Kindergarten in Korea

Go Shopping

2008-09-20T23:59:00Z

This last week I used my class' theme time to allow them to learn on their own. Using my "Go Shopping Cards." I created a set of cards with a food beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Students play like GO FISH, however I only let them have one turn each unlike the original game where if you get a pair you get another turn. My students are 6 year old Korean (5 years old internationally). This is their first year of learning English, now 7 months into the year. It took about 3 times playing the game before they could play mostly on their own -- ALL IN ENGLISH. It is not completely surprising to me, I think the overall success of this year's class is play. Most of the learning I do in my class revolves around play of some sort. This emphasizes my philosophy of learning, that children learn nearly entirely through play.

PE and Music reinforce language

2008-09-06T04:41:00Z

During PE and Music and Movement: PE time was focused on body part recognition and movement words. Stretching before activities I would reinforce right hand and left hand, right leg and left leg, for one month I even had them wear a bracelet that spelled out left on their left wrist. Other activities we would all repeat as one person did activity. Such as during balance activities done on the i-gym system, I would say step right, step left as they walked on stepping stone like cones. As they walked over a balance beam we reinforced, “step on” “walk across” “step off.” Music and Movement has been great learning too. Learning actions to songs reinforces the meanings and vocabulary. Also, Koreans in general have difficulty with the “w” sound especially in “wolf” so any game that helps practice this words and is fun for the kids is great. I stumbled upon one, the music curriculum includes this month, “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf.” At first, the children didn’t want to do the activity for what ever reason. So, I added the chasing game they love. Blending “What time is it Mr. Wolf” with this song, I came up with a game. All the children, except one (who is the wolf), dance sort of like the pigs in the Disney cartoon and sing, “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf...” I stop the CD and yell wolf and the wolf chases the class trying to catch one who will be the wolf next time.

Sticker Charts

2008-09-06T04:40:00Z

I started sticker charts without the goal of adjusting behavior. Instead, I felt the learning of the words was a good goal for them. In addition, I use it to help them master the phrase, “May I have a sticker please?” then I reinforce words being learned during theme. The first was pets and farm animals. So the stickers were of cows, pigs, sheep, lambs, dogs, cats ... now (September, the 7th month of school) the stickers are the words themselves which the students label pictures on their chart with.

Articles from the start!

2008-09-06T04:39:00Z

While I expect most students to continue to make mistakes in the area of article usage, I make it a point with every noun to say ‘a’ or ‘an’ and reinforce the idea of vowels. Very early I told the students ‘a’ is the first letter of the alphabet and it means ‘one.’ During the theme unit on animals I began making the distinction between ‘a’ and ‘an,’ reinforcing their pattern “This is a/an ___________, would you like to see it?”

Sight Words and Reading

2008-09-06T04:38:00Z

Sight words and reading: the first book students read was My books appendix E which I remade from a Scholastic reproducible resource. Concepts big, small, head, English, math ... were presented as words and ideas. I focused on MY and BOOK. I reinforced my while telling them to get their books or pencils. Once they had them I told them to tell me, “my color pencils” or “my book.” By May, 2 months into the year, I began teaching sight words. I brought the sight words up talked about them wrote them on the board, had them read and repeat them with me. This worked alright, however, I think these kids are a bit of an exceptional case and even still while, it was my original intent on simply introducing the words to give them later reference. I now feel it would be better to have a more comprehensive plan on introducing these words and reinforcing them through reading. I feel I need to reorder the words to better reflect age appropriate reading. Many kinder books and picture story books have good stories but have poor word choices.

Math

2008-09-06T04:37:00Z

After using various worksheets and a laminated card with numbers to 170, color coded for students to count by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s, I began using a 1st grade math book, ‘Steck and Vaughn Core Skills’. Math gave some of the students a difficult time at first, I had tried adding with them early. But what I have come to know, or understand is that knowing their numbers doesn’t progress unless they begin to use numbers. While counting to 20 was easily repeated, it was not easy for them to do on their own. Yet, once we began counting by 2’s and using numbers in addition recognizing their English names and writing them becomes much more useful to them and therefore better known. I believe just as in English words without context are easily forgotten, numbers without use are also easily forgotten.

Color Color Color

2008-09-06T04:37:00Z

As a note about writing and using black and white pages even for math, I use color pencils/crayons to make it more interesting and to help develop accuracy in writing. Students are excited to write letters when they write in rainbow colors. I also use colors in most writing, even reading. In writing, I will tell the student which color to use for each word, or even when just circling. I also, let them choose colors. It depends on two factors, the first if time is an issue choosing for them speeds the time it takes for them to complete the task, the second is whether coloring something can reinforce learning, for example; writing words in different colors helps distinguish them from one another. Besides making dull work seem fun, constant reinforcement of color makes it something we need not teach separately.

