Today I started implementing a new punishment system, since the way I was doing it before obviously wasn't effective enough for the 6 year olds. Now, instead of giving stars for being good or answering a question (1 star = 1 sticker at the end of class) and X's for being bad (3 X's is a severe punishment like take them to the hall and lecture them, and 1 X is minus 1 star). Now I am giving out stickers immediately when they do something to deserve them, I take a sticker away if they are misbehaving, and if they are blatantly misbehaving or ignore my instruction I take off a sticker and send them to the corner to stare at the wall for about 2 minutes. If that happens twice and they are still misbehaving I send them to another teacher's class (the kids absolutely hate that). Today was my first day implementing this strategy, it worked beautifully in my 7 year old classes, though they weren't too bad to begin with, but my more hyper 7 year old class was just peachy today, and I only sent two kids to the corner. We finished all our scheduled book work 20 minutes early and played games the rest of the time, which was a lot of fun, and made me feel really good.
My 6 year old class I had a lot of kids going to the corner, a couple of repeat offenders, and I sent (carried is more like) one kid to another teacher's classroom when he wouldn't stop hitting another student, and I had already had him in the corner twice... (Evan is really smart, but he's such a trouble maker!) They weren't perfect, but my countdown (from 10, 5, or 3, depending on what I want) is a lot more inspiring now, and by the end of the class I hadn't wanted to rip my hair out once, which is an improvement from the average day with the 6 year olds. I definitely need to stick with this routine, I think I need to make a few changes to my teaching style still, get little games / songs going in between book work, but I am trying to stay on schedule with the work they are scheduled to do, and I don't have time to do much of that... Anyway, I think the kids will be better at listening to me after a few days of this punishment strategy, and I might be able to keep them organized enough to have time to do more fun things between work.
The head foreign teacher is observing me next wednesday, which is a bit unfortunate because I would like a little more time than 2 and a half weeks with my classes before my teaching is analyzed by a superior.. But it isn't that big of a deal, it's more to help me improve than anything. You have to be really bad to get fired I hear, I'm not worried about that at all. They just don't offer you a contract renewal at the end of the year if they don't like your teaching style by then.
Below are a few of my photos from the field trip to Hwa Soon
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