dancing students and spelling mistakes...

So upon my arrival to Korea, I was under the impression I would be teaching 2nd graders. While I do teach a class of 1st/2nd graders for 40 minutes as an after school class, I was surprised when I was told I would be teaching 5th/6th graders.

My experience with teaching 6th graders was limited to my 9 weeks of student teaching my senior year of college and needless to say, it was the worst experience ever. The children were little devils, one throwing a chair at me on my 3rd day, one attempting to break a girls arm (for the fun of it) and not to mention the worst mentor teacher in the history of student teaching... ever. she told me to my face that I would make a terrible teacher and she didn't want me in her classroom and wanted to be done with me. To repay her for all her "kindness" I won't a 2-page letter to my principal why she should never again be a mentor teacher, which I then translated into my evaluation that was submitted to Pacific. Needless to say she got the worst review ever.

So going into this I was very nervous. Thankfully my children have proved me wrong. I love them. Of course there are a few that I could do without, the child who was sent to the vice-principal's office being one of them. Or the few who refuse to do their homework or participate and talk the entire time. But overall, my kids are great and I couldn't have asked for a better bunch of kids.

The other day I was working with my 6th graders on the different seasons in the year. In the book that we use (which I am not a fan of at all), there is a song that we sang about the seasons. Below is a video of one of my favorite 6th grade classes. They got very involved in the song and even made hand motions and everything.




Speaking of the textbook... We are given a student book and a teacher's manual when we started. The teacher's manual is in both English and Korean. I basically get the jist of the lesson and then go off from there and avoid using the book as much as possible. Well We were practicing a conversation dialog on the computer and what do I find when the dialog pops up... a spelling mistake. Not a small one letter wrong mistake, a big the word isn't even the same mistake.

Hoilyday?!?! What the heck is that? Of course I was the first one to notice the spelling mistake (considering I am the only native speaker in the classroom) and I instantly told them to not write it down in their books. (They are to copy the written dialog from the screen to their books so they can practice) I had to then write down the correct spelling and explain that it was wrong. I proceeded to find to more spelling mistakes in this lesson alone. The word "present" was spelled without the "ent" on the end and "April" was spelled "Tpril".

You would think that a textbook and DVD that is given out to the whole Gyeonggi-do province to teach English with wouldn't be full of the most ridiculous spelling mistakes. I was told I should keep track of the amount of mistakes I find... I'm considering it.