영어 캠프 - Week One

English camp has improved after the snafu of the first day, thankfully, but it's still been hectic. Since I thought I was only teaching the 3rd & 4th graders last week, I had only planned for the 3rd & 4th grade camps and was going to use my afternoons to plan for the 5th & 6th grade camps. This means that I have to plan and prepare two lessons from scratch every afternoon in addition to finishing prepping for the 3rd and 4th grade classes. It's doable, but it means I'm busy and guys, I'm done. I am out of energy, ready for vacation, ready to see my family and ready to not have to deal with students and lesson plans for a few weeks.

None of this ennui is helped by my normally lovely co-teacher. English camp is my responsibility; she's just around to fill out the paperwork and help with translations, so in the afternoon while I plan for camp the next day, she's taking a nap or watching TV. Not exactly conducive to creating a productive work environment, especially when all I really want to do is go curl up in the backroom with a book. I'm glad there are only three days left.


Adorable moppets!
The 3rd and 4th grade classes have been a joy, mostly because the students are undeniably adorable little moppets. Last week, we studied colors and foods, which meant lots of coloring activities. On Tuesday, I gave the students a worksheet with eight line drawings and told them how to color in the pictures. The carrots were orange and green. The dragon was blue, yellow and purple. The flower was green, yellow, orange, pink, blue and purple. "Teacher," my students groaned, "that's an ugly flower."


북 경률 likes chicken and doesn't like French fries, which I think is ridiculous. They taste so delicious together.
During the food unit, I had the students draw their favorite and least favorite foods, which was an interesting glimpse into their minds. While a few kids still claimed to dislike vegetables, no one claimed a processed food (pizza, french fries) or a desert as their favorite food. I doubt a survey of 20 American 3rd and 4th graders would found the same thing. Meat and fruit were popular favorite foods, while other students chose Korean dishes as their favorite food. I had to explain that in English, kimchi is still called kimchi and that while bulgogi technically translates to "fire meat," foreigners just call it bulgogi.


A truth universally acknowledged amongst 5th graders: big, fuzzy dice are awesome!
The 5th & 6th grade classes have been small - only six boys are regularly coming to the basic class, which is fine by me. Lessons have been a mixture of a review of topics we studied last semester and a preview of topics we will cover next semester. It's a bit of a cop out, but having six kids versus forty kids changes how I can teach a topic, especially difficult concepts such as prepositions. I gave the boys a piece of candy and told them what to do with the treat. "Put the candy on your head. Put the candy in your pencil case. Put the candy next to your eraser. Put the wrapper in my hand. Put the candy in your mouth!"

We studied houses and furniture (Lesson 12: This Is a Bedroom) on Thursday. As an activity, the boys drew and labeled their dream houses. There were the usual rooms - bathrooms, kitchens, bedrooms - but the boys quickly grew tired of such plebeian rooms and dreamt up homes with PC방 (a LAN gaming center, a popular place in a country where Starcraft is the national sport and there are such things as professional computer gamers), ski slopes, department stores, subway stations, banks and their friend's house.


Left: Three PC방, two kitchens, one bathroom and one batroom! Right: I like the attention to detail - the ski slope has easy, medium and difficult slopes.
The 5th & 6th grade advanced class has continued reading Aesop's Fables. Last week we read, The Grasshopper and the Ants, The North Wind and the Sun and The Wolf and the Crane, and through the magic of Youtube, I showed the students video clips of the stories. I've had the kids do lots of writing exercises: they drew a cartoon version of The North Wind and the Sun and wrote down what they would have done as the characters in The Wolf and the Crane. Tomorrow, I'm gong to have them argue whether hunting is ethical. I'm not use to having this advanced a class, and it's been fun.


Drawing cartoons is srs bsns!