Students' Crime Stories

I entered the 6 PM class today to hear cries of "Game! Game!" They told me that while I assumed they finished their book this week, they don't finish until the end of September. That's fantastic! We have 5 pages of the book left, and that's supposed to last 5 weeks?? The thing is, that book usually takes 3 months, but because they used the higher level book last session (and didn't do well), then they need for this lower-level book to take 4 months to keep them on the right schedule. Nice of the Korean teacher to tell me that, huh?

With that particular class it's not a huge deal, though. There's only 7 of them and their behavior is decent and they're at a high enough level that I can be a little creative and teach them something that's not straight out of a textbook. I'm actually looking forward to being something other than a tape player drone who makes conversation from time to time.

I'm an expert at thinking on my feet now, so I told them that yes, we would play a game, but not for all of class. I had them write a police story, drama-style (such that they can act it out later). First we brainstormed characters together. Police officer, robber, victim, witness, news reporter. Then the 3 girls worked together and 2 boys worked together and the other 2 boys mostly just sat there and did nothing. They did a lot better than I expected. They spent a full 20 minutes on it, and would have continued if I hadn't promised them a 15-minute game at the end of class. (Hacking test took up some time, talking some more.)

I had Stephanie come into the class to look at John's very pink eye that he was rubbing, then touching the desk and his classmates. She said it was no problem, but told John to wash his hands and then not touch his eye again. She instructed the rest of the students to wash their hands after class. If John does indeed have pink eye, he should not be in class!! Public school resumes in one week--just enough time for the disease to spread among our 400 students, then it can get started with the 3000 in the elementary school.

We finished class by playing what I call tic-tac-toe. It's like tic-tac-toe in that you try to get three in a row, but each square has a category and a number in it. It's usually girls vs. boys. They have to choose a category and then name the certain number of things from that category. I usually try to do roughly half things they know well, some that they've recently studied or need to review, and one or two that they might not know but should be able to figure it out or guess what it is. Zoo animals, family relationships, school supplies (that took several rounds of guessing!), countries, capitals (a little difficult because the cities sometimes have slightly different names in English than in Korean), furniture, jewelry, etc. It's a fun way to review vocabulary and learn new category names. It works well with most level classes that I try it with, I just adjust the categories.

So here are the students' stories. I'm thinking that I'll correct the mistakes and return them next week. Then maybe I'll have them add a little more to the stories and practice before acting them out for the other group.

Boys:

News Reporter: Now police officer catching a robber.

Victim: Please catch a robber.

Police Officer: Don't worry. We will catch a robber.

After second day police officer asked to witness.

Police Officer: What does he look like?

Witness: He is thin and tall and he has red curly hair.

Police Officer: Thank you! very much.

After 1 week police officer went to the robber's house but robber is run.

Police Officer: Hey, stop there.

Robber: No I can't.

So police officer shot the gun but gun is miss.

Robber: My speed is faster than your gun.

So, police officer is shot the gun again and robber is hurt.

Robber: Ouch!

and police officer catch him the next day

News Reporter: Police officer catch the robber.

-F I N I S H -

Girls (short because they were trying to get every word perfect):

News Reporter: Today was a robber steal a much money in the sidewalk victim's bag!

Police Officer: Suddenly a man was steal a victim bag and run away. This robber will 1 year in prison because before this robber kill some people.

Robber: I don't know when I was stold money....

News Reporter: Now is Kim Ha Nul report....