HABA Games

2008-09-06T04:36:00Z

At the school I am at the director includes HABA and HABA type games in the schedule. Using these games to reinforce, game playing phrases, such as “Your turn” “Is it my turn” “ Roll the die” as well as teaching a phrase for each game. Such as “Don’t get caught by the cat” which I repeat continually during the game to reinforce a phrase type that is also what the game is about or is a major obstacle in the game. In the first few games, (a month or two since the games are only played 2 times each week with half the class the first time and the other half the second time.) I need to ask the students to say the phrase. After a while, the saying of the phrase came nearly as natural as native speakers playing a familiar game. Students would repeat the phrase to urge other students on or to taunt them.

Duck, Duck, Goose

2008-09-06T04:35:00Z

Many incarnations of “DDG” have developed. Most recently, we played it as “Olympic Ring.” Students would touch a friend’s head and say a sport we learned when they said a sport twice or said ‘RUNNING’ then the student touched would begin chase. Other incarnations include “Who’s the Tiger” where the concept of “Olympic Ring” came from where students said names of animals, then said “tiger” instead of “Goose” but the added bit of if an animal name was said twice it was the same as ‘tiger.’ This was an extended use of another incarnation called “Dog and Cat.” This version the person saying names was the cat, and they would say names of other pets and the chaser would be the “dog.” Another game to help students use proper pronouns was called “It,” each student was touched while saying “He, She, or It” If a student was called by the wrong gender word it was treated the same as ‘It.’ After the original “DDG” and “Blooming” we had included “Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum” this helped their counting ability and learning to separate out words from the phrase.

My family/ My Day theme

2008-09-06T04:34:00Z

During the “My Family/ My day” Theme, I taught by repeating a few simple phrases explaining a child’s day. “I wake up.” “I get up.” “I get out of bed.” ... see appendix D As I said each phrase, I would make a unique action for each. After they became able to repeat well, I would do each action and they would say it, with help at first, later with only the prompt of the visual cue. I expanded this to include everything from waking up to going to bed, using about 20 phrases in total. Many were repeated such as “I get on the bus” came up both to come to school and to go home.

Beginning Phonics

2008-09-06T04:33:00Z

Through July we worked on Alphabet letters only during Phonics time. using MCP phonics level (A) ... however, I did not merely tell them the names of the words they didn’t know. I had them spell out the names under the pictures. Even though at first they could neither fit the words into the boxes, nor read the word. However it gave them writing practice ... copying the words I wrote on the board. For the actual learning of Phonics I used three mini-books I made (My Alphabet Chant Book, My First Reader Book 1, My First Reader Book 2)

Theme

2008-09-06T04:32:00Z

) Theme time has been a good learning experience for the students, mainly because, I focus not merely on the theme for the month but on simple phrases. As we learned each theme topic, (toys, spring/ my day, family, farm animals/pets, wild animals, sports/Olympics, and now food). I used the same pattern over and over. “This is a _______. Would you like to see it?” To which I had the children repeat, “Yes, thank you.” As they began to master “Yes, thank you.” I had them repeat the phrase “This is a _______. Would you like to see it?” as they would then pass it to their friends. (sitting in a semi-circle I would pass to the line leader for the week and the order remained the same as the two friends before and after each student) AS they had a good handle on this phrase I had them open with the name of the friend they were passing to. As “Wendy, this is a _____________. Would you like to see it?”

Show and Tell update

2008-09-06T04:31:00Z

9/6/2008 I haven’t written in a long time. As a summary, I will highlight some of the point I have noticed about the last 5 and a half months. KINDER *6yr old The students (now 12) of Rabbit class can now with only a prompt of a waving hand say the phrases for Show and Tell (Hello, Rabbit Class, my name is ___________. ) and as a class respond (Hello, ___________ what did you bring for show and tell?)

