Geez man. I thought you was a English teacher!
It’s “A man”…sheesh 
“Hard core” doesn’t mean “no fun”. Perhaps it means having higher standards and expecting students to meet to those standards.
I certainly don’t have students memorize grammar rules. But students and teachers are held accountable for the students continued academic progress.
You should see the shocked look on parents’ faces when their child is assessed their level when they sign up with me. “My son finished level such-an-such at Blah-blah-blah school”. I get that all the time. In fact, I’m sure a Hess branch here in Kaohsiung is going to get an earful today after Timothy’s mom saw Timothy flounder his assessment test yesterday. 
Ranked “third in his English class” my ass.
Of course, schools are putting out a product. To call it anything else is silly. The question is “what is the quality of the product?”.
I know the situation that Durin’s Bane talks about above. I have the same situation on a weekly basis these days. DB probably has it daily though.
Still have parents beg to have their kids move up with their class. Truth is, sometimes we don’t have an appropriate class for them to go into at the time and must find a solution.
Homework, I am not sure exactly how many hours our kids spend on homework, but I am going to guess about 4 hours a week. If they don’t do it, I won’t fail them… they’ll do that all by themselves.
I don’t put a lot of faith in assessment tests, because they only reflect what you are doing in your school. People do different things in different schools and have different means of assessing their students. So the test you give to assess the students going into a particular level reflects your program, not always the students
Agreed, though the assessment tests I use are pretty basic in nature. Nothing fancy, just testing basic knowledge. Just to get an idea of what they know so I can put them in the right class. I usually give new students a week or so to make sure I placed them where they need to be.
No, no I don’t do stuff like that. If that is what they are doing then I would most certainly NOT label my schools “hard-core”.
There are “hard core” schools that don’t berate the children for their mistakes. The last such school I observed, a Tomcat branch, had a positive attitude in the classroom, but it was run very “no nonsense” nonetheless.
I object to the abusive nature of some of the schools and would never recommend them to a parent, but the one I observed most recently is a different story. I think things could be done better, but it does have merit. It focuses on a different goal than the chain schools I’ve worked at.
I thought I’d just defend the owners/teachers who don’t go abusing their kids in the class but still run a “harc core” curriculum.
if you are interested in motivation, and especially ways to promote self-motivation, take a look at dornyei’s “motivational strategies in the language classroom”. not too long, and lots of info.
students will do better when there is some accountability.
Muzha Man, I was going by the excerpt that was put up by the OP. There are expectations and I do my best to balance out giving my students choices rather than being rigid and running my class like a military camp. During our teacher’s week this year, we had a chance to watch Barbara Colorosa’s “Winning at teaching… without beating your kids.” One of the (many) wonderful things she said was that teachers should not be brick walls (rigid and strict) nor jellyfish (too laidback with no structure), but spines…flexible, but solid. My expectations are high for my students. I admit this openly. Because I know that they can do it. It means knowing when to work with one student on each question or sentence in their work and when to say “I am confident that you can figure it out for yourself” and getting those students from the first stage of intervention to that final stage of independence.
I totally do not agree with memorization drills being the way to learn, especially with children although I am a firm believer in mnemonics…like the “-es” chant a co-worker taught me for spelling rules for pluralizing sibilants and affricates - “C-h! S-h! S-O-X!” and of course “I before E, except after C and when it sounds like ‘A’ as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’.”
I also believe in teaching by example. At first, I think I drove my principal crazy when she saw me reading a book with my students while they did their DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read). I hope she understands (if she’s reading this 
) that I am still teaching my kids…
- Free reading is a lifelong skill and hobby.
- Reading can be an experience (when I laugh out loud or gasp at something in my book, they always want to know what’s going on…and then I start to see those same kinds of strong reactions happening when they read) rather than a chore (like teachers who use DEAR time solely for them to finish their prep work while their students are otherwise occupied).
- I introduce them to new quality texts that they would never had thought of picking up themselves. Often I have had kids come up to me after I finished a long book and ask me if they could read it after me. The same kids who had (or still have in some cases) the habit of counting how many pages a book has before deciding to read it.
