Category: Teaching

  • How I Design My Worksheets in 10 Steps

    Hello friends,

    I thought I would share my 10 step process behind how I make fun and engaging ESL elementary school worksheets!

    I use Canva for almost everything now. Sometimes if I want to do more fine-tuning or custom designs, I still have to break out my Adobe Illustrator skills, but for most purposes, Canva works just fine.

    If you’re an educator, you can verify your status and get Canva Pro for free!! Highly recommend. Once you start using it, you’ll never be able to go back.

    As an EPIK teacher, I don’t have a school ID or email, but I submitted the first page of my teaching contract instead and got approved in less than day!

    1. Start with a half page

    First, I always start with a A4 size page in landscape, then add a faint dotted line to split it in half.

    Then I stare at the blank page for at least several minutes considering what content would fit in this smaller space….

    If I can help it, I always, always try to make every worksheet a half page because I teach over 400 students and it seems a waste to be constantly printing out full size pages that they will inevitably throw away.

    Sometimes an idea I have grows too big to fit the half sheet size, and then at that point, I switch to a full A4 size page.

    2. Dust up on my English skills

    …by which I mean review key terms and expressions from the lesson. Usually I’m making a worksheet for a specific lesson in the curriculum (though not always). Obviously, it’s helpful to double check the list of vocabulary and sentences I’m trying to focus on.

    3. Secretly judge my students

    I’m kidding… sort of. I always look at the lesson goals, then reflect on what my students have been struggling with. Most of the time, I can identity a few certain words or grammar points that students consistently get wrong.

    ESL games are usually great at reviewing a breadth of key points and getting students to practice the target language comfortably, but I think its harder in general to use games to focus more in depth on the areas students have trouble in. That’s what I make the worksheets for.

    4. Ponder puzzle possibilities

    I spend a good amount of time thinking about what type of puzzle or activity would be suitable based on the topic of the lesson and my goal, whether it’s general review, spelling practice, or focus on a specific grammar point. Sometimes I’ll just whip together a simple activity the day before or same day I need it for class, but for some more complicated worksheets, I start thinking about them a few weeks before I will need to use them.

    My thought process is pretty much the same every single time.

    If the students need to review, word searches and crosswords are good, but I want to make something more unique… spelling and writing drills are good but also boring… maybe they can solve some kind of riddle or secret message, those are fun… but it can’t be too complicated because class time is short… let me see what the textbook supplementary materials look like… ahhhhh why are the textbook materials so boring….

    I ponder all the possibilities while eating lunch, during breaks between classes, or when I’m bored on the bus ride home. Then, if I can’t think of anything I like, I look at Pinterest.

    5. Consult Pinterest

    I have never been big on Pinterest, but now my eyes have been opened. As a teacher, Pinterest is the best for inspiration! There are hundreds of thousands of teaching materials online and sorting through it can be a pain, but I can easily scroll through my curated algorithm and find a few good ideas. I also follow other teachers around the world to both support them and stay on top of techniques and ideas that actually work in classrooms.

    6. Create the mechanism

    Now the fun part. Once I’ve decided what type of activity I want to do, I can design the whole thing. If it’s a puzzle, I always start from what I want the answer to be, then create the mechanism by which to solve it.

    7. Sprinkle in some storytelling

    Finishing the worksheet is a little more fun if you can provide a reason for why the students are doing it, so I try to come up with a story or premise behind the whole activity. You are a spy and decoding a secret message, or the bird is lost and needs to get home, or the world is going to explode unless you know how to spell this one specific random word!!! Or something like that.

    Some very, very simple storytelling goes a long way to make the whole activity feel more meaningful and less like a standard homework assignment.

    8. Make it pretty (and functional)

    Another fun step! I design the visual layout and make everything is readable and spaced appropriately.

    But the more important part is designing the instructions. Students, and people in general, are really bad at reading instructions. How can I communicate what to do as clearly as possible while also keeping the story intact, especially with the limited space I have? I write and rewrite instructions all the time to sound as clear and simple as possible and to try to convey more meaning in fewer words (and then the students still don’t read them).

    9. Lost in translation

    If I’m translating instructions to Korean, how can I keep the instructions clear without losing nuance? Most of the time for worksheets, translation is very simple.

    “Circle the answer.” “Fill in the blank.” These are easy.

    But for some more complex puzzles with a story-based premise, the translation involves a few more human decisions to preserve clarity and my original intention.

