Second Day of Classes

Today was the second day of classes, and we had cooperative learning, taekwondo, school culture, and powerpoint use, as well as our Korean classes at the end of the day.

Cooperative learning was all about how to get your students learning from one another so that there is less teacher talking time. We played a bunch of games that we could use on our own students that got them working on their conversational skills, which is severely lacking in Korean students. They learn to read and write in English, but their conversational and speaking skills are generally not that good, so one of our primary goals is to teach speaking abilities.

Taekwondo was excellent. It was boiling hot in the room though. We did a lot of warming up and stretching then we practiced kicking. Tawkwondo uses more feet and legs than a lot of other martial arts we were told. The coach and two of the members of the Jeonju team were there to help us, and they were all really sweet. The team members showed off a little in their demonstrations, and the coach had some kind words for us. He said that EPIK teachers are special because we are the ones teaching the next generation of Koreans. It was a really great experience despite the fact that we were really sweaty and hot. We showered right after class then had lunch.

After lunch we had a school culture class taught by some of the native English speakers who work for the EPIK head office. They gave us a book with a bunch of stories from people in EPIK to read and share with the class. The stories were interesting, and it got us talking about what Korea is like from a foreigners perspective. It also made me think that EPIK is really sparing no expense in making sure we are good teachers. We have large orientation books, smaller story books, and a field trip book. They make sure we have water and snacks between meals. It's a pretty well-run orientation.

Powerpoint was a really interesting class. I never knew there was so much you could do with powerpoint, and I'm really excited to make some cool slides. The guy who taught the class did all these games with us, all involving powerpoint. They were so much fun. He showed us this busy beaver video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5bEbgBBAyU. He then had made a board with various words and a few pictures from the song on it. You are supposed to follow along with the song and put your finger wherever you can find the phrase, word, or picture from the song on your board. It was actually a really fun game. The song was SOOO catchy!

After powerpoint was dinner then Korean class. In Level 2 Korean, we went over the greetings we did last class, and we learned how to ask the price of something and order food using numbers. Ellie wrote us all a piece of paper that can go in our name tags with helpful phrases that we can hopefully use tomorrow on our field trip day! I'm really excited, but it's been raining today, so it will probably be raining tomorrow. We bought an umbrella, so we don't get drenched.