Day 352

Friday December 4

It was a pretty easy day. Only 3 classes.

I had to leave comments on the report cards today. I didn't really know what to write. I wrote that most of them were good students. A few of them need to put forth more effort and 2 of them need to work on their behavior and work harder in my class. The Korean teacher asked me about one of them. Her writing grade was low but I put that she works hard in class. I told her that I dont think she studies for her tests. She does do good in class but all the students pretend like they have no clue when its test day. She said this student's mom is picky. Thats why she asked.

Starting today I am doing the online newspaper class in the classroom. She's just now realizing that there aren't enough computers for everyone. I think its better in the class anyway. I chose a few articles and printed them out. I also downloaded the sound files so they could listen also.

Today I picked out articles about Cow dung as an energy source, Top 10 most powerful people, fun ways to learn English, and an article about a Korean actress who is selling her paintings. I'm going to start giving them tests in that class about the articles. I usually just give a quiz that doesnt count. This will give them more grades to average in with their speaking grade.

My first class was pretty good. One student said she likes doing the articles better in the class because she doesnt like sitting at the computer. I think it will be better for speaking practice. I played the articles on my laptop and they wanted to read a sentence each and just keep going around the room. Next week I'll havent to bring an article on animals. They said that was the best one. They liked the article about President Obama being the most powerful person (according to Forbes magazine). They all love Obama. They asked me if I liked Obama. I said I didn't know. Really, I dont have an opinion. I left right after he was elected so I havent been around. I don't really keep up with too many things going on in America either so I don't know how he is running the country so I have no opinion yet. They all seem to hate their own president-Lee Myung Bak. They don't speak too highly of him. They wish Obama could be their President. Then during one article they got completely off topic and told me how much they love mickey mouse. 3 girls in the class love mickey mouse. One showed me her mickey mouse pens. Another has a mickey mouse pencil case and the other girl has a mickey moust bookbag.

My 2nd class was okay. We were also doing the articles. There were only 2 people the class and they didnt really enjoy it. The boy kept telling me how boring it was and he was so disinterested. oh well. Can't please them all.

The Korean teacher picked out a textbook for the lowest level to use. I told her that 4 of the students had already did that book last semester. So we are using the next level up. I didnt want the students to have to repeat a book.

I had 2 new students in my lowest level class. They were begging for a game so I told them if they were really good I'd let them. Today we were talking about months of the year. My class cd wasnt working very well. It kept skipping so I just quit using it. I had them say the months then I wrote the months on the board and left out letters so they could fill in the blanks. They all enjoyed that. I had enough little pieces of chalk where everyone could just come up to the board and fill in the blanks. They were getting excited. I want to do number 1, number 6, etc. Then we put the months in order. We talked about what months our birthday was in and had some speaking practice. Then I let them play a game. They played the ghost game and they stayed pretty quiet. The cctv is messed up in our room right now so I didnt have to worry about anyone watching..haha. Everyone was well behaved today. That was nice. I think the speaking book will be more interesting than the spelling.

On Monday I'll start doing my lowest level class again. I only had one student to begin with and she left in October so I didnt have the class anymore. I'll be teaching spelling and the online newspaper. I liked not having class till 4pm. Now on Mondays I start at 2:30 and on Wed and Fri I start at 3:15.