Day 197

July 2 Thursday

I actually had a good day!

I made a list of class rules today. I figured it was a great time to give it since its the beginning of the month. I have things such as "only speaking in English","Stay in your seat","use your 'inside' voice",etc. I've even started some positive reinforcement. If they do their homework every day of the month I will give them a reward. I'm going to go to Emart this weekend and see what I can find. I think I'll find a lot of little things and give them a choice. Something like cute pencils or erasers, notebooks, etc. Things they can use. Or I'll give them a choice if they want something like a snack. All kids love ice cream. I told one of my classes that the prize might be ice cream and he got excited. ha. I wonder how many students will actually follow the rules and do their homework. I'm going to give them a calendar for the month and I'm going to put a sticker on the calendar if they do their homework. I gave everyone a freebie for today whether or not they had their homework. I'm also giving a penalty for not doing homework. I'm going to take 1 point away from their final grade. If their final grade for July is a 90 and they missed 3 homework assignments then their grade is an 87.

My first class was good. We went over the rules and one page in the book.

I had a new student in my 2nd class. 2 of my students were absent. We went over the rules and they all taped their calendars in their book. We went over about 3 pages of material and we were working all the way up till the end of class. The students really enjoyed writing the answers to the questions on the board. I was going to write the answers on the board but one student asked if she could write the answer then 4 more students volunteered. Then they all wanted chalk. I broke off little pieces of chalk and gave it to them. They love writing on the board.

My 3rd class was extremely good. They only spoke in English and kept the noise level down(this is usually my worst class!). The twins were absent so I had 4 boys in class today. One of the boys didn't get to class until it was game time. He's always late. I think they cause a lot of the noise. We went over our rules and then covered 3 pages of material. They asked for a game so I let them play a game since they were really well behaved. They love to play their own version of hide and seek. One person puts a bookbag on their head and the other students run around the room and that person tries to find them. Its quite funny. We are usually laughing a lot when the blindfolded person is running into desks and chairs.

My 4th class was pretty good today. I gave them the same test that we took on Tuesday because they needed some good grades to pull up their other bad grades. Well after I gave them all of the answers on Tuesday they still did just as bad. The highest grade was a 1 (out of 10 points). All they had to do was study the last test where i wrote out all of the answers for them, but they didn't. We went over 3 pages in our writing unit today.

My last class never causes problems but I still gave them the same rules as everyone else. They are well behaved, always do their work and homework, and participate.They asked if the rules were only for their class. I told them everyone had the same rules. Today we went over a few pages in the writing book and then I gave them free time. During free time one of the girls likes to write korean/english vocab on the board and the other student likes to teach me new korean words. She was so excited when I remembered a word that she taught me about 2 weeks ago.

So overall it was a good day. All of my classes behaved and I didn't have to yell at anyone. success. If only all days were this good then maybe I'd like my job. Maybe things will turn around once they get used to my rules. I'm hoping the reward will help them to do their homework.

One of my students told me that he had an error on his cd rom so he couldn't do his homework. Then the boy that was with him said that his computer had a virus. The other boy said he was lying. I dont know if the 2nd boy was lying or not. I think I'll mention in class that if anyone has a problem with their cd they can play it on my computer during my free time. I'll be there watching them so they don't try to get into any of my files. I want them to be able to do the activities.

I dont have a way to know if they are doing the CD or not. If they say 'yeah I did it' then I just have to take their word. I'm going to start watching the cd rom and taking activities straight from the cd to make as homework sheets. Its going to be a lot of extra work for me, but I'll know if they watched it bc the answers will be on the cd and not in the book. or it means they just copied it from someone else. They are always copying each others work for other classes. Its pretty much a normal thing over here.