The week went well as a whole, I had some rough days or at least days that didn't go how I thought they would. Monday was a little rough, but mainly because the students and myself were coming off of a three day weekend. My lessons went well, but I did modify both the 2nd grade and 4th grade lessons so that there would be more time for the main activity. The 2nd graders were talking about "Are you hungry" so I planned some fun activities, but I was bored and the students didn't seem to want to sit still so I found a song on YouTube called "Are you hungry" and sang that will all of the classes the rest of the week.
My lesson went well for 4th grade as well, we talked about Halloween, which is always fun. I taped myself in that class, but didn't like how it turned out or how I have been teaching it seems awkward to me. I watched the video many times and made minor changes to some of my activities. 4th grade went well on Tuesday as well and I felt like an actual teacher because the homeroom teacher was gone when I got there and needed to start class so I got all of the students to calm down and get ready for the lesson. It was very nice!
Dr. Sung came to observe my 2nd grade class on Tuesday and I think it went very well, I won't get feedback until next week sometime. I was able to give some one-on -one attention to students who didn't fully understand right away while the others moved on to the next step. At pizza night she mentioned that she liked the lesson and the children seemed to have fun too. She suggested that I have the students think of foods and write them on the board rather than me just writing words so I did that on Wednesday and it worked very well.
I had my 3rd grade storytelling group on Tuesday as well and that went smoothly...I am going to miss that group so much!
Wednesday was broadcast day as usual, but this time I had to read the story 3 time because of technical difficulties. Either way it went well and students liked the story about the five little pumpkins. I taught two classes of second and they both went well and I learned some new words in Korean from the students which was very cool. I love it when the students can teach me new things. I have learned so much from the students!
I have been working in the Talk Talk Magic Shop with parent volunteers as well and have learned a lot from them too. I love getting to know the parents and talking with them about my time in Korea and what I need to make sure to see before I leave. It has been a lot of fun and I'm going to miss my school and the people a lot.
Thursday and Friday were uneventful days. I taught my lessons to the 2nd graders and everything went smoothly. I think I have become better manager of time in the class and more confident too. I plan on taping myself again next week to see how I can change things and make my teaching better.
This weekend is Halloween weekend and lots of people are going to parties, but as of right now I am not going to any parties. I am just going to stay in and work on my homework. I really want to get all of my big assignments done so I can focus on my PORTFOLIO...the word itself is daunting.
I was looking at my calendar this week and realized I only have 18 more days left of teaching and only 30day from next Tuesday Nov.1st until I leave Korea. There is so much I still want to explore in Korea, but I will be glad to be home with my family again too. Overall though a pretty uneventful week.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
From teaching to NORTH Korea and celebating Birthdays
This was an overall good week for me. I taught Monday through Thursday and then went to the DMZ on my birthday. Teaching this week went pretty well, but I didn't get as much done as I was hoping.
For some reason on Monday I felt very off / out of my groove. I taught one 1st grade class and one 3rd grade class. My 1st grade class went okay, I was teaching them body parts in English and did the song "Head, shoulders, knees and toes". I thought it would be fun and that the students would not know the song in English yet, based on what my CT told me,who is a 1st grade teacher. However, the first class I did the lesson with already know the song and the different body parts in English so instead of spending time on learning the song we went right into singing it and doing the actions. It was also a little bit harder to get the children to pay attention, I could tell it was a Monday! The students had lots of energy and really just wanted to socialize with each other. I noticed that in most of the classes the socialization is a huge part of the day. The teachers don't ask students to stop talking very often, instead they just talk over the students that are talking. It is very hard for me to do this because by the end of the day I will have no voice so I do ask the students to be quiet while I'm talking. I use the 3 fingers in the air method and it has worked very well so far. I decided to do the song for a longer period of time because the students were having fun and to help get some of their energy out so they would be able to focus more on the the part of the lesson that had them coloring and labeling a person. I was right, it helped them sit for a little bit longer and by the time they got antsy it was time for them to stand up and learn the new good bye song, which has them moving. So overall my lesson went well in that class on Monday.
