New School Year

Posted on Wednesday, February 9, 2011 by Colleen

So the new school year starts in March, which means my 3rd graders leave and I get a new batch of 1st graders. So for the next two weeks I'm kind of just filling time, practicing teaching the book with the students so I know what I'm doing when it comes to the start of the year. The books are all in Korean, which is a little difficult, but it does come with a computer program that has audio instructions and scripts for the students to listen to, which is convenient. The pages show up on the big screen too, so they can follow along with me on the board instead of in the tiny book.

I've really started to notice which classes and great, and which classes are going to give me trouble next year. I don't really care about the 3rd graders anymore, since they are leaving next week, I'm not going to waste my time trying to whip them into shape. For 1st grade and 2nd grade though there in one good class in each grade, and one bad class. The good classes are obviously the higher level students, ones who actually care about learner (or are maybe just more afraid of Mrs. Choi than the others). Mrs. Choi says that they might mix up the classes next year, which I really hope.

I don't know if it's because they don't care, or they are just shy, but many students in class just sit there quietly and never answer even the simplest questions I ask. So I have begun to develop and reward and incentive program that I am going to start implementing next term. I've broken it down into personal rewards, and classroom rewards. For personal rewards, if I see a student being great in class, answering questions, being quiet while I'm talking, helping others, etc. I'm going to give them a good job ticket (kind of like I did last year with my kindergarten students). Then as they accumulate their awards, they can get certain rewards, i.e. free homework pass, ice cream, a prize. So in order to make this an incentive, I am going to start giving homework every week, more and harder homework for the classes that piss me off more. I'll probably give something once a week, let them have all week to finish it (I found a great site with lots of free worksheets to give as homework).I can already see which students are going to wind up getting the more awards, so hopefully it will kick the less enthusiastic students into gear.

Then comes in the class rewards. When a class finishes all their homework, or is nice and quiet, participating for the day, I'll give their class a sticker. I need to create class banners with the students names once I know who is going to be in what class. And then at the end of every three months or so I will give a pizza party to the class with the most stickers. I'm hoping that this will encourage students to behave, because their peers will get mad if they don't.

I'm going to try to make everything as official as possible, laminating the passes and the class banners, getting good stickers, giving homework regularly, keeping track of who turns in their homework. Sometimes when I give homework, the students don't really care and thus don't do it. I'm really hoping this will be a good incentive to become better students, and hopefully they can actually start to learn something!

New School Year

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