Show and Tell

2008-09-06T04:29:00Z

3/26/2008 Today, I had several students give a “show and tell.” Now, the students didn’t know what the name of their toy that they brought was, in English. So, I had to tell them. Not only tell them the names of the toys but also the way to say every phrase in the presentation. To begin with, I had each student repeat the phrase as I gave it to them, “Hello, Rabbit class, my name is __________.” to which the other students would repeat after me, “Hello, _________. What did you bring for show and tell.” I would then have each student say, “This is my Barbie doll/ Robot/ Teddy Bear.” After that I would ask the presenting student, “Where did you get it?”, “When did you get it?”, and “Who gave it to you?” Most students didn’t understand the question at all, but when I waved my hand around with differing amount of fingers as I asked ages, most figured out it was age and would repeat one of the numbers with some confidence. (I can only assume this means that they figured it was age since most children this age do not think in days weeks or months and knowing that we have taught them “I am six.” to indicate their age.) Other answers were either not answered or when I would say the names of popular stores (to answer the question about where they got it) they would nod when pointed to the toy and said the name of one of those stores. I would then have them repeat the answer as I understood it such as, “I got it at E-mart.” The show and tell was fun for them, because they liked showing their toys, and they did still talk a bit in their native Korean. Still, I thought that the repetition of the phrases was not meaningless, since though they probably didn’t really understand what they were saying, except for their name and the word, “toy,” they did repeat pretty loudly the main phrases, so they began to have some comfort in asking “What did you bring for show and tell?” We also did summersaults in the gym. While doing the summersaults, I had the students repeat the process for doing a summersault, “Hands down, head down, tuck, and roll.” For 4 weeks we have been reinforcing “hands on hips” so, the word “hands” is very familiar to them if not completely known. “Down”, “tuck”, and “roll” however, may have no reference other than the motions given as we had each of the eleven students do the summersault 3 times as the all repeated the process after me each time. The Korean teacher translated a few times as well, so they should all come to understand these words in English and as long as they continue to be reinforced, these words should become part of their natural vocabulary.

Educator Journal of Donald Ruhe

2008-09-06T04:14:00Z

03/24/2008 Today is the first entry. I have been teaching EFL in South Korea for the past 2 years and 4 months. My most recent job began at the beginning of this month (March), which is the beginning of the school year here in Korea. First, I will explain a few things I have been trying and evaluating the past few weeks. My students this year are 6 year old (Korean age), [Internationally considered 5yrs old]. They have had some exposure to English, but for the most part have little formal education in English. Starting from the beginning with these students requires a lot of patience as well as a lot of energy! To begin students in the language, I pretty much started with “Duck, Duck. Goose.” This game is fun for them at this age and the language is secondary. After a few times playing I changed the words to help them practice basic sentence patterns. The first incarnation of the game, I had the students say, “I’m fine.” to each student instead of “duck” and to the student they wanted to chase them they would say “How are you?” to which the chasing student would have to respond, “I’m fine.” in order to begin chase. this worked very well. The students were able after about 3 games over a weeks time (in addition to the classroom reinforcement) to begin responding to and asking “How are you?” Today, I again altered “Duck, duck. goose” this time to reinforce a phrase I am using to help them play one of their own games, in English. The Korean phrase is “ .” which translates to “The Rose of Sharon is blooming.” The game is played much like tag, where the one who is ‘it’ counts, but in this game they say the phrase. I have played the game with them for about a week and a half, for short periods of time. So, today when we had some time, I played it again then had them play it as “DDG.” The goose in this case was the last word in the phrase, “blooming.” The repetition of these new phrases and the students’ enjoyment of the game, allow for a much longer repetition period, which increased the recognition and use of the words and phrases. In the afternoon study, I have 8-year-old (Korean age) students. We are learning with the “Let’s Go! 2,” second edition. I have found that the songs and chants sometimes are difficult to follow for beginning students and especially to evaluate each student’s pronunciation. The recognition of each individual word by the students is complicated by music and intonation made to fit the musical composition. In order to bring about a better learning, I use the tape to get him or her started then we substitute each student’s name and let that student sing the answer parts, e.g. “Hello, Scott. How are you?” becomes “Hello, Yujin. How are you?” to which Yujin then answers, “I’m fine. Thank you.” Personalization and the slower word-by-word singing of the songs dramatically helps the understanding and use of the phrases taught in the songs. In addition, in this group I noticed their strong tendency to pronounce, “says” as “saes” instead of “sez.” I have been correcting them these past 3 weeks as they read the storybook, “The Enormous Turnip.” However, they continued so I made it a teaching point in 2 lessons. During the first 2 weeks, students read the story aloud in various classroom reads. The third week we read the book word by word backwards through the story, to emphasize the reading of each word. Now, today we read it again sentence by sentence in rounds, in a kind of game. The students would get a minus point if they mispronounced or misread their sentence. Overall, they did much better, but a few students made errors in saying, “says” and the pronunciation of “girl.” With correction and the visual of a minus point, the correct pronunciation of “says” looks like it will be self-corrected in the future. “Girl,” is another story. The pronunciation is difficult for many native speakers. So, I emphasized the pronunciation by having students mimic the sound of a motorcycle, speeding and slowing, to produce the resulting “gggiiirrrlll.” The success immediately of 5 out of 6 students being able to then say “girl” at least in a way that was acceptable and 1 out of those 5 was able to then pronounce “girl” in a way equivalent to a native speaker of similar age.