    I think when dealing with instructional material, translating contextual meaning is much more important than a literal word for word translation. I’m not translating some great work of literature where it may be important to preserve the author’s original phrasing. The students just need to understand what to do. This is the difference between source-oriented and target-oriented, where source-oriented translation preserves the source material as much as possible, and target-oriented prioritizes naturalness for the target reader. There is always this trade-off in translation.

    10. User testing

    User testing is essential to good design work. Luckily, I have over 400 unsuspecting test subjects at my disposal… and I don’t have to pay them! 😈

    As a teacher, everything I make inevitably gets field tested with my students. Once I’m happy with the worksheet, I print it and use it in my lessons. Then I can see how students respond and make any adjustments before publishing on my website.

    As they say, good design always starts with solving a problem, not just making things pretty (although I think this is a very essential last step). I hope this quick insight into my thinking process was valuable to you, or at least interesting!

    Love,

    B

  • No-prep Advanced English Games

    Last semester, I led an English club at school for teachers and faculty who wanted to practice English!

    We met every Wednesday at 2pm for teatime and snacks. For about an hour, we had English conversation practice time and played games.

    Here are some more intermediate and advanced general English games that I liked to play with the teachers or with more high level students. You can find beginner games listed in my post Emergency Beginner English Classroom Games.

    β˜… I marked my favorites/best hits with a star.

    Intermediate Games

    Alphabet Game β˜…

    A car game I played all the time as a kid. Name a category like fruits or animals. If the category is animals, take turns naming a category for each letter of the alphabet.

    When I played as a kid, we played it as a memory game where you had to list every previously said word in order before adding the next letter. For example, “A is for alligator, B is bunny, C is for cat, …” etc.

    Taboo

    I use this website to play with a group. Players take turns being the “Guesser”. The website will give a list of forbidden words to everyone expect the Guesser. They must give clues to the Guesser without using any of the forbidden words. The Guess guesses as many words as possible in the time limit.

    20 Questions

    Class game. You can choose a category like animals or foods to make it easier. One person thinks of a word, and everyone else has 20 questions collectively to narrow down what the word is and guess the word as quickly as possible. They must be Yes or No questions only.

    Advanced Games

    These games I consider advanced because they require much more vocabulary, are more free form, and encourage lots of speaking and creativity.

    Scattergories β˜…

    I play using this website. There is a time limit and the website will reveal a set number of random categories and a random letter. You can adjust the list of categories to make the game easier.

    Each player must write one word that starts with the given letter for each category. For example, if the letter is “A” and the category is “fruits,” apple and apricot would be acceptable answers.

    Fortunately, Unfortunately β˜…

    Similar to the “Yes, and” game, where one person starts a story and the next person adds to it by saying “yes, and…” But in Fortunately, Unfortunately, there’s a twist. After the leader starts the story, the next person starts their sentence with “Fortunately,…” and says a good thing that happened. Then the next person must start with “Unfortunately,…” and say a bad thing that happened. This can lead to much more interesting and dramatic stories!

    Yes No Game

    In this game, there is one person in the “hot seat.” Everyone else asks that person questions. The person in the hot seat can answer any way they wish, but they MUST NOT say the words “Yes” or “No.” Ask them questions quickly to increase the pressure and make them slip up!

    Contact

    This is a really fun car game that I’ve learned and forgotten about over and over throughout my life because the rules are complex and I haven’t had many opportunities to play. I played this game with other teachers in my English club, but it’s definitely a harder one to get started. It is a quite advanced, complicated game and is confusing even for native English speakers, but we had so much fun playing once everyone understood the rules!

    It’s been explained many times online, so I won’t repeat it here, but here’s a link to a good explanation. If you’ve never heard of this game, you might want to read a few different explanations to really understand the rules and variations. I promise, once you play and get the hang of it, it’s worth the investment.

    Hope you learned a new game with this list or were reminded of an old one! There are of course hundreds of these games online but these were the favorites from the English club last year.

    Playing these made me want to go back home and try playing with my friends. They make me think of all the ways my friends and I entertained ourselves before streaming and social media. I think we learned more about each other playing simple group games like this than doing anything else.

    Love,

    B.

  • Emergency Beginner English Classroom Games

    Here are some no-prep English classroom games that I’ve had to do on the spot when the schedule has changed up on me or there’s some extra time leftover or something unexpected happens.

    These are all beginner level, easy games for elementary school EFL students! If you want to see a list of advanced games, you can read my other post No-prep Advanced English Games.

    As a teacher it’s always good to have a few ideas on hand just in case. There are a few classics here that you probably already know, but there are also a few less common ones that have worked for me.

    I’ve sorted this list into Lesson-specific (as in can be adapted for your specific lesson that day) vs General, then into 5 minute vs 10 minute games.

