Reading Town Honor's Ville (my school's name)

Sorry about taking so long to post, I'm going to try and do a better job of it! I wanted to tell you about my school and teaching now that I'm a month into it.  I'm an English teacher a hogwon, which is a private academy that teaches English courses to students, with the intention of making them fluent readers and speakers of the language.  I teach students that are about 8-13 years old.  Most of them start at the regular Reading Town which is on the floor above my school.  The teacher 4-8 year olds.  After my school, they go to the floor below us, called Avalon Glide, where the continue to study the language, and start studying science and math in English as well.  It's a huge industry in South Korea, proven in that South Korea is one of the largest investors in private education.  The kids at my school with take 2 or 3 classes in the afternoon or evening.  A class period lasts 45 minutes with a 5 minutes break.  This is in addition to the regular schools they go to earlier in the day.  We have 5 native teachers (including me) and right now 5 korean teachers, but I know they are looking for 2 more korean teachers!

There's three type of classes I teach.  Book reading, comprehension, and speech/essay:

1) Book reading is where we take a month in class to read book.  I assign reading, we discuss it, and they also have workbooks to go through.  It's a lot of repetition to make sure EVERY student has a strong grasp of the book, its vocabulary, what it means, etc.  We meet 3 times a week, and one of those days we go to Learning Gate (the library).  Here, they each pick 2 smaller books to read on their own and write a "Mini-Book Report".  I then pick a big book to read, and they have to read then write a "Big Book Report" on the book that I grade, and they also have an online test they do at home on the big book.  Every week we go to the library and get new books and such.  Most of my classes are book reading classes.

2)Comprehension is for some of the older students, and its just what it sounds like.  They read articles in a book, and then we talk about what it means and such.  Each unit has an articles and a workbook area associated with it, we do one unit a class and after 6 classes, we take a test on the previous units.

3) Essay/Speech is where the students practice their writing skills, correctly building complete sentences and such.  There's an emphasis on the kids reading out loud and writing their own essays and giving presentations. A lot of the instruction is on useful expressions and such to make a continuously flowing and long responses.

So those are my classes!  I have about 32 lessons a week right now,  and I see the same students MWF and different students TR.  Here's some pictures of my school of one of my classes!

I get to school at 1pm, and my first class of the day starts at 3:40.  These are the youngest kids I teach, and luckily I only have 5.  It's also one of my favorite classes, but I'll admit, they behave much better than some of the other young classes the other teachers have (lucky me!).

The lone boy in the class Hayden didn't want his picture taken.  He's always hyper and having fun, but he crosses the line too much, so I have to yell at him.  This was right after he got yelled at, so he was sulking in the corner.  Irechez is on the left, she's really smart but new to the program, but she is getting confident and always has the right answer for me!  Jamie is in the back, she likes to answer questions or explain things by getting up and demonstrating, which hopefully will gradually turn into her using English to answer questions!  Kayla is second from the left, and is quite smart too but like to take control of the class sometimes.  Cindy is on the right, and if Hayden isn't being the class clown, she is.  Let's just say she doesn't like rules, and I'm guessing learning English isn't her favorite past time!

This is the face Irechez always makes when I ask who wants to read first?!  The young ones love reading, and the always want to be the one to start first haha.

I took this video of them reading...it was the day after they took a test on their previous book, and they knew I was making them read this book just because we had nothing to do, since the their semester was finishing that day too.  So needless to say, they weren't very cooperative!

So here's my school!  This is the entrance area where the front desk is.

Here's a classroom and the hallways through the area.  We have about 12 or 15 classrooms?  One of the is a lot larger, and wired for presentations and movies and such.

Here's the faculty work area.  All of our desk areas are on each wall, and the middle table will have food for us on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, since none of us have a break during dinner time to go out a buy something on the street.

And here is my desk area!:

Nothing spectacular, but its works well!

I hope every has a great weekend and I'll post sooner than I did this time.  I have some fun things coming up that I will definitely share on this blog.