Has anyone been told that we are choosing new textbooks for the 2014-15 school year?  I've been given 5 to choose from:  3 Cheongjae, 1 YBM and 1 Daekyo.  The confusing part to me is the textbooks indicate that they are for 3rd through 4th grade but provide the same amount of lessons as our old textbooks.  For some reason, my school didn't allocate this task to my English speaking co-teacher so I can't get a straight answer on why these are 3~4 grade textbooks.

I just saw these in the teachers room at my schoo. I plan to look at them tomorrow.

I was told that the "1" books are for 3rd and the "2" books are for 4th. So 3-4 1 is 3rd and 3-4 2 is 4th. But it does seem weird to combine the grades on them then.

What are your thoughts on them? Any one stand out as the best?

There is a website   http://text.ktbook.com/     

Go here and click on the big blue box that says 뷰어 다운로드. It is on the bottom right of the screen.

Then on 학교급 select 초등학교. the password I was given is ch109 (I am not sure if this is school specific so please check with your school first for a password...not sure I am supposed to be giving it out)

The only thing on there now is PDF files of the books. However, I was informed that on Monday they will be uploading the CD-ROM for each book so we can make a more informed choice on which will be the best.

Thank God b/c if they didn't do that I would have been extremely pissed at the ridiculousness of having a student book with no teacher book or cd rom with which to judge its contents. 

so these are completely new books, right? with different content and everything? as in, your school isn't just choosing a different textbook to use but the publishers have actually updated/revised/changed their books?

Well we use YBM, so the other companies are "new" to my school. Looking at the chapter titles they are probably 90% the same though.

I did notice what appears to be phonics (or ABC's) in one or two of them, which I think will be immensely helpful for 3rd grade. They look much better though. More colorful and vibrant.

But I want to check the key language and things like that. Cause if I have another "my fav class if broom" sentence or anything similar I might just say F it and give up.

Well it is hard to tell what terrible expressions might be in the books by just looking at the students' book.

However, things I don't like about the new books.

1. There is very little printed English - most of them don't have the song words printed in the book and I like to use them for extra reading practice. None of them have printed expressions (except in the reading/writing sections).

2. They have moved alphabet into the first semester of 3rd grade (which is a good thing), but then gone straight from teaching A-Z into reading and writing words like 'eight' and 'notebook'. I think having alphabet at the beginning is good (I already teach it that way) but then they haven't added phonics or started with reading/writing simple cvc words.

3. All the books are more difficult than the current books we use. I teach low level students who already struggle with the current books so having more difficult material is not good.

4. I don't like the artwork in most of the new books either.

I am not saying the current books are great - they have many problems but they haven't addressed any of these problems in the new books and have just made it more difficult to teach by making the material harder.

[quote author=johnny russian link=topic=61283.msg395615#msg395615

fantastic, so now all the tons and tons of hours i've spent lesson planning this year could end up being useless for next year 

can't believe they've increased the difficulty too. probably my number 1 complaint with the textbooks from elementary right through to high school is that they are already too difficult. and that this high level of difficulty is actually stifling learning.
[/quote]

Most of the topics seem to be the same, so you should be able to use a lot of the material next year.

And I agree with you about the high level of difficulty stifling learning. It amazes me how the curriculum designers could believe that a student can go from learning X, Y, Z one week to being able to read and write 'cookie' or 'eraser' the next week. I think they must just assume that all the students go to hagwons.

One thing I can vouch for is that Daegyo will have an all english version of the teachers guide book (g3-4), which is something I've never been able to get my hands on for any of the other books I've taught. Not that you need to learn what to say when, but it's real value comes with all the game activities that are available for every lesson.

The word reading requirement might be a drastic jump, but the target expressions don't seem to be any more difficult. They're speaking the words, so why not teach the spelling at the same time?

And in terms of trashing all your old lessons - come on. The same expressions are used in every book, with minor variation.

Good luck!

From what I was told by my ct, the curriculum is changing as of next year for all of grade 3 and 4 subjects. All subjects will have next upgraded texbooks to meet the new standards, including English. The curriculum changes for English include more reading, writing and phonics at the grade 3 level.
To prepare for this, grade  2  teachers will be preparing their students by teaching them the alphabet and simple phonics. Whether that will happen in time for next year's grade 3's I'm not sure. We can hope :)

If they are going to change textbooks for the Elementary school programs, I would insist or perhaps suggest the education authorities that they should do this gradually. Start out only with the grade 3 elementary students. Change their textbook first starting in March 2014, and then by March 2015 the schools have to implament the new textbook curiculum for both grade 3 and grade 4.

The website and password worked...thanks.  No CD-Roms though.

Sorry, I was told next week....Monday possibly.