My DEAR book changes depending on which age group I am reading with so I can draw their interest in books that are on their reading level.
And then there’s reading aloud. This afternoon, I paused for a second to take a sip from my tea while I was reading Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary (one of my favorite books from when I was little) to my 2nd graders, and one of my students, the one who has the hardest time concentrating on his work and staying in his seat, looked up from his doodling with such a disappointed look on his face and asked me why I had stopped reading.
Damn. I got off-topic talking about reading again. Sorry. It’s Muzha Man’s fault for mentioning reading in a response to me. Muzha Man, I’m more shocked that you would doubt my beliefs in reading as an important means for learning.
To get back on topic and bring my page-long post to a point, I do not believe an English program for children can be well-rounded without including quality literature. It provides content, context for vocabulary, examples of grammar points and good writing, and lots of opportunities for discussion.
In my opinion, any school worth its salt is one gives kids access to a variety of quality literature, both in a learning context and an extracurricular one and lots of opportunities for those students to explore their learning environment through interaction. I think that’s why I like the program my school uses for the older preschoolers and the elementary school students. It teaches grammar, reading comprehension, phonics, spelling, writing, and vocabulary through quality literature.
I am more shocked that not one poster has had a go at me yet 
Ok, I will.
Four hours of homework per week. Are you evil?
Ok, I will.
Four hours of homework per week. Are you evil?[/quote]
Yeah, evil.
30 minutes a day listening to the CD’s at home… damn, it’s more than 4 hours with the workbooks and local teachers homework. I am evil. :help:
Ok, I will.
Four hours of homework per week. Are you evil?[/quote]
Yeah, evil.
30 minutes a day listening to the CD’s at home… damn, it’s more than 4 hours with the workbooks and local teachers homework. I am evil. :help:[/quote]
Yeah, like they do that.
Actually, I forgot about the workbooks. That’s my boss’s department. Takes too much time checking everything and gets in the way of teaching.
I check workbooks in class and it helps me where they need some coaching while we’re both right there in the class. I can also see if there’s a pattern of a problem emerging so I can do a ‘freeze’ and go over the concept that’s causing trouble. Hard to keep that relevance and intervention going if it’s not even you checking their errors or comprehension…then again, it brings to question the following:
What exactly are they doing in their workbooks that’s so tedious to even be a useful part of your teaching? Are they expected to simply fill in pages without having any practicality to what you’re doing…aka the aforementioned shut-up-and-color work?
For grade 2 - I have four workbooks to get through - phonics, spelling, grammar, and a workbook that practices these skills along with reading comprehension and vocabulary extensions. The trick is picking only what is necessary and what can be used to review or reteaching any difficult points and what can be sacrificed. It’s only a small part of my lessons, but I do check each and every one of them, multiple times sometimes if there are errors to be corrected.
Maybe if it’s such a chore, you could attempt to reason (I know idealistic thinking on my part) with your laoban to use more useful materials that aren’t so time-consuming and take away from your teaching. This all goes back to the topic that classwork (and homework) should be useful and challenging, but not take away from the actual learning process.
[quote=“ImaniOU”]I check workbooks in class and it helps me where they need some coaching while we’re both right there in the class. I can also see if there’s a pattern of a problem emerging so I can do a ‘freeze’ and go over the concept that’s causing trouble. Hard to keep that relevance and intervention going if it’s not even you checking their errors or comprehension…then again, it brings to question the following:
What exactly are they doing in their workbooks that’s so tedious to even be a useful part of your teaching? Are they expected to simply fill in pages without having any practicality to what you’re doing…aka the aforementioned shut-up-and-color work?
For grade 2 - I have four workbooks to get through - phonics, spelling, grammar, and a workbook that practices these skills along with reading comprehension and vocabulary extensions. The trick is picking only what is necessary and what can be used to review or reteaching any difficult points and what can be sacrificed. It’s only a small part of my lessons, but I do check each and every one of them, multiple times sometimes if there are errors to be corrected.
