... and what do you plan to do about it?

I'm sure we all have that one lesson in the book that just makes us cringe. Likely, a lot of us share "most hated" lessons. If we each come up with one idea for making that lesson better, we can challenge ourselves to be positive about the terrible parts of the curriculum, and in the process build a great resource for those days when we're stuck trying to spruce up something that seems to have no point, or bores us to tears.

For me, it's grade 5 lesson 4: "What a Nice Day!". That's the stupidest, least useful lesson in the whole book, because it drills an unnatural construction that's almost never used in real life. This distracts from the real meat of the lesson: using adjectives.

Last year, I made the mistake of sticking to the text a fair amount. This year, I plan to use the "I like pink fish" game from Genki English, and focus on silly adjective use to make the lesson a bit more fun. I also plan to challenge the kids to use adjectives as much as possible both throughout the lesson, and after, when we've moved on to other lessons.

(If you happen to really dig a lesson that someone else despises, let us know why! Which fun activities did you do? How did you make that lesson interesting to yourself and to the students?)

I have always disliked the old 6th grade lesson. Don't take off your shoes. They were trying to teach the word don't. I think they could have come up with many other options for teaching don't instead of teaching that we don't take off our shoes in the house. lol I taught it anyway with a bit added to it from me.

BY FAR "How do you say it in Korean" in 6th grade.

I used to wonder where Koreans learned all this self-aggrandizing crap about how great everything is here and how everything is traditional Korean. (I recently bought a bag of frozen hamburgers that said "traditional korean hamburger steak." Don't even tell me it's not overused.) I used to wonder how they pass on those kinds of attitudes.

Now I find out that they have an entire chapter in their ENGLISH textbook to talk about KOREAN things.

Most foreign language classes have culture chapters about native speakers of the target language. When US kids take Spanish, they learn about Argentina and Mexico and Spain etc. etc. etc. Yet when Korean children take ENGLISH. They learn about... Korea.

The lesson is finally over and I'm so relieved to be finished with it.

This.

I turned the tables using the same sentence structure to say 'How do you say this in ENGLISH?" Needless to say, the students were not amused  I also tied it into a lesson about postcards I was planning to do anyway.

Most foreign language classes have culture chapters about native speakers of the target language. When US kids take Spanish, they learn about Argentina and Mexico and Spain etc. etc. etc. Yet when Korean children take ENGLISH. They learn about... Korea.
The lesson is finally over and I'm so relieved to be finished with it.

Yeah this is kind of annoying, but I understand why it's done: I've found that many of my students really aren't terribly interested in other countries, but when you start up a conversation about Korean things, they suddenly have a lot to say about it.
It's hard for lower level students to discuss topics they know nothing about, and the ol' nationalism thing is very easy to exploit: nothing riles up my kids quite so much as negatively comparing Korea with... well... anything 

Mine is 6th Grade "What do you think of Sim Cheong?" None of my students have read any of the books they are talking about. Two students out of the whole sixth grade had any idea who "Jean Valjan" was. It is so irrellevant and useless for them that I cannot blame them for acting out in class due to boredom.

I am certainly not looking forward to this lesson. I found it by far the hardest to plan for.

Another one that was quite difficult is "what do frogs eat?" just because the key expression was so simple, it was hard to fill all the lessons. However, as a biology major I had no problem as I just taught them other biology stuff during this lesson  .

In Spanish Class I absolutely hated Culture Chapters. I could CARE less about Argentina, or Mexico, or Spain. I just wanted to learn a language.

Definitely don't blame the kids for not wanting to learn about another culture. If I'm not going to live there, why care? There is plenty of Spanish in my community and online to take care of immersion for me...

Same for kids. If they get into a business setting, they will probably be using English in a business room of some sort. If they go study abroad in USA, lets be realistic, how much "culture" is REALLY different to them? How much will they expose themselves to? How much time will they have to explore the culture? I have a few friends studying abroad and they have almost no time to even explore any new culture because the English is so hard for them.

Just my two cents, I hate culture chapters. If I want to "learn about culture" I'll go find it out through experience. (IE visit a 노래방 instead of reading about one)

I would say the Grade 6 how do you say it in korean? lesson is pretty bad..Its just hard to come up with various activities to fill 8 classes.