My school has a surplus in the budget for our English Department. My co-teacher wants me to suggest some materials but I'm drawing a blank since I don't know what's available or what works best.

Any recommendations or suggestions?

I've put down board games so far, but am clueless as to anything else. Our English classroom is brand new but could use some posters- does anyone know where I can find English materials in Korea?

Help!

Try www.orientaltraidin g.com the stuff that they have on there is really awesome for classroom supplies and usually pretty cheap as well so you can get a lot of stuff for a little buck. However, you might have to have it shipped to your parents and then shipped here or if you have a friend with an APO address, have it shipped there. They currently only ship to the US and Canada.   I'm so jealous of you with your lovely budget!!!

Thanks for the ideas!

I know I should be so grateful- but I'm scared I'm going to blow it by choosing the wrong things. Ah! The pressure....

These are a great way to start thinking about it. Both are much appreciated  :D

I have been building a DVD library at my school with our budget, so I have plenty to choose from on movie days, and the students (high school girls) can borrow them to practice at home. I make sure all of the movies are in English with English and Korean subtitles.

The next item on my list is a good set of bilingual dictionaries, and a set of play money for role-playing situations. I have a bunch of other little props for role-playing already, too, like small costume items and plastic table settings. These things help make activities more fun to the students. When they feel like they are playing, they don't complain about the work so much!

1. Books
- Collection of Disney Fairy tales
- Anderson and Grim Fables

2. English Movies - Go to Costco or buy online. Kids movies like:
- Toy Story 1& 2
- Shrek
- Monsters Inc.
- Finding Nemo
(Disney has combo packs with all of these)

Maybe also buy one Christmas movie (Home Alone) and one Halloween movie (Casper/ Hocus Pocus).

3. Workbooks
Costco also has some amazing teaching resources like workbooks.

4. Barry English
Register to Barry English (it costs money) but the activities they have are awesome like monopoly etc.

5. Board Games
You should also buy some board games for your Camps. Like Scabble, Pictionary etc.

6. Supplies
Colored paper, stamps, stickers, candy and prizes (Always come in handy), go to Dasio.

7. Bell or Buzzer for Classroom management
http://www.schoolbox.com/Classroom-Management-Timers.aspx

http://www.amazon.com/ will also give you tons of ideas
http://www.scholastic.com/teacherstore/

I teach at a girls' high school.

That said, here are the things used most at my school...

~ Board Games!
- Clue is a huge hit!
- Guess Who is surprisingly popular.
- Apples to Apples Junior is great if you have lots of time to teach it.

~ TV Shows
- Ugly Betty is the top favorite
- Alias is okay, but not as popular

~ A full set of basic arts n crafts stuff (used to put together assignments for classes)
- Scissors
- Glue
- Basic paper stuff
- Stapler / staples
- Lots of tape

~ Books!
- Twilight and Harry Potter are hugely popular... for a minute. Then kids open the books, see how much writing is in there, and put them right back down.
- Roald Dahl stuff is pretty good, but can be confusing with all the made-up words.
- Basic, easy reader type stuff is good.

~ Dictionaries
- My school bought six electronic dictionaries - one for each group.
- We also have six English-to-Korean dictionaries and six Korean-to-English dictionaries.

I know some of this has already been said, but I just wanted to throw in my two cents.  :D

I sould specifiy and say that I think the second edition is better than the first of the picture dictionary. There are a lot of books in that series so do some research online to choose which ones are best for your class. :)

The game Jenga with simple questions written on the blocks.

I'd probably go for the teacher's pack from GenkiEnglish and a few sets of early readers, leaning towards the lowest level available -- if you think you can get away with assigning reading homework.  The kids generally won't read the books unless they're encouraged to do so.  Also, dictionaries -- if you do some reading/writing work in class and think they will use them.

I'm a bit dubious towards that pack. I've seen and tried using bits of it left behind at a past school, and I know experienced EFL teachers with a full pack who call it useless. The precise reason given was that over-branding and advertising for further GenkiEnglish products took precedence over the actual English. Some of the audio tracks with the booming positioning statements actually scare young kids. I'm guessing you've got the pack yourself and until I heard all these stories I was eyeing it off myself for a bit, so I'd love to hear some feedback in this regard; has it ever been a prob. for you?

I'd write a list in order of precedence, and precedence should weigh up quality, scope of use, how easily the materials could be replaced by free stuff given the effort (and laminator film) and price. By price I actually mean putting precedence on MORE EXPENSIVE stuff rather than cheaper. Good illustrated hardcover dictionaries for example, are invaluable, but EFL funding in my limited experience usually arrives in drips and drabs with spending deadlines as opposed to lump sums, so the opportunity to buy a full matching set is somewhat rare. As such, if you have enough for dictionaries, I'd seize the day and take them first. Might be years before the school gets that chance again. Then use the change on other stuff.

If your school places limits on your laminating, printing and general stationary needs, I'd honestly place this as priority #2.

Uhm... one other really odd thing I'd suggest that I sure miss here is a guillotine. A cheap guillotine from an art supply or office stationary supplier. You know, flat board with little papersize markings and a rolling blade on a stick. Not the scissor type. From preparing flashcards at a more manageable sub A4 size through to worksheets through to shaped game pieces, not having this really costs me more time than I imagined, and always when I'm short on it (not like today for example), and I'm kinda opposed to having Stanley knives lying around a classroom.

If teaching elementary, try to find a good writing/phonics worksheet book. This might sound really silly, but so many of them SUCK. In Korea especially we've got all these kids learning to handwrite typeface lowercase As and blackletter uppercase Gs. Talk about turning an easy skill to learn into a difficult one. Or developing utterly alien handwriting quirks because the pages fail to have 4 lines and the letters have horribly exaggerated tails on characters (this is the source of so many younger kids writing a lowercase R like a hangul niun (ㄴ): the books do it themselves!). And then to top it off you've got index phonics words in the books like "whilst" for "w" (both wrong, abstract and way above a beginners's level!) Gah! I'm getting so irritated with this I'm actually considering biting the bullet, making a font, and making my own entirely copyleft one. slash/end/rant]

If you don't want to bother doing that, spend a few bucks on licensing a good trading/lined typefont set online that fixes these problems and make your own I guess, but that'd take more work and check the license as you may risk running into misloading (.doc) or Copyright (.pdf) issues when distributing materials utilising it on Waygook.

Actually, I guess I should've asked this up front: What level do you teach?

Edit: 3 months later and the bullet has been bitten indeed.

Depending on what age group you are teaching, you could consider starting a library of graded English readers.  Extensive reading is supposed to be very helpful for English language learners, and if you and your school is interested in starting a program it's best to get started on building the library as soon as possible.