Maybe if it’s such a chore, you could attempt to reason (I know idealistic thinking on my part) with your laoban to use more useful materials that aren’t so time-consuming and take away from your teaching. This all goes back to the topic that classwork (and homework) should be useful and challenging, but not take away from the actual learning process.[/quote]
I don’t teach the workbook. My boss does. I teach the same things that are in the workbook because we have a textbook that goes right along with it. I don’t bother with the workbook. I use a notebook for that and they have to write words and sentences five times for homework. Those are checked quickly and if there are errors, they do it over again for homework on top of the newly assigned homework. The quicker they get things right, the higher the reward. And rewards are immediately given.
If I had to go through each kid’s workbook during class time, I wouldn’t have enough time to teach. I teach the first hour and the boss teaches the last half-hour.
No. No. I think you misunderstood, or my point was not made clearly. I know reading is extremely important to you, as is inspiring students both by the example of your passion for literature, and with entertaining material. That’s why I was confused that you would endorse the hard-core cram schools in which reading is taught as just one more set of skills.
DB, good to hear that you wouldn’t call your school hard-core. I think we all agree that accountability, standards, and discipline (in addition to not caving in to parents) are essential ingedients in a good program. But such things do not have to be matched with a martinet-style of instruction to get good results.
i have little game i play call “the phonics palate”. i put a "b, f, c, at, ox " on the board. we review the sound of each. then two students come up to the board and race to spell the word i call out, choosing parts from the “palate”. i say “fox” they look up at the board and choose f and ox.
i found out before this that kids were just memorizing the spellings rather than the word parts. this helped!
it’s weird why local run bushis don’t emphasis phonics and are hardcore bent on KK and worse, rote mem of vocabulary.
Ok, I will.
Four hours of homework per week. Are you evil?[/quote]
Yeah, evil.
30 minutes a day listening to the CD’s at home… damn, it’s more than 4 hours with the workbooks and local teachers homework. I am evil. :help:[/quote]
Yeah, like they do that.
Actually, I forgot about the workbooks. That’s my boss’s department. Takes too much time checking everything and gets in the way of teaching.[/quote]
Yeah, well, the parents have to sign off on it. Sometimes the kids try some fraud on the sigs. , but for the most part, they do listen. If they don’t listen and fail, well, it’s their fault. Thing is, if they don’t read the books or listen to the CD’s then they can’t complete the workbook.
I don’t go that far. Part of teaching and learning is putting it there in front of them and letting them decide what they’re going to do with it. Just like the real world.
[quote=“Maoman”]Just noticed this blog earlier today. The author had some interesting (and accurate, IMHO) observations on foreign-run buxibans. As someone who has recently taken over one of these schools, along with its “hard-ass” programme, I was very interested to read his take on things:
[quote]These schools have a simple no non-sense curriculum structured around sentence patterns, core-vocabulary, and constant pronunciation coaching…
Unlike the big chains, these schools require correct pronunciation and have teachers who can tell the children how to correct their pronunciation. Also, unlike the big chains KK isn’t taught at HFRBs. Instead phonics is taught the way we learned it back home: i.e. They learn about long and short vowels, basic phonics rules like “when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking”, and so forth.
One other major difference between HFRBs and other schools is that at HFRBs, the kids have to do their homework. If they don’t do it, they fail. Yes, kids actually can fail at these schools. Also, the teacher has to grade books and listen to tapes after class to ensure that the students are doing their work correctly. All of this work is unpaid.[/quote][/quote]
Very cool. I think ours would qualify as hardcore, but its tough when the parents don’t give a crap. I’ve expelled kids for cheating repeatedly, then had other parents complain. Then again, I’m in Bubbaville, Taiwan where the average IQ is somewhere between a Pringles (sour cream and onion) and a cockroach.
I am a bastard as far as homework goes, and get very little parental support. In one case this week, I’ve gone so far as to simply ban the kid from the class until his homework is done (its a passive agressive challenge thing with this one). My wife was worried that his parents would pull him, and I said “Fine, he’s holding up the class. Either he shapes up, or he’s expelled. It will cost us far more in lost students if we slow the class down for one kid.”
And yeah, I require perfection, and don’t simply tell the kid the correct answer–they have to think and look in the book .