    β˜… I marked my favorites/best hits with a star.

    Lesson Specific

    These games can easily be adapted for any lesson.

    5-10 minute games

    Sentence Telepathy β˜…

    This is for simple review. Secretly choose a random word or sentence from the key vocabulary and expressions of the day. Tell the students to choose a random word or sentence from the lesson and write it down in their notebook. If the one they chose matches yours, they get one point. It sounds simple, but students love trying to guess what the teacher is thinking and telling you how many points they got at the end!

    What’s Missing?

    This game is played with PPT slides usually, but if you really had no time to prep, all you need is a whiteboard. Write 10 words on the board. Have students close their eyes and count down from 3. While they count, erase one word. On 1, students open their eyes and say the missing word(s). Good as a vocabulary drill and time filler.

    Pass the Ball

    You’ll need a ball or object to pass around. There are 2 versions I play. In version 1, all students stand while passing the ball. Each student who receives the ball says the next word in a set series of words or sentence. For example, students could say days of the week in order, or months of the year, or you can make up a list of words or give them a sentence. The student who says the last word in the list or sentence is out. This version is good as a warm up or in an actual emergency if you have nothing prepped.

    In version 2, play it like musical chairs. Students pass the ball around while you play a song. When the music stops, whoever is holding the ball must make an English sentence. answer a question, or complete any task of your choice. This version requires more prep because you have to have questions/tasks for them to do.

    Hangman β˜…

    I play this if my lesson ends a bit early and we have 5 minutes left of class. I will choose a word from the lesson (or try to pick a more obscure word because the students will look at their books and guess correctly almost immediately), then play one round. If there’s time, the student who guessed the word or a volunteer can take over and lead the game. I have the student quietly write the word on a piece of paper for me first so I can check their spelling and help them run the game.

    10-20 minute games

    Minority Game β˜…

    I play this game with a slide presentation sometimes but it can easily be played just using the whiteboard. Give the students two choices (two words or two sentences from the lesson). They must choose one silently and write it in their notebooks. Then we count how many students chose each option. The students who are in the minority earn one point each round! So if the choices are “apple” and “orange,” and fewer students chose “orange,” then those are the students who win the point. This is sometimes also referred to as Nunchi (눈치) Game in Korea.

    Telephone / Whisper

    I grew up playing Telephone a lot! In Korea, it is more commonly known as Whisper. The students form a line (or several depending on class size). Whisper a secret word or phrase to the first person in the line. That student will whisper the word to the next student in line and so one until it is passed along to the last person in line. Remind students that the word is secret and so they need to whisper! Ask the last person in line to repeat what they heard out loud and see if it is the same as the original word or phrase! You can repeat with students taking turns being last in line or have a student choose the secret word.

    Charades or Pictionary

    More childhood classic games. You can choose word directly from the book to play with the students. Lessons teaching action verbs work better with Charades and lessons with more nouns in the target vocabulary list work better with Pictionary.

    General English

    These are general English no-prep time filler games. I don’t find these as useful because I’m usually teaching a very specific lesson, but they can come in handy.

    5-10 minute games

    Categories

    Super classic. Write a category such as Food, Animals, Jobs, Countries, etc on the board. Students take turns naming something that fits the categories. Anyone who repeats or passes is out.

    10-20 minute games

    Alphabet Game Variation β˜…

    There are many “alphabet games” out there. Here’s a variation I play that is a little easier for beginner level students.

    I write the alphabet out A through Z twice on the board in two different colors (for example Blue and Red). I split the class into 2 teams.

    Students take turns naming a word, any word. If a student from Team Blue says a word that starts with “A,” I erase the blue letter A. Then a student from Team Red will have a turn. If they say a word starting with “C,” then I erase the red letter C. No words should be repeated. If a student cannot think of a word, the turn will pass to the other team. The game will get harder and harder as letters disappear. The goal is to be the first team to erase all the letters.

    You can also play this game as an entire class, and lengthen the game by writing the entire alphabet out 3 or 4 times. Playing with teams tends make the students get very loud and competitive, so depending on the personality of the class and time we have, I may not play with teams.

    There are lots of lists like this out there, but these are the games that have worked best for me personally while teaching elementary students in Korea.

    A lot of variations of these games are played with themed and animated PPT slides in the classroom in Korea to make them more exciting, but with absolutely no prep in an emergency situation, they still all work! They are even fun for adults as ice breaker / team bonding games. Hope one of these ideas is useful.

    Love,

    B.

  • Songs I play to fill the extra 5 minutes

    Sometimes you teach a lesson and it’s perfectly timed the first three times you teach it, but then one class of students will fly through it and you’re left with a few extra minutes before the bell rings.

