What am I teaching in South Korea?

To refresh your memory- I teach in an Elementary English Center, I teach most classes alone, my class sizes range between 8-14 students (although I've had 3 students show up one day...fun class!), and my lessons are all considered supplementary lessons (the students already have English class during the school day and then they come to me for extra lessons).

I teach 3 levels: Phonics, Beginners, and Intermediate. The Phonics class has a really basic workbook, while Beginners and Intermediate have a more advanced book. I follow along with the chapter theme but never really teach directly from the book. Don't get me wrong- I teach the book! However, the kids seem to find the work to be pretty easy so I tend to expand on the theme.

Please ignore the bags under my eyes. The books I use for Phonics and Beginner/Intermediate 

A page out of the Phonics book. 

I've covered quite a few topics with my kids over the last few months so I won't get incredibly detailed about all of my lessons but here's a general idea of some of the things we've covered:

1. Phonics
            -I teach a 1st and 2nd grade Phonics class and they're precious. We practice the ABC's, writing our names, short sentences (Thank you, I like/don't like, etc), food names, and most importantly- the ability to identify sounds. When I make a sound for a letter they should be able to tell me what it is. However, I'm just happy if they can make it all the way through the ABC's.
Here's my favorite program to show if I have extra time at the end or need to catch their attention at the beginning:

                                   Alphablocks: Great series to learn the sounds of letters

2. Weather
            -This is the most recent topic I was covering with my older kids. The key sentence was "How's the weather today?" and its corresponding answer. They learned vocab related to the weather and played games where they had to use weather words.

3. The Solar System
           - We learn and review the names of the planets, watch a video showing how the planets compare in size, use flashcards to put the planets in order, and practice identifying planets by playing memory games. End result: they should know all of the planets in order, Mercury is the smallest, and Jupiter is the largest.
Here's my lesson plan for teaching the planets:


 4. Storytelling
           - Using the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar we learn and review the days of the week and food names. I show a video with the story, use flashcards, and use memory games to practice.

5. Clothing
           - This topic was expanded over multiple classes but I'm gonna condense it. We practice sentences such as, "What are you wearing? I'm wearing..." We learned shopping expressions and went shopping. We reviewed the different seasons and discussed what was appropriate. Learned about traditional clothing from around the world (ummm...they've been teaching that America's traditional clothing is Cowboy clothes....I don't know how to feel about this).

6. Cubes and Cuboids
            - Reviewed 2-D shape names (square, triangle, etc) and then expanded to 3-D solid names (sphere, pyramid, etc). Played a board game, listened to a song, thought of different objects that were different shapes, etc. This is the video I watched over and over. I know all the words. Super.

7. Food
        - My favorite topic to teach because I love all food. We learned/reviewed names, learned key phrases (This is delicious! This is gross!), discussed foods from around the world compared to Korea, learned what to say in a restaurant, made our own menus, etc.

8. Body Parts
         - Kids in this school are now really good at singing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, fantastic at playing Simon Says, and great at identifying body parts (especially to say their friends have big heads/noses/mouths). We drew pictures of monsters and talked about their bodies, measured body parts, and just played lots of movement games to remember the parts of the body.

9.Colors
         - Point to something red! Something green! Touch something black! Lots of Powerpoints, coloring, and running around to find the right color.

I get a lot of great material from websites like Waygook.com (resources galore!) and just general google searches. Teachers like to share their fantastic Powerpoints and worksheets- which makes my life a lot easier. I'm not the greatest at making Powerpoints but I'm pretty fantastic at modifying them.

Hope this was informative and interesting. If not, I'll try to do something interesting this weekend to write about.

Peace!