My 3rd grade class went okay, but I wasn't as happy with how the lesson went as I had been in the past. Our topic was "I can jump" so I came up with more words that I thought they would be able to act out. I thought that some of the words would be difficult for them and I would have to explain, but I didn't have to. The students had already had a lot of the words, which was okay. I decided to tape myself during this lesson just to see how I could improve for my next 3rd grade class on Tuesday. I am glad I did tape it because at one point I felt like the students weren't listening and it was hard to get them all back on track, which showed me how to improve the activity for the next day. The activity was for the students to find their partner without using any words, just doing the action on the card that I gave them. I thought I had explained and that they understood to leave their pictures on the desk. I found out that they must not have understood because they all took their pictures with them to find their partner and showed the pictures to each other rather than doing the action to find their partner. I changed the lesson for the next by just showing them the picture they had to act out and it went much better.
My lessons on Tuesday went well too. I taped myself again in the next 3rd grade grade class. I was very excited to watch it and when went I did I found out that throughout the whole movie you can't see my face, I was so mad because the lesson went so well and I wanted to use it for my video assignment.
I still have a hard time figuring out if I am being understood in the lower grades or not. I think I will need to teach the students how to say 'slow down please', or 'can you repeat that', I need something because their are students that do understand but I know there are some that are still lost when I talk. It's hard for me to remember from one week to the next which students need more explanation because I have so many students and I only see them once every other week.
My classes on Wednesday we cancelled due to a flea market that took place at my school for the students that day. The students all got to bring things they wanted to sell and got to buy things too. It was very cool to see them all learning about the cost of things and how to make deals with people. Wednesday was a very uneventful day for me though. I did get to help in the Talk Talk Magic Shop again and this time I took some photos to show you what it looks like...I would have loved this kind of shop as a kid.
Thursday was a very interesting teaching day for me! I had my CT's
Finally Friday, it was may birthday!!! Erin, Falyn and I went to the DMZ which was very cool and a little scary at the same time. I got to step foot in North Korea and I never thought I would get to say that. I had a great day and was so tired by the time we got home. We got to see all the freedom bridge, 3rd infiltration tunnel ( they say that the US intelligence says there are like 50 of them and they have only found 4 of them).We got to go to the Observatory where we saw North and South Korea at the same time which was cool.
In the afternoon we got to go to the JSA ( Joint Security Area). There were US soldiers there too! The US helps to secure that area along with the South Korean Soldiers. It was very neat to see North and South Korea so close and I got to spend a second in North Korea while I took my photo with one of the guards.
For some reason on Monday I felt very off / out of my groove. I taught one 1st grade class and one 3rd grade class. My 1st grade class went okay, I was teaching them body parts in English and did the song "Head, shoulders, knees and toes". I thought it would be fun and that the students would not know the song in English yet, based on what my CT told me,who is a 1st grade teacher. However, the first class I did the lesson with already know the song and the different body parts in English so instead of spending time on learning the song we went right into singing it and doing the actions. It was also a little bit harder to get the children to pay attention, I could tell it was a Monday! The students had lots of energy and really just wanted to socialize with each other. I noticed that in most of the classes the socialization is a huge part of the day. The teachers don't ask students to stop talking very often, instead they just talk over the students that are talking. It is very hard for me to do this because by the end of the day I will have no voice so I do ask the students to be quiet while I'm talking. I use the 3 fingers in the air method and it has worked very well so far. I decided to do the song for a longer period of time because the students were having fun and to help get some of their energy out so they would be able to focus more on the the part of the lesson that had them coloring and labeling a person. I was right, it helped them sit for a little bit longer and by the time they got antsy it was time for them to stand up and learn the new good bye song, which has them moving. So overall my lesson went well in that class on Monday.