    If I have a few minutes of extra time and nothing prepared, I play a song that is related to the lesson or just a song that I know my students will enjoy (and maybe learn some English at the same time).

    Here are a couple of songs I’ve discovered myself or learned about from my co-workers that work really well for my students in Korea.

    1. Any video by Dream English

    For some reason, my kids love this guy, even the slightly older students. I think its his goofy smile and his awkward way of staring into the camera as he sings.

    This particular video is great if you’re teaching daily routines. The channel is called Dream English Kids has lots of videos that you can choose from.

    Something about these videos feels very nostalgic to me, like a PBS kids show from the early 2000’s (for those who don’t know, PBS kids is an American non-profit educational media brand).

    2. Lemon Tree by Fools Garden

    I had no idea this song was so popular in Korea. Even my kids who never speak in class can sing the chorus of this song entirely in English.

    It has been rewritten into Korean and covered various times by different Korean artists over the years, so the song has sustained its popularity. Of course, I always play the original English song for my students.

    3. Line Rider – Mountain King

    This one doesn’t have any English, so I haven’t used it much, but it’s a good one to have in mind to use during a waiting period or whenever the occasion pops up. And the kids will lock in on this once it goes up on the screen.

    4. Alphabet Dance

    Tell me why my 3rd graders love this SO much?? They are always requesting this song, and they go all in on the dance moves too.

    This is definitely better for younger students who haven’t learned what it means to be an overly self-conscious pre-teen yet. Not every student enjoys dancing, but the ones who do will dance to the fullest with no shame and make it fun for everyone in the classroom. It’s so great every time.

    5. When I Get Old by CHUNG HA and Christopher

    This is a good one for my 6th graders. They stop chatting so much and pay attention to the song lyrics, which is a welcome break for me. In this video, I like that the lyrics are in Korean and English because there are always some students who give up and stop listening if they see too much English on the screen, but the Korean translations help them out a bit more.

    6. Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary

    Another one that is a surprising hit with the kids. This is a classic song by one of the most influential folk-singing groups in American music history, so it’s not too surprising that it is still internationally recognized. But it was written in 1963, so it really is surprising that elementary students in Korea know of it too. Even if your students haven’t heard of it, they would probably still enjoy it because it’s just a nice, relaxing song. I use it for younger students when they need to chill out a little. This video has the lyrics in English and Korean!

    It’s always interesting to me to see what lands with students, particularly my elementary students in Korea. Even if they would never watch these on their own time, they still enjoy seeing it in class. Having these videos ready to pull up from time to time has really saved my life as a teacher!

    I wonder what other time-filler songs are popular among students here or around the world? Let me know if you happen to know.

    Love,

    B.

  • “Teacher Tired”

    I knew teaching was hard, but nothing could have prepared me for the special type of fatigue I’d face as a teacher. After a long day of teaching, I feel particularly drained in a way I’ve never felt. Not when I was a student athlete, nor when I was overloaded on credits in college and was pulling all-nighters, nor during my internships or when I was working up to five different jobs in NYC to piece together a salary. I mean never.

    I don’t even know how to describe this feeling. No matter how many hours I sleep, handling the kids all day wipes me out, especially when I teach certain classes with some particularly rowdy students. Maybe my personality is simply not well suited for public school teaching, but I think this is honestly a universal feeling among all teachers at some point. Here are some ways fatigue from teaching has changed my thoughts and habits.

      1. I eat better.

      It’s simply necessary. If I don’t pay close attention to my nutrition, I inevitably get sick over and over again, either from the stress of managing a classroom of energetic students all day or from the exposure to germs from yelling over the energetic students all day, every day. Luckily my school provides pretty nutritious meals for lunch. It’s also easier to get nutritious meals at an affordable price in Seoul than in NYC, but unhealthy options are just as readily available, so I still think my job has influenced my improved food choices more than simple convenience. It would definitely help to sleep more as well, but I’ve found that sleep is a harder factor to control than nutrition while I’ve been in Seoul.

      2. I value silence more.

      I used to be the type of person who filled my day with social activity and could be reenergized from a conversation with a friend, but now I need to mindfully schedule times to enjoy silence. Working in a public school all day means I only ever have maybe a few minutes of silence at a time, and even after school hours when I am working in my office, I can hear the children shouting outside my door as they play with their friends or attend their afterschool classes, many of which also take place in the public school building. Sometimes I notice the silence when I’m alone in my room at home and feel a strange overwhelming sense of appreciation for it. That’s where we’re at now.

