I'm just ending week two of my hagwon job in South Korea. This evening spent two hours staring blankly at the upcoming chapter in one of the books, trying to think of some constructive and creative way to use this material.
Illustration #1 Three children stumble across a giraffe and a tree house. The boy says, "Look! It's a giraffe.
Illustration #2: with all of the children on his back, apparantly the giraffe is sticking his neck through the treehouse window Boy asks "Is Mr. Snoop in the kitchen? Girl 1 responds "No, he isn't." Several empty glasses, a couple of them spilled over could suggest Mr. Snoops may have been drinking, but could also be explained by the purple cat in the hat on the kitchen counter.
Illustration #3: Giraffe and the children on his neck peep into another window (?) to find the sinister Mr. Snoops (he resembles Count Olaf from the Lemony Snicket's series of Unfortunate events) in bed reading wearing an identical hat to the that of the purple cat. Girl #2 asks "Is he in the bedroom?" Girl #1 responds "Yes, he is. He's in the bed."
Illustration #4 The giraffe leans over to set the children down. The boy says "Thank You." Mr. Snoops leers or smiles out of one window; two crosseyed monkeys join "the story" and appear to mimic Mr. Snoops one fisted gesture. With just a quick glance at the illustration, Mr. Snoops appears to be waving.
I wasn't sure if the children were saying thank you to Mr Snoops or to the giraffe. If it had been me instead of a Korean speaking Korean-American teacher teaching the class throughout the previous chapters, it all would have made perfect sense. Maybe he was able to explain it in a way that the children can understand.
The 'Be Resourceful' section suggests making masks of the characters, giving each member a part to play and asking them to dramatize "the story." Students can also play Guess Who? and mime the actions of the characters....the book suggests "pretend to be riding a giraffe." The problem is that everyone except for Mr. Snoops rides the giraffe.
When I decided to rewind 'the story' and try to find the larger pieces of the puzzle, I discovered that even though they have no distinct personality traits, the boy and two girls each have a name: Tom, Pippa and Kiki.
In the first unit, we find the boy seated on an enormous mushroom reading a pink book, when Pippa and Kiki each swing in on a vine. After making introductions, Pipa and Kiki throw their hands in the air and say to Tom "Welcome to the jungle!" Hold on. According to the illustration sequence Tom was there first. Did the mushroom help him get to the jungle
Next, the children are in a tree and two adults and two children pass underneath. 'Pippa(?) says "She's my mom. He's my dad. She's my sister. He's my brother" Toms book falls out of the tree and along comes Mr. Snoops with his evil grin. They catch him in a net, along with the book and jump out of the tree and run away saying "Goodbye, Mr. Snoop." In the next scene, Tom and Pippa are in a room with insects, monkeys, and a cat, and a blackboard and an eraser when Mr. Snoop comes back and says "hands up!" Kika somehow does a rope trick and ties Mr. Snoop to a chair. Once again, they say "Goodbye"
Logically what happens next is the three kids find a pink and yellow kite and ask each other "Is this a kite?" and then it suddenly launches into the air and and a full sized bicycle, a puppet and a car fall out of Kikas backpack and Mr. Snoops rides away with the book and the bike.
Looking ahead to the next chapter: The kids have a party with elephants and ask eachother if they like bananas and monkeys. Just as Kika is telling Tom, "No, I don't" (like monkeys) Mr. Snoop starts to help himself to the apples and bananas. As he's being trampled by the elephants Tom asks "Do you like bananas Mr. Snoop?"
Course objectives:
Be (present simple, all forms)
What's this? It's a/an and short answers
Adjective and noun word order
Plurals
Basic prepositions
There is/are
Can/Can't
Like my textbooks, it's probably not easy to discern the point of this post. It could be best categorized as a cry for help.
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Hmmm...wow having some fun browsing my thoughts over there. no. it was that bad. the 'see saw' series was replaced by something that really made me want to jump out the window..... it was called 'magic time.' it didn't make any sense either and lacked the comedic qualities of 'see saw'
Oh no! I wrote this post two weeks into the experience here. Thank God my hagwon is retiring the 'See Saw' series! If you're planning on coming to South Korea, don't let me discourage you just be prepared to find some real weird stuff in the psychedelic textbooks! After you've spent some quality time with your mouth agape, scratching your head, get beyond the shellshock, it's not so bad. The situation has forced me to be extremely creative, and I like that. I really need to write a new post discussing 'coping strategies.'
Actually, I'm having a good time here
awful really, it this wat lies in store???
Yes, I've been trying to figure out what concepts the units are meant to teach. I think that the author of this book had a serious substance abuse problem. Believe it or not, this post was first conceived in the 'How to Make the Most of Your Tefl Course Book' post. This text book, with ideas such as "have the students mime out the actions of each character," to play guess who and all there is to go on is "riding a giraffe," the only objective is teaching kids how to ask 'is he/she in the ______ room?' A 'Where's Waldo Book" might be more useful. I'd be inclined to purchase other books but it would involve finding my way to a city that has an English language bookstore. I guess I could start purchasing Korean language magazines just to cut out the pictures
Oh lord! I feel utterly confused by your textbook! I can see that they're maybe trying to jazz up basic concepts to make them more interesting for kids, but it's just confusing! You probably need to work out what it's trying to get across and ignore everything else, just don't mention it in your class.
Who the hell wrote the text book though? Some drugged up TEFL teacher with a rather overactive imagination it seems!
Good luck and keep us posted with how you get on - you might also want to check out this article by one of our resident TEFL experts, Emma: http://www.tefl-chalkboard.com/emmafoers/posts/929-how-to-make-the-most-of-your-tefl-course-book
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