My 3rd grade class went okay, but I wasn't as happy with how the lesson went as I had been in the past. Our topic was "I can jump" so I came up with more words that I thought they would be able to act out. I thought that some of the words would be difficult for them and I would have to explain, but I didn't have to. The students had already had a lot of the words, which was okay. I decided to tape myself during this lesson just to see how I could improve for my next 3rd grade class on Tuesday. I am glad I did tape it because at one point I felt like the students weren't listening and it was hard to get them all back on track, which showed me how to improve the activity for the next day. The activity was for the students to find their partner without using any words, just doing the action on the card that I gave them. I thought I had explained and that they understood to leave their pictures on the desk. I found out that they must not have understood because they all took their pictures with them to find their partner and showed the pictures to each other rather than doing the action to find their partner. I changed the lesson for the next by just showing them the picture they had to act out and it went much better.
My lessons on Tuesday went well too. I taped myself again in the next 3rd grade grade class. I was very excited to watch it and when went I did I found out that throughout the whole movie you can't see my face, I was so mad because the lesson went so well and I wanted to use it for my video assignment.
I still have a hard time figuring out if I am being understood in the lower grades or not. I think I will need to teach the students how to say 'slow down please', or 'can you repeat that', I need something because their are students that do understand but I know there are some that are still lost when I talk. It's hard for me to remember from one week to the next which students need more explanation because I have so many students and I only see them once every other week.
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| The students get Soongin Dollars to spend they receive them by doing very well at something in school. |
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| The Magic Shop before opening. |
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| The rules for the Magic shop and they are all in English. |
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| Students look at items to buy. |
Thursday was a very interesting teaching day for me! I had my CT's
Finally Friday, it was may birthday!!! Erin, Falyn and I went to the DMZ which was very cool and a little scary at the same time. I got to step foot in North Korea and I never thought I would get to say that. I had a great day and was so tired by the time we got home. We got to see all the freedom bridge, 3rd infiltration tunnel ( they say that the US intelligence says there are like 50 of them and they have only found 4 of them).We got to go to the Observatory where we saw North and South Korea at the same time which was cool.
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| Freedom Bridge |
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| People leave messages and wishes for loved ones who died or are still in North Korea. |
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| You can see North and South Korea. North Korea has no trees on the mountains because they need fire wood. |
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| We weren't allowed to take pictures in the tunnels so here is the coal that North Korea painted the tunnel with to try and cover up their plan to attack the South. |
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| The North Korean guard that I later got a photo with. |
That was the excitement of my week this week, but I'm sure I will have to talk about next week!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
A Week of Growth and Learning!!
This week has been filled with learning experiences for me and new relationships. I documented how each day went in a journal this week because I had been forgetting what had really happened each day of the week.
Starting with Monday morning I knew it would be a rough week or a week full of change! It was the first time that I can remember a lesson completely flopping...to the point that I couldn't even get the students excited using songs, chant or any of my movement games. Don't get me wrong, I am used to having lessons not go as I thought they would or have to change lessons on the spot, but this was beyond that. I changed the lesson and the activities as soon as I saw the students becoming disengaged with the lesson, but it didn't seem to matter. No matter how funny I tried to be or how much I tried to get them involved the class just seemed dead. I completely lost the class and I have never felt so bad and helpless in my life! The class that I was teaching was 2nd grade and the topic was the short /a/ sound...not my favorite, but I thought I'd try to just a curriculum book. NEVER again...at least not as closely as I tried to. Normally I can punt and get the students attention and get them to interact with me again, but it didn't work this time. I think the problem was the topic and the fact that I was not excited about the activities that I had planned for the class. I was bored with it and I should have known that it would be just as boring for the students. Needless to say I changed my lesson for the next day! I taught rhyming instead.
