Cute.

My kids enjoy bomb games. If you can't figure out how to have more than one student speaking at once, you're not doing it right. Ideally, at almost any level, the teacher shouldn't have to speak at all while playing a bomb game.

oooooohhh Zeegs serving up a hot plate of snapper doodle cookies!!! WHUT WHUT!

no but seriously Zeegs, GG, +1.

@yfb
if you don't like bomb games, why'd you down load 11 of them?

I bulk download materials

ah, I think I found your problem.

anywho, every week I'm asked, "please don't teach, just show a movie" I give my fake nyahaha chuckle and teach my lesson regardless. well this week due to SAT finals for important classes my kids got a episode of simpsons followed by a bomb game. teachers thanked me, said it was wonderful, and couldn't be happier. I couldn't have been more upset. a robot could replace my "job". but it is what the school wants. sooo, my point is...well I'm not so sure, something like, don't hate da playa, hate da game dawg.

There is a lot I want to say, but it has been said a thousand times on waygook and Zeeg said it rather well so eh.

Please post more interesting activities that don't involve PPT games.

surely you see the humor in this? you are upset about teachers being lazy and not giving you better things to download? 

I use the Bomb games as a reward system. The students know that it's not as involved, and much more exciting than regular/everyday lessons. I think you can have a balance. So, for example, I give my kids marks for good participation and effort. If everyone in the class has accumulated a certain number of points by the end of a week-two week period, I'll have a day set aside for fun stuff like bomb games or what have you. However, I do agree, showing movies in class is pretty - .... it's just not a good idea unless the clip is like 10 minutes or less - something that gets a point across for your lesson.

I work at a Hagwon and all too often, when talking candidly with students, they'll gleefully say "Oh Teacher! I watched a movie in English class today!" or something to that affect.

I can honestly say that I've never played a bomb game in my entire 2.5 years teaching here...

...My classes don't have enough time between playing the CD's, doing the work books, and doing the daily quizzes.

So there's that at least.

It depends on the situation. It can be if that's all you do. I usually include one bomb game per lesson as a treat at the end.

Most often I tailor that bomb game around ppts I've done myself, funny images I know will get a laugh, or specific things we've gone over in class. Sometimes their level is more than the book, so I add more in. Sometimes they are lower level so I tailor it to be as simple as possible.

It really depends on what you put into it. I find bomb games get the quieter kids excited sometimes because it's easier for them to participate without being singled out as much. On the other hand, you can also use questions like "What's your favorite animal?" to prompt a reply from them, forming a sentence on their own. So a bomb game doesn't have to be a necessarily too-easy form of lesson.

It's been said a million times but variety is key.

OH and another thing. In my classes we make the ENTIRE class say the answer most of the time after the specific group takes its turn.

A complaint I've heard from Korean teachers is that NETs rely too heavily on bomb games. I've been to several of those required "teaching conferences", and this has come up, particularly over the last two years.

Having said that, I totally blame the English program in Korea. You do *not* hire a bunch of people who've never taught before and throw them into a classroom, having only a nine day orientation be their introduction to teaching.

If they wanted to optimize the NETs effectiveness in the classroom, they would have bi-weekly meetings during the teachers off period at school (and god knows we have enough time to kill during the week), where new, first year teachers are TAUGHT how to teach by NETs who have been here longer and KTs (you can probably throw in co-teachers in this too, as I've had several of them over the years who are just as clueless in the English classroom as NETs fresh off the boat).

It's so freaking simple. Just tell new teachers where the resource materials online are, give them pointers on how to teach class and how to sync with their co-teachers, and you'd probably see a significant drop in a lot of the issues that the English program deals with.

If NETs in different provinces were able to get together once every two or three weeks for several hours and go over their most effective lesson plans and their most effective teaching methods, I truly think the teaching abilities overall of NETs, particularly first year NETs, would improve significantly.

Really, just about anything is better than throwing a clueless employee into the water and saying "Swim", which is the current method. But in order for Korea to do this, they'd have to acknowledge second, third, fourth, and so on NETs as a valuable part of the educational system, and they seem totally disinterested in doing that.

They do not want to put us in any type of position of power in the education system here, and thus, you get a lot of new NETs relying on bomb games.

And I agree, personally, I hate bomb games, and I use them, to be honest, only when I'm too lazy to plan something else. Maybe other people use them more effectively, but the last thing I want to do is be standing behind the desk pressing a button. It's so boring and it drives me nuts.

Well lets be honest most people here are pretty lazy.

If we're going to "be honest", let's just say most people in general are pretty lazy. That, however, has no baring on what you wrote next:

What really do the NETs have invested into Korea? No one really gives us an opportunity to move up. A guy here for 7 years is the same as someone for 1. Same opportunities and everything.

Which in most cases is true. If most people are lazy, it's an awful idea to take away what may motivate them, such as job growth. I mean, that's why job growth is written into so many job descriptions, because anyone who has ever worked a job understands how important it is.

This is why so many countries suffer a brain drain to places like America, because no matter what anyone says, there's still a lot of opportunity for growth back home for people coming to work there.

Korea is getting, and losing, people with higher education because they resist acknowledging excellence in foreigners. Hence, they keep getting a lot of first year NETs who don't know what to do and so rely on things like bomb games, which are fast, easy, and take no preparation if you aren't the one actually making them.

Don't put people in a position to indulge their inherently lazy natures. God employers excel at not creating conditions like this. We, on the other hand, mostly suffer from bad employers.

Private messages should be kept private.

So edit your original post and keep the cattiness in private messages.

Besides, it's a mistake to take the negativity of this website private. It's better if everything stays out in the open.