As I've said in my last few posts, TaLK has been keeping me as busy as a bee, so I have been either too busy or too tired to update this blog as often as I would like, but I can say I'm happy the program is run like this. We are learning a lot of teaching skills that we can use while our tenure as TaLK scholars. But enough of that. Time to talk about what we actually did this week.
I mentioned our practicum, or our lesson plan demonstration. On Monday, we had our first Practicum Class, where we prepared our own lessons and presented them to our class. We basically pretended we were teaching a class. This practicum was an 8-minute presentation. I practiced my practicum before, so I was confident that I would be able to do it.
Monday morning, the cafeteria was dead. There were NOT a lot of people because the night before, people were finishing up and perfecting their lesson plans. I feel for those people because most of the scholars had no experience teaching before, so some people were constantly revising their lesson plan. We had a regular lecture in the morning, but the next class was lesson prep, where we made materials for our class because w weren't allowed to use technology unless it was to print out our lesson plan. Personally, I think that the lesson prep was fun. We were all drawing and coloring and making things. Since we're teaching elementary schools, I felt like I returned to that state of mind and it helped me a lot.
The practicums began during the next class period and I was lucky enough to go first. But let me tell you how it happened. During the prep class, our practicum teacher, Joseph, gave us all chocolates as a late Valentine's day gift. BUT! There was a twist. There were slips of paper that had numbers on them. Those numbers determined the order we went in. I originally pulled 10 and then I traded for 6. Then, near the end of our practicum prep, Joseph asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to be first. I proudly volunteered as tribute. Better to be first, in my opinion.
Anyway, for my practicum, I had to do a short activity for first and second grade kids involving prepositions and I prepared a chant to teach my "students" and went through it. I prepared pictured to help facilitate. I think it went well, overall. we received evaluations about our performances. That day, my favorite practicum lessons were from my friend Saya, who did a lesson for kindergarten kids, and from Elaine, another classmate who prepared another class for a kindergarten class as well. I just realized that both my favorite lessons were for kindergarten. What does that say about me?
Moving on.
We all had lunch before doing the rest of the practicum lessons. We finished our practicums early, but we couldn't run off to freedom. We still had a class to go to afterwards on Korean Culture. I felt really sleepy, but I managed to stay awake for the presentation because it was pretty interesting. We were taught about the Lunar New Year, Seollal, in Korea. It's very important and pretty much every store is closed for Seollal. People head home and get together to greet the new year. We were taught how to greet the family properly. Women in hanbok (traditional Korean garb) showed us how to bow. Women bow with their right hand over the left, and for men it's the left hand over the right. For funerals, the hands are reversed. Interesting, no? The culture is very intricate.
After the Korean culture class, we all rushed off to dinner and ate our heats out. Chef, man, Chef. He seems to know what we're thinking. Always the right meal. Anyway, after dinner, we went to Korean class. I was dead tired, but Korean class has a way of getting me all hyped up for no reason. We learned about... wat for it... prepositions! Yes, they came back to haunt me, but this time I wasn't the one presenting. Kekeke. Anyway, we learned a little song to remember the basic Korean prepositions and played a few games and I got a twix bar for being awesome. JK. But I did get a twix bar. I gave it away though. I'm not a fan of twix. I don't like wafers.
Anyway, That's all I'll add for now. I'll post again about the rest of my week and my second practicum. Until then, see you.
Cheers~!
P.S. I have added a few new pictures to the photo album. Click on the link to the right.
No comments:
Post a Comment