My 4th grade class however went excellently. I played bingo with them using the sentence from their text book " What do you want?" I had the review the question and the response then use it to call the bingo cards. After reviewing the sentences that would be used, we discussed the words that they would use in the sentence. For example, " I want pizza please." I wrote all of the words on the board for the students to look at for spelling and to be able to remember what words we were going to use.I gave each student a blank bingo card and told them to write down one of the words on the board in each box. The students did that and then we would all ask, "what do you want" and the student that got to call the word had to answer with the sentence, "I want(word), please." It went very well and all the students were engaged in listening and speaking. I repeated this activity with the 4th grade class on Tuesday also, but had to do a little bit more practicing of the words and I gave them more time to write down the words. I had a lot of fun!
This is a short clip of my third grade storytelling group doing a sequencing activity.
My lesson for the 2nd grade went okay on Tuesday, but I felt like I needed some feedback from someone so I went to talk to Ellen. She had not watched my lessons that week, but I told her about it and asked for advice. She was very helpful and willing to talk with me any time. We talked for 45minutes and I got some great tips from her. She was honored that I asked for her advice and I think we will become good resources for each other. After talking with her it made me wish even more that I was in her classroom all of the time! She had great ideas and told me to focus more on the English part of the lesson and not so much on the content, which is different from what I will be doing when I get back to the US, but here that's exactly what I need to do. I also had my storytelling after school program today and they were great! I love teaching them.
When I went home on Tuesday I was determined to change the structure of my lessons and so I searched YouTube.com and found a very good seminar called teach English EFL/ESL. There are 6 sections to the seminar and I watched all of them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_barTKxikvA
It gave me great new ideas and ways to organize my lessons so that the students would be excited about learning English. My classes on Wednesday went AMAZING. I wish I would have found this before I started teaching, but at least I found it when I did.
On Thursday I was really missing home and was looking at all of the assignments that I have due in the next month. I let myself become overwhelmed and started to stress because Francis is coming to visit me in November and I want to be able to spend time with him, but that also means I only had 43 days to finish everything. The classes I taught went well and and so did the writing group that I had after school.
Friday, I was very tired and had a lot to do. My lessons went well once again and I decided that I really liked the new organization for my lessons that I'm using. The students seem to be more focused when i start the new content and seem to have a little more fun too!
Saturday and Sunday were filled with conference seminars. Falyn, Erin, Keely and I went to the KOTESOL conference. It was so good! I used to go to conferences in WI and tried to go to the NAEYC conferences as often as I could and this was similar. It is the annual international conference and there were so many 'english' speaking people there. I learned new techniques and received free teaching books which I was very excited about. I wish that Soongin would have sent their teachers to it to get new ideas on how to teach English to students. I have 15 pages of notes to go through now and apply what I learned to my classes that I am going to be teaching next week. Some of the seminars that I went to were called, Politeness to Participation, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple and Stimulating), Classroom Management:Supportive, Corrective, and Preventative Measures, Effective Ways of Approaching Speaking Classes for Children, Teaching Practice a Reflective Approach to the Classroom and one my Ken Beatty that I didn't get the name of because it was a last minutes decision to attend it. (I loved it though)
I have a busy week ahead of me and can't wait to see how the 1st and 3rd graders like the changes I've made to my teaching. I love going to teacher conferences and learning from other teachers and professionals that are in my field. I realized that even when I graduate I will always enjoy learning new things and I want to be a life long learner!
Starting with Monday morning I knew it would be a rough week or a week full of change! It was the first time that I can remember a lesson completely flopping...to the point that I couldn't even get the students excited using songs, chant or any of my movement games. Don't get me wrong, I am used to having lessons not go as I thought they would or have to change lessons on the spot, but this was beyond that. I changed the lesson and the activities as soon as I saw the students becoming disengaged with the lesson, but it didn't seem to matter. No matter how funny I tried to be or how much I tried to get them involved the class just seemed dead. I completely lost the class and I have never felt so bad and helpless in my life! The class that I was teaching was 2nd grade and the topic was the short /a/ sound...not my favorite, but I thought I'd try to just a curriculum book. NEVER again...at least not as closely as I tried to. Normally I can punt and get the students attention and get them to interact with me again, but it didn't work this time. I think the problem was the topic and the fact that I was not excited about the activities that I had planned for the class. I was bored with it and I should have known that it would be just as boring for the students. Needless to say I changed my lesson for the next day! I taught rhyming instead.
