[jessteacherkorea]

Hi!
I am teaching English in a public school in South Korea. I have an afterschool class 3 days a week for 80 minutes. I create my own curriculum with almost no materials and after about 12 classes, I am running out of ideas.

I have between 7-14 kids of varying abilities on any given day with an age range of 4th-6th graders.

I am basically running out of ideas on what to teach that will keep them interested and learning, the last few classes have been flops and I really want to keep them going without a) boring them to death or b) making it too fun and not actually teach them anything.

any ideas out there? Any and all input would be much appreciated!

[teachingenglishmadeeasy]

Hi Jess! I too am in South Korea, but I teach at a University. One thing I can tell you is that students like themed lessons. You could very well build a curriculum around a theme. Have it run at least 3 to 4 weeks. You could do something like:

Classroom English
Week 1 - Basic vocabulary
Week 2 - Commands
Week 3 - Commonly asked questions by students
Week 4 - Incorporate all 3 previous weeks in the class

Basically, you could incorporate real-life situations into the class. Students love it. I am sure you do now, but I don't know so I'm only throwing out some ideas. HOpe this helps!

[andreskii]

Sounds tough!
1. Maybe try flash cards. If you have a printer you can get them on the internet, print, and have the kids cut them out. Korean book stores have some big flash cards for 4-5000 won.
2. If you have a dictionary, a blackboard, and some old copier paper (already printed on one side) you can go over a few vocabulary words by saying and students repeat and then have them write the words three times to increase memory retention.
3. I bought some canyons and had the kids share. We did the family so I found a coloring page on the Internet and printed some out. If not you could try to get kids to draw and color their family (hard to do with the shy kids and active ones ignore assignments).
4. Newspaper: I don’t know where to get it but a school near you should have old copies of The Kids Times.
5. Again if you have a black board hang-man is a popular game my kids like and I review my vocabulary using it.
6. Songs: print out lyrics or try and write on black board. I-tunes have 100 kids songs for $10.
7. I draw on the board and have kids come up and spell things like clothes, parts of a stick man, and park/playground items. They often can’t spell the things so I spell it out and I do the same topics once every 1-2 or so weeks until their spelling improves.

[vivian9]

Some fun and engaging activities we use in my class in public schools with newcomers ages 11 to 15 include:
1. cooking -- students read and copy recipe, food nouns, direction verbs, menu, descriptive adjectives
2. introduction practice -- index cards with 4 sets of prepared questions and answers like
"Hello, my name is Jairo. What is your name?"
"I like rap music? What kind of music do you like?"
Students in two lines, facing partner, one line moves to constantly change partners.
3. lunch sack -- paper lunch bag for each student, filled with cut out food pictures from magazines, students arrange foods on paper, label, write about how the foods are prepared or eaten, etc
4. bingo -- have students fill bingo card grid with 24 words (free space) from posted list of 35. Sometimes we do nouns, sometimes verbs. Hold up picture, students cover word.

[jessteacherkorea]

awesome! thanks guys! these are some good ideas!

[HUE]

Have you considered reviewing particular themes/grammar. Review sounds boring, so maybe that's not the best word. But you can return and do a theme again, just tweak it a bit. If you talked about vacations, for example, why not talk about dream vacations? Or horrible vacations? Or make students put together a travel plan in groups? Or video skits focused around travel?

The last idea on videos would make a good project, which leads me to another idea: projects. How about getting students to work on something together in groups for two or three weeks?

I hope these ideas help.

Good luck with the after-school classes!

[Elle Stevens]

Hey there, Jess I came across your post while looking for - you guessed it - lessons to use for after school class, ha ha.

I'm also teaching public school in South Korea, but thankfully for only 40 minutes per class 6 times a week.

I actually found this website a few days ago that I think will save you loads of time with preparations. It's Free Printables for Teachers - flashcards, printable games, worksheets, phonics materials, conversational activities. They have a whole curriculum split into different units along with audio and video materials as well as worksheets. I used one of the lessons for my level 1 group (grade 1-2). So if any of your after school classes are in that age range, I highly recommend this website to you