So, my province is transferring me to a new school at the start of my new contract next week due to provincial-wide budget cuts.  I've been teaching at an all-girl's high school this past year, but teaching is a second career for me and I still don't feel very comfortable with lesson planning.  Basically, I was given free reign to teach anything I wanted to the 500 students I saw each week.  Overall I found it very difficult to juggle between finding things that were interesting/engaging, actually teaching something valuable and connected to other things they'd learned, and could accommodate the extremely wide range of ability levels.  So, I ended up second-guessing myself a lot and taking much more time than it probably should.

My new school is an Elementary school with roughly 50 students.  I'll be teaching grades 1 through 6.  Most grades I'll teach 3 times a week (one curriculum class and two after school classes).  I'm barely know where to start as far as lesson planning goes: this is a completely different level with completely different needs, and I've never really worked with kids this age either.  Plus, I'll have to make a lot more lesson plans than I did in the past, since I can't reuse the same two plans for my all my classes each week as before.  So, I'm wondering what the best resources you'd recommend for figuring out what/how to teach for students at this level.  I know there will be books for the curriculum classes, but the after school classes are pretty much open-ended.

By the way, what province are you in?  I'm only asking because I'm wondering if my province is making even more cuts.

I'm in 충남.  All NETs found out about it back in December.  Most have transitioned already in my province, but I have one of those oddly-timed contracts.

My friend said basically the same thing about phonics.  Are there any good phonics-based curriculums I can use as a starting point?

I made the same transition and I find that I love elementary school students.

They are easy to motivate and get involved into activities that high school students would be too cool for.  Yes, you have to make more lesson plans, but you can find a few games the students like and reuse them again and again.  Elementary students love playing games they know and don't tire of things easily. 

I agree that phonics is the way to go.  I teach single letter phonics to my 3rd graders and double letter phonics to 4th graders. 

For 1st and 2nd, they can't make sentences well but they are like sponges for vocab words, plus you can teach them songs (lots of fun ones on youtube) and the alphabet.  And like I said, the young kids love repetition.  Start each class with the same song or two, and have a solid plan for class time.  The students will catch on to your patterns (intro songs, flashcards, alphabet book, games, ending songs) and get really into it. 

the way I usually do phonics is ill show them a couple of the words that we have been studying that start with the letter.  it's easier for them to recognize the sound if its the first letter in the word.  so for A, show them on PPT or the white board the word written out with both upper-case and lower-case.  Then practice reading it together.  "Apple, apple," "Ape, ape"

next, i'll play a song from LittleFoxKids channel on youtube.  Here is the link for the A song:

Then we will practice writing it.  The students will all put out their index finger and write it in the air along with the teacher (teacher will be drawing it mirrored, so that it appears normal to the students.  you need to practice this). 

If you don't have a workbook, you can make a simple worksheet with guided writing lines on top so they can practice writing capital and lower-case letters, or some words.  Then after that have some puzzle or activity using the letters.  It can be something like matching lower-case letters to upper-case letters.  Or divide a picture into many parts and write a lower-case and upper-case letter in each one (Mn) (Aa) (Bd) and they have to shade in the ones that match, so it forms a picture if they do it correctly.  or once they learn more letters you can start doing ones with short word-based activities.

At the end, or the start of the next class, I review by telling them to do a certain action when they hear the sound of the letter.  So I will say words one by one, and they need to clap their hands when they hear the A sound. 


As for songs, keep it simple.  Anything that gets them moving is good because they have to pay attention and actively listen. 

Do you like broccoli?   
Head, Shoulders, knees and toes     
The number rock     
How are you song?     
Whose ears?   

Yeah this is my first year teaching in Korea, and lesson planning is the most difficult part for me too.  I teach both elementary and middle school so there's a huge range of activities that I need to plan for each week.  Thank goodness for Waygook.

For what it's worth, I've found that lesson planning for elementary students is much easier than lesson planning for middle school students.  I haven't taught at high school yet, but I imagine that the older the students get, the wider the skill gap gets, and it gets really difficult to properly differentiate the lesson to each student in the classroom.

Teaching phonics, songs, and physical activities gets me the best results in elementary school.  Teaching competitive games and personalizing lessons gets me the best results in middle school.