"Teacha Crajy?": So the word has come down from on high that I will be teaching grades...
So the word has come down from on high that I will be teaching grades 3-6 next semester, 24 classes a week (though a full week rarely ever happens due to cancellations). I am to have 12 co-teachers, that is, two English subject teachers for 5th and 6th grade (one of whom will be my ever-beloved…
I don’t have a co-teacher in the room most of the time, but I also don’t use Korean to explain anything (other than the occasional vocab word, if a kid is really struggling and as a last resort). My advice? Routine is your greatest weapon.
Establish a routine from the beginning, and you won’t have to explain much else for the rest of the year. For example, a regular schedule that the kids come to rely on, so they always know what’s coming next. Mine is: intro, open your books, PPT (listen and repeat/comprehension checking), short scaffolding worksheet, speaking activity, end. Every single class, with minor exceptions, that’s the drill and I don’t have to get them to understand what’s going on every time I change gears, because they already know.
We also play games with exactly the same teams with the same desk formations and the same names every time. Their groups are made up of six students, but even if the game is a partner game, I still have them form the same group, and then give each group three sets of the game, every time. Because then when they hear the word “team”, they know exactly what they are supposed to do. It never changes.
I also usually tend to organize most of my games or activities in the same way. Different activities, of course, but every time we do one type of activity, it’s done in exactly the same way as we did the same activity the time before. I make sure they learn the basic vocabulary for “memory”, “partner”, “interview”, etc. the first time around, and then after that, when they hear that same word, they know the same activity is happening as always happens when they hear that word.
And here’s a hint: It helps the low level co-teachers feel more confident with what’s going on as well, because they also know what the students should be doing when they hear “interview”.
It gets to a point that, by mid-semester, I say 3/4 of the instructional sentence before an activity and pause, and the students shout out the operative words to finish. Because I use the same fucking sentences every time.
I’m sure you already know most of this. But for what it’s worth.