My 4th grade class however went excellently. I played bingo with them using the sentence from their text book " What do you want?" I had the review the question and the response then use it to call the bingo cards. After reviewing the sentences that would be used, we discussed the words that they would use in the sentence. For example, " I want pizza please." I wrote all of the words on the board for the students to look at for spelling and to be able to remember what words we were going to use.I gave each student a blank bingo card and told them to write down one of the words on the board in each box. The students did that and then we would all ask, "what do you want" and the student that got to call the word had to answer with the sentence, "I want(word), please." It went very well and all the students were engaged in listening and speaking. I repeated this activity with the 4th grade class on Tuesday also, but had to do a little bit more practicing of the words and I gave them more time to write down the words. I had a lot of fun!
This is a short clip of my third grade storytelling group doing a sequencing activity.
My lesson for the 2nd grade went okay on Tuesday, but I felt like I needed some feedback from someone so I went to talk to Ellen. She had not watched my lessons that week, but I told her about it and asked for advice. She was very helpful and willing to talk with me any time. We talked for 45minutes and I got some great tips from her. She was honored that I asked for her advice and I think we will become good resources for each other. After talking with her it made me wish even more that I was in her classroom all of the time! She had great ideas and told me to focus more on the English part of the lesson and not so much on the content, which is different from what I will be doing when I get back to the US, but here that's exactly what I need to do. I also had my storytelling after school program today and they were great! I love teaching them.
When I went home on Tuesday I was determined to change the structure of my lessons and so I searched YouTube.com and found a very good seminar called teach English EFL/ESL. There are 6 sections to the seminar and I watched all of them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_barTKxikvA
It gave me great new ideas and ways to organize my lessons so that the students would be excited about learning English. My classes on Wednesday went AMAZING. I wish I would have found this before I started teaching, but at least I found it when I did.
On Thursday I was really missing home and was looking at all of the assignments that I have due in the next month. I let myself become overwhelmed and started to stress because Francis is coming to visit me in November and I want to be able to spend time with him, but that also means I only had 43 days to finish everything. The classes I taught went well and and so did the writing group that I had after school.
Friday, I was very tired and had a lot to do. My lessons went well once again and I decided that I really liked the new organization for my lessons that I'm using. The students seem to be more focused when i start the new content and seem to have a little more fun too!
Saturday and Sunday were filled with conference seminars. Falyn, Erin, Keely and I went to the KOTESOL conference. It was so good! I used to go to conferences in WI and tried to go to the NAEYC conferences as often as I could and this was similar. It is the annual international conference and there were so many 'english' speaking people there. I learned new techniques and received free teaching books which I was very excited about. I wish that Soongin would have sent their teachers to it to get new ideas on how to teach English to students. I have 15 pages of notes to go through now and apply what I learned to my classes that I am going to be teaching next week. Some of the seminars that I went to were called, Politeness to Participation, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple and Stimulating), Classroom Management:Supportive, Corrective, and Preventative Measures, Effective Ways of Approaching Speaking Classes for Children, Teaching Practice a Reflective Approach to the Classroom and one my Ken Beatty that I didn't get the name of because it was a last minutes decision to attend it. (I loved it though)
I have a busy week ahead of me and can't wait to see how the 1st and 3rd graders like the changes I've made to my teaching. I love going to teacher conferences and learning from other teachers and professionals that are in my field. I realized that even when I graduate I will always enjoy learning new things and I want to be a life long learner!
Saturday, October 8, 2011
HOME AND BACK AGAIN!
This has been so busy and very hard for me. I went to Wisconsin last Thursday night, that is a story of it's own. I went home to be in one of my best friend's weddings and it was worth the cost and exhaustion that followed.
