely want to learn, but 2 of them who are tuned out.

It'd be bearable if it was just a 40-minute class, but it's an 80-minute block. Anyone got any advice?

I already do that, most of the time!

I'm not afraid to pull up a chair and plop down with them, and they know me as I've been here for about ~1.5 years or so. It's not the subject matter of the class, it's more the tone.

Another issue I run into is the constant disruption of the kids who leave to go to hagwon. That's not an issue, but the kids who *don't* go to hagwon want to leave with their friends and it takes me a while to reign them back in. The kids who leave aren't noisy on their way out, quite the opposite. A combination of it being Friday + the last class of the day before they go to the bus helps tremendously.

I kind of pulled something out my ass today, and I'm going to see how well it goes over with them.

Unfortunately, no song for them. On Friday 5 of the kids are 6th graders, and they do not do songs at all. I can do songs with 5th grade, but the 6th grade kids are like. . . no music or singing. Ha. No.

But thank you. It's just a challenge trying to tweak it to what will work for this group. Even the Korean teachers are like, ". . . the boys are very challenging. . . and do not care for school / English."

I'm in the same boat, every Wednesday and Thursday I have an 80 minute after school class with 6 and 3 students respectively. They're very unenthusiastic and the English level is extremely low. Most can't read. The size restriction and English level make things very challenging but I've learned to stop formally planning for the classes and maintain low expectations! We do everything from Go Fish, Hangman, board Games, Bomb Games (3 vs 3), Red Light Green Light, Reverse Charades, Pictionary, etc. I've turned Thursdays into movie day and on Wednesdays we rotate games and I give them ~15-20 minutes at the end to watch a YouTube drawing tutorial (in English, usually Clash Royale characters) as they enjoy drawing. Just wing it!

It can be tough with small classes. Maybe involve them in creating the lessons. What would they like to learn about, what interests them etc.