      3. Coffee is back.

      I was an avid coffee drinker during college but after graduating I had cut back a bit. Now that I’ve started teaching, I probably consume about as much caffeine as I did during peak finals season back in college. My morning coffee ritual has become necessary to survival. It allows me to get to work and fall into a familiar routine immediately without thinking too much about what to do next, because once my classes start, my brain is switched on for at least five hours straight. I can get through a day without my morning coffee, but whenever that happens, I feel slightly off or low energy. I basically give presentations, field questions, facilitate projects and activities, think on my feet, watch the clock, make hundreds of different decisions, and manage a crowd of humans with underdeveloped brains for hours at a time every day, work that has definitely increased my caffeine dependency.

      4. I crash more often.

      I said earlier that getting more sleep would help me and this is absolutely true, because there are times when I simply crash. I fall asleep anywhere (usually at my office desk or somewhere at home) and don’t even know when it happened. This is another quirk of the job that I haven’t experienced before, but I have heard of other teachers suddenly needing ten hours of sleep a day in their first few years even if that wasn’t their regular schedule before. I totally understand this now. Something about this job causes my brain to require more sleep than before. It’s really physical exhaustion, but more mental and emotional exhaustion, so sleep is really important. The crashing problem has gotten better over time, especially if I maintain my nutrition, good sleeping habits, and emotional regulation skills, but my point is that I have never needed to pay so much attention to these things to function daily.

      5. I think several days, weeks, or even months ahead

      Curriculum planning is just like that. I do follow the YBM curriculum, but it is a bit too short to fill the whole school year, so I work carefully with several different English co-teachers to plan out the lessons for the year months in advance. The plan is constantly changing to adapt to different things that come up along the way, and planning for my winter and summer English camps is an entirely separate and even more complicated matter. Often I rarely finish a day on Friday without thinking about exactly what I have to accomplish first thing on Monday in order for a Wednesday next month to run smoothly, or something like that.

      Teachers really get all types of fatigue.

      Decision fatigue, performance fatigue, social fatigue, compassion fatigue, burnout, everything. I had a fellow teacher once tell me she feels like a clown. Every day is a performance, and just like in show business, the audience doesn’t care if you’re tired. You cannot have a low productivity day. The kids show up to class every day, government mandated.

      Compassion fatigue is one I learned about recently. It’s commonly experienced among caregivers, healthcare workers, therapists, and the like. Teachers deal with a lot of emotional labor every day: responding to student emotions and problems, reading emotions, listening intently, explaining and understanding, dealing with sudden crises. Capacity for empathy can literally run out. I’ve experienced this more as feeling emotionally numb after teaching for a while, especially if a lot happened that day. Kids fight in class (sometimes physically hitting each other), kids come to me crying, everyone needs me to explain something, everyone’s question needs individual attention, surprises come up like a mandatory training or meeting. Specifically as an EFL teacher, sometimes kids will rant to me about something while speaking entirely in Korean and I have to really lock in to catch onto what they’re saying, or sometimes I have to take over a class on my own with no co-teacher to help with translating complex instructions into Korean. That’s just the job I signed up for, but the emotional side effects have taken me by surprise at times.

      Although, when the kids are happy and excited, it does boost my mood a lot. The students’ moods and attitudes have a huge impact on my own, so good days are good, but children are so fickle, and that is also part of the emotional fatigue.

      Social pressures here do not help.

      I find it very hard to take a day off, even sick days, because of the social pressure not to, and because of the sense of responsibility to the students, and because the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education Coordinator strongly advised us to never take days off during the school year and to consider the burden on other teachers when taking sick days. It seems to be a very complicated process to get substitute teachers here, so if someone is sick, other teachers often pick up the slack on top of their regular load.

      Another stress point I was not prepared for was the amount of pressure teachers feel from parents, in a way that I think is different from public schools in the U.S. Parents have a huge influence over schools and teachers, and even though I personally do not interact with parents, I still can feel their influence creeping into school policies and politics. This limits the way we can manage classrooms, and even classroom management strategies that seem super light and acceptable to me as an American feel more restricted.

      Now it seems like I have only complaints, but most of the time it’s not too bad, and as the native speaking English teacher on staff I have it way easier than my co-workers in many respects. I do feel that teaching is every bit as rewarding as they say. I’m just also saying that the teaching fatigue is on a different plane in a way I really didn’t expect. It’s like my life has reorganized more around recovery to keep me going just one more day. I realize that may sound similar to any 9-5 job, but I do think this is truly a different type of tired that is unique to teaching, hence the term “teacher tired.” Wish me luck this week.

      Love,

      B.