Third grade!

This week, Sheyann, Thomas and I worked with the 3rd grade class, a group of five eleven-year-old kids. Angelina, Jack, Jordan, Mandy and Tony welcomed us with bright smiles, and they seemed as excited to meet us as we were ourselves. On the first day, we introduced ourselves to the kids and vice versa (“What is your name?”). I remember talking with our peers about this — we for sure knew that 3rd grade was bold, but as our time with these five kids continued, we realized how shy they initially were. Since then, they never stopped transmitting positive energy to us, and we tried our best to reciprocate by enthusiastically planning our lessons and having fun with the children.

We noticed that the attention span for some of these kids was perhaps shorter than we had expected. By the end of Monday, which was mostly speaking-based, we realized that the children were struggling to retain the material. We needed to engage the children in different ways too, encouraging reinforcement by switching the focus to reading and writing. For Tuesday, we prepared some worksheets. These were really helpful; they served as a break from the dynamic group activities. We gave the students space to focus on their own worksheets and test themselves. The small nature of the class allowed us to work with them one-on-one, adapting our instruction based on individual needs. On Thursday, we taught “activities” through recitation, dialogue, worksheets and games like charades. The kids were visibly more engaged when a variety of activities were prepared.

By the end of the week, our students were much more comfortable introducing themselves in English. Our goal was to familiarize them with some everyday English vocabulary, too. Most importantly, we developed relationships that will hopefully last long. We hope that our short-lasting presence in their class will give these children something to talk about in the future, that we leave a positive mark on their journey of learning.

Third grade students and teachers on the last day of the week

Middle School!

On Monday and Tuesday, Martin and I worked with a group of six middle schoolers in the afternoon. Due to the varying language backgrounds present within this group, communicating ideas to the students was a challenge. We have noticed that within middle school there are some who refuse to speak up or are simply too shy and their limited language reduces their confidence. As we took the initiative by showing more determination in communicating our ideas, the students themselves were more open to conversation and made an effort to respond. In order to facilitate this, the topic we chose for the first hour on Monday was “movies”. We watched a clip from the animated movie Up, which had no dialogue. The students told us their favorite movies and Martin, who knows a lot about film, introduced some interesting facts about them. For the second hour, we went upstairs and played soccer and dodgeball with a different group of students.

Most of the middle schoolers have been in Korea for a very short time. According to their teacher, many of them are not planning to pursue high school education, and intend to go straight into the workforce instead. While such decisions are to be expected given the situations their families are facing, my understanding is that their teacher’s desire is for us to set an example to the students as peers, by exposing them to our own experiences. Ideally, we would motivate the students to pursue their education further. Since we are working with the middle schoolers in Jiguchon after school, our main goal is not to introduce new material for them to learn and study. Through our small group discussions and activities, we do not only intend to build relationships between teachers and students, but also between the students themselves.

Teachers and middle schoolers singing “Happy Birthday” to 끄엉

By Leandro