It’s been awhile since my last update and I’ve found a new platform on WordPress. The second semester of teaching is in full swing and fall weather is finally here. 

One of the new experiences this semester is teaching the first and second grade students. Earlier this year the Korean National Assembly passed an amendment that lifted the ban on teaching English in public schools for children under third grade. 

In reality this ban didn’t stop children from learning English. The ban helped increase the English learning gap between students that could and couldn’t afford to attend hagwons (private academies). 

As an English teacher, you can tell which students attend hagwons and which ones don’t. I have some third grade students that have a higher English proficiency than some of my sixth graders. 

For the majority of my students, their only interaction with English is at school. For my new first and second grade students, English isn’t a part of their curriculum. I see them twice a week for the afterschool program for about 40 minutes each time. 

Some of the students are already familiar with the alphabet and some of the words in English. Primarily we’re focusing on phonics and the alphabet with the students. My low level of Korean (my fault xD) means that I rely on my phone to help communicate with my students along with demonstrations and a lot of pictures. 

With my other classes I’ve tried to focus more on writing this semester. This has included madlib style activities along with getting some of the older students to try and write short stories. I’m hoping by the end of the semester to have a collection of their writing so that I can make portfolios for each of the students to see how they’ve progressed over the semester. 

We’ve got a couple of holidays this coming October; Foundation Day and Hangeul Day. They fall on a Thursday and Wednesday respectively, so I’ll try to either get some editing done or explore some places locally. 

Next Tuesday is our field trip to Gongju with the first through fourth grade so it will be interesting to see what we do. I’ll try to bring my GoPro and camera with me so that you’ll eventually get to see what I did when I get around to editing video. 

Another recent activity was our school’s sports day, but I’ll write up a separate post for that to keep this post fairly brief. I found some new video editing software that my laptop should be able to handle while I get my desktop built so fingers crossed that I can finally start vlogging as well. 

Until my next post (I promise it won’t be months from now) take care.