The trip started with my plane having a fuel leek and everyone had to sit on the plane for an hour and half while they fixed it. We got to San Francisco late and I, along with everyone else, had to run to their connecting flights. Luckily I made my flight and the next flight was the same way. I had to run through the Chicago airport and got to my flight to Milwaukee just as they were closing the doors. I must have looked tired and desperate because the workers opened the door and told me that I almost missed the plane. I made it safely to Milwaukee and Francis was there waiting for me which was so nice!
The next day I got to have breakfast with my family and tell them about some of the adventures I've had such as hiking, dinner with all of the teachers and living in Korea in general. My sister-in-law and niece even got to come and see me. I miss my family a lot so it was very good to see everyone. Francis and I meet with our real estate agent and looked at some houses he liked. Then we drove to the rehearsal and had a wonderful time with our friends. The wedding was beautiful and I had a wonderful time. I am so glad that I went!
I left Wisconsin early Sunday morning and got into Seoul on Monday night at about 9pm. I didn't get back to my room at CJ House until 11:30pm, which made for a rough Tuesday morning. I have to say that getting on a plane to come back was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I know it would be hard, but didn't expect it to be as hard at it was.
So I started the work week very tired, but Tuesday went surprisingly well. I taught the 3rd graders and 1st graders. This was the first time that I have had a class that I have taught in the past. It was nice to be able to review the rules and what we talked about the last time I was in their classroom. The students were all able to tell me the rules and what we had done the previous class. It made me feel like I was really teaching them something. I expanded the map lesson with the 3rd graders, which went very well. We worked on the sentences "Where am I?" and "I am in the____." I gave them clues and they had to guess where I was. I played a game with the students and they loved guessing where I was. I wish that I could have done my lesson with both 3rd grade classes but because we had off on Monday I didn't get to have class with the other 3rd grade class.
The 1st grade class went okay, I wouldn't say it went well, but it didn't go bad. I taught the students about families. The students did a very good just with the concept, but the activities I planned were a little bit to hard for the group of students I had on Tuesday. I was having students think about what they do with their families. Then they were to draw pictures in a mini book of those items. The teacher told me that she thought that it was to difficult for the students and that maybe I could just have them draw one picture of something they do with their family. Taking that into consideration, I changed my lesson for the next day. Instead of making a book, I decided to have the students just draw a picture of their families and label the people they have in their family. It worked much better and the students seemed excited to show me their families.
I also had lots of firsts this week. I had my first after school program with the 3rd graders and it was so much fun! I am teaching them about stories and discussing them. The students are so sweet and really want to be there. I have to plan something to do for next week and it has to be more difficult because this week was to easy for them. I think I am going to start reading a chapter book and then have them try to retell the story in English.
The Talk, Talk Magic Shop was also something that I got to help with this week and will be helping with every Wednesday and Friday for the rest of my time here in Korea. It is a little shop that the students get practice speaking English in. Students earn special money to spend in this store and then get to pick out little items such as pencil cases, purses, baseballs, notebooks, etc. The students have to speak English to the volunteers who help run the store and are having fun will doing it. I loved being in the shop and talking with the students some of them were shy, but they all talked to me.
Overall this weeks teaching went well, but I noticed that all the girls are much more down than we have been. After talking with most of the girls it seems like everyone is really missing home and is sick of everything here. I don't me to be a downer, but I know how they all feel. It seems like the homesickness has hit all of us at the same. We are all talking about what we are going to do when we get home and what we will eat first...it's kind of funny. Falyn and I have received emails and a formal letter from CJ House about our room not being paid for yet and the letter said that if we didn't pay by Oct 9th, which is Sunday, then our room could be given to someone else. It just makes us a little worried, but I talked to our TA about it and she said not to worry about it. I hope she's right.
There is a big firework festival today, Saturday, I got all the way there and then got sick! I have been feeling sick a lot lately and it's not fun. I went to the fireworks with Erin and Falyn, but I had to leave because I wasn't feeling good and I didn't want to ruin it for them. I told them to take lots of pictures and I hope to be feeling better tomorrow.
