I've just finished my first placement as a prac teacher - teaching high school seniors.  Thankfully, I've had text books... but coming up with useful lesson activities to ensure they are learning rather than just me teaching has been a real challenge.

The advice I've been given by my supervising teachers has been "less you, more them" or words of that nature.  I've seen some interesting ideas about getting students to work using Google Docs to summarise parts of the syllabus or key phrases and ideas - but with each person contributing only one or two sections to a single document the whole class has access to. 

I was also surprised to see teachers still asking students to read out loud from the text book at the most senior level of school... but have adopted it myself now!

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.  My problem is an acute one, but perhaps not unique. 

I have taught ESL at high school before, but not here in Korea.  I was warned in advance that I was put in one of the lower level schools in the province, but I had NO idea just how low it is.  90% of my highschoolers do not even know what verbs, adjectives, nouns and punctuation are.  I am baffled as to what the previous and current teachers have been teaching them.  Keeping their interest is a constant struggle, and frankly it's easier for class if I just let the ones who want to sleep put their heads down and be quiet.  It's less disruptive.  The best way to hold their interest (for maybe 15-20 minutes tops) are videos, but only if they have Korean subtitles.  If I give them vocabulary and listening exercises with the videos, they don't do the work.  And even if they did, my vice principal said not to show videos so often (which wasn't that often in the first place, but whatever). 

I would ask the students what they want to learn, but they don't/can't answer me.  Games bore them (one of the things they actually could express to me), and I almost never have a co-teacher in the classroom.  Oh, and I have no textbook to use.  I was also recently criticized by a co-teacher for my teaching method, which is odd since he's never around when I'm teaching.  I care a lot about the kids and love at least trying to teach them, but I'm seriously considering resigning in March.  I don't want to do that, but I am also pretty much fresh out of ideas (without teaching them kindergarten materials) and do not appreciate being criticized for my students being low level. 

If there is anyone in even a remotely similar situation, I am really hoping to get some ideas to at least hold the classroom's interest, if not give them some practical knowledge of the English language.

Hi Chuckthebear

I'm also a high school teacher new to Korea. I arrived here on 25th November. For my first lesson I established some class rules and then just told them a little bit about myself, my family and my home-town which went well, they had lots of questions! The class I'm doing this week is just going over some of the phonics I noticed they struggle with as they've not had a native English speaker before so it pays for them to get used to different accents and pronunciations.

There's a great section on here that's a rough guide of what to teach and when. The majority of my students are at pre/intermediate level and are confident speakers so lessons should be quite interesting. As they don't speak English in their english grammar classes I'm just going to start with the basics and go from there. Their reading and writing skills are excellent but their speaking and listening is not so good so I'm going to work on that. 

How are you finding it so far?

Im new too, Iv been in the school nearly two weeks but cannot dstart teaching until next Monday because of exams
I have used the time thou, to sit in and listen
Most of the students seem to have very good reading and writing skills
They just seem to lack pratice and confidence speaking
Im doing a simple ppt for first week because they know NOTHING about Ireland
Second week, get them to tell me about Korea (in groups naturally)
Then the usual topics, music, movies, food ect
Iv been told (and had no intention anyway) to avoid grammar and focus on speech
That works for me, I dont get most of the grammar rules in English anyway and speek the language just fine.
I would just avoid long boring grammar classes. If your school is like mine, just been in the room is usually enough to make the students excited :D

I have a game that I swear by with High School students in Korea.  It is hands down the best version of Wheel of Fortune i have found on the web.  I just break the class into teams and the website lets you choose how many teams.  This kind of only works if you are lucky enough to have a "Touch Screen" tv/computer board, where is projects your computer onto the T.V. and it is a touch screen.  If you do not have one of those you can always just use a projector that projects your computer screen and use your mouse for whatever the children choose on the computer.  All of the games on this website are good, but "The Wheel" went over so well with my students that the foreign teachers heard about it and now they play it.  You can choose what category the kids have to guess in, and it works for High level or low level.  For low level they just end up guessing until basically there are no letters left and for high level it's more like the real game show Wheel of Fortune and they are able to solve it before hand. Here is the website: http://www.barryfunenglish.com/games.php?PHPSESSID=0f8cbc03ff2c42becd9f3ee97716cbe1

I am going to start teaching soon as well, and this entire thread was helpful.  Thanks you all!

Hello all.  I'm a new teacher at an all girls' public high school.  I've been told they are quite dedicated and much is expected of them.  Any major differences teaching at an all girls school as opposed to other public high schools? Thanksss

Given the choice, I highly recommend splitting the class into levels as opposed to mixed abilities. Some like the idea of sitting a higher student next to a lower student but it's a lot easier to plan and produce a valid lesson for students of a similar ability and hence keep their attention for longer.

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.

This sounds great - did you just get them to bring newspapers and stuff from home? Or could they print stuff from the internet and such as well? Was it all in English?

Thanks in advance!

Some great ideas here, I've filled a page of notes already! I'm of two minds as to whether I should stick with just an introduction for my first lesson and save the rules for the second? I like the idea of spending some time on them and having the class help to choose them, but I'm a stickler for discipline and don't want to be giving out to kids for stuff in the first lesson if we haven't even covered set rules yet.

I'm wary of High School kids thinking they're above playing games/activities, etc, but if sleep is high on their priorities, I'm thinking I should try and keep them on their feet. What's the general results of this from others, if you've tried?

For my first lesson I told them about me. I showed them pictures of my family and friends, my home-town, some interesting facts about where I lived (they liked that there is a guillotine in my home-town and that I live near (ish) to Man. United football stadium) and then I let them ask me questions. They're going to be very interested in you! You can ask them what they're interest are which will make lesson plans easier as you can tailor them a bit more. I then discussed with them the rules of the classroom by showing them pictures and asking if they thought the behaviour was ok or not ok.

That seemed to go down really well as they know their place from the get-go, but at the same time they've had some involvement in the process AND you've got the discipline in straight away. I have a lot of all boys classes and they are actually really well behaved. They know that if I write their name on the board, that's strike 1 for talking, another strike gets them a punishment (like standing up or answering a question) and third strike they get a negative point (this is a reward/punishment system in school).

It's difficult because you don't want to look like the bad guy from the beginning but if you don't show any discipline they probably won't listen to you. Many of my co-teachers say that they were too soft with their students and now they are mischievous. On the other hand, some of them give out worse punishments than me! I've seen a few of them make the boys do press-ups on their knuckles! You just have to find what works for you. A good idea is to get them in competition with other classes. My students love anything like that! I give the whole class 10 points per class, every time someone disrupts me or the class they lose a point. After a month the class with the most points wins a small prize, usually candy. You'll find they 'police' themselves because they don't want to lose! I find this works better than punishing them.

And with regard to the sleeping issue. Don't forget that students work NON-STOP! Even during vacation they study study study! Some students won't see your class as important as they don't get graded or tested on it, so they will use it as sleep time. I try to get them up on their feet straight away with a game to wake them up a bit, and keep the activities etc short so they don't get bored. But if they're going to sleep you're best just letting them. The more you're concentrating on keeping the sleepy ones awake the less time you're devoting to the ones that want to learn!