It's been a good week, but I think we all need to do something to make us feel more at home here. Now just to think of something to do.
The trip started with my plane having a fuel leek and everyone had to sit on the plane for an hour and half while they fixed it. We got to San Francisco late and I, along with everyone else, had to run to their connecting flights. Luckily I made my flight and the next flight was the same way. I had to run through the Chicago airport and got to my flight to Milwaukee just as they were closing the doors. I must have looked tired and desperate because the workers opened the door and told me that I almost missed the plane. I made it safely to Milwaukee and Francis was there waiting for me which was so nice!
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| The beautiful bride! |
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| Rachael, the bride, and I. |
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| Francis and I at the wedding. |
I left Wisconsin early Sunday morning and got into Seoul on Monday night at about 9pm. I didn't get back to my room at CJ House until 11:30pm, which made for a rough Tuesday morning. I have to say that getting on a plane to come back was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I know it would be hard, but didn't expect it to be as hard at it was.
So I started the work week very tired, but Tuesday went surprisingly well. I taught the 3rd graders and 1st graders. This was the first time that I have had a class that I have taught in the past. It was nice to be able to review the rules and what we talked about the last time I was in their classroom. The students were all able to tell me the rules and what we had done the previous class. It made me feel like I was really teaching them something. I expanded the map lesson with the 3rd graders, which went very well. We worked on the sentences "Where am I?" and "I am in the____." I gave them clues and they had to guess where I was. I played a game with the students and they loved guessing where I was. I wish that I could have done my lesson with both 3rd grade classes but because we had off on Monday I didn't get to have class with the other 3rd grade class.
The 1st grade class went okay, I wouldn't say it went well, but it didn't go bad. I taught the students about families. The students did a very good just with the concept, but the activities I planned were a little bit to hard for the group of students I had on Tuesday. I was having students think about what they do with their families. Then they were to draw pictures in a mini book of those items. The teacher told me that she thought that it was to difficult for the students and that maybe I could just have them draw one picture of something they do with their family. Taking that into consideration, I changed my lesson for the next day. Instead of making a book, I decided to have the students just draw a picture of their families and label the people they have in their family. It worked much better and the students seemed excited to show me their families.
I also had lots of firsts this week. I had my first after school program with the 3rd graders and it was so much fun! I am teaching them about stories and discussing them. The students are so sweet and really want to be there. I have to plan something to do for next week and it has to be more difficult because this week was to easy for them. I think I am going to start reading a chapter book and then have them try to retell the story in English.
The Talk, Talk Magic Shop was also something that I got to help with this week and will be helping with every Wednesday and Friday for the rest of my time here in Korea. It is a little shop that the students get practice speaking English in. Students earn special money to spend in this store and then get to pick out little items such as pencil cases, purses, baseballs, notebooks, etc. The students have to speak English to the volunteers who help run the store and are having fun will doing it. I loved being in the shop and talking with the students some of them were shy, but they all talked to me.
Overall this weeks teaching went well, but I noticed that all the girls are much more down than we have been. After talking with most of the girls it seems like everyone is really missing home and is sick of everything here. I don't me to be a downer, but I know how they all feel. It seems like the homesickness has hit all of us at the same. We are all talking about what we are going to do when we get home and what we will eat first...it's kind of funny. Falyn and I have received emails and a formal letter from CJ House about our room not being paid for yet and the letter said that if we didn't pay by Oct 9th, which is Sunday, then our room could be given to someone else. It just makes us a little worried, but I talked to our TA about it and she said not to worry about it. I hope she's right.
There is a big firework festival today, Saturday, I got all the way there and then got sick! I have been feeling sick a lot lately and it's not fun. I went to the fireworks with Erin and Falyn, but I had to leave because I wasn't feeling good and I didn't want to ruin it for them. I told them to take lots of pictures and I hope to be feeling better tomorrow.
It's been a good week, but I think we all need to do something to make us feel more at home here. Now just to think of something to do.
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