Grade 4 Days of the Week Mafia Game

I played Mafia with my 4th-graders today, for their speaking period of Lesson 13: It's Sunday!

It's a super simple game, where there are sets of four for each day of the week, and several mafia paper slips depending on the class size. Students pick up game card, memorize it, and walk around the classroom practicing their key expressions:

What day is it today?
It's _____________.

Students who are the mafia have to lie and pretend they also have a days of the week card. When four students with the same card find each other, they go to the teacher and reveal their card on the count of three.

Students whose four cards match all get stamps. Groups where a mafia member managed to infiltrate successfully - only the mafia student gets a stamp. If a group has multiple mafia members, it's a draw and nobody wins.

I've played this game with my fifth and sixth graders before, and they're much better at maintaining a poker face and lying. These fourth graders - their eyes light up when they pick up a mafia card.

I'm telling you, no finesse at all.

Time: 5-6 mins each round (we played two rounds)

Dinosaurs Galore

Every Wednesday I do a segment on the school television for ten minutes. It goes by the cringe worthy name of Fun Fun English With Stella Teacher. To be fair, if I had naming credits, I probably wouldn't have fared much better. Wake Up Wednesday. Weekly Wednesday. Live! with Stella. Good Morning Suan. Good Morning Korea.

How very pretentious of me.

Fun Fun English With Stella Teacher suddenly doesn't sound so bad.

Last week, I read If The Dinosaurs Came Back by Bernard Most to the students, and issued the challenge of coming up with an original idea to add to the story. 

Today, we chose the top ten submissions and the students were given a little stationery prize. 

Here are some of the artistic ones.

Grade 6 Class Contest Activity

My sixth graders just finished a full day of exams last Friday, and I prepared a fun lesson with minimal textbook work to break up the monotony. The class was split in 6 groups of 5 so they could compete evenly.

This is the worksheet they have to fill out. Each group member has to be the representative for one category; they send out their teammate to compete with another team. It's all about strategy.

And here are the game slides:

The kids had so much fun that getting stamps didn't even cross their minds, which is super rare.

For my 6-1 class, we finished early, and thought it would be fun to find out who the arm wrestling champion was.

Hint: it wasn't me. 

Also, I'm left-handed. I wasn't going easy on them.

What did I learn from this class?

1. Creative classes are time-consuming to prepare, but they really do pay off.

2. I need to start lifting weights.

Birthday, Epik High, and Basketball Weekend

It was a glorious weekend.

Friday Dec.4th, 2015

Birthday dinner for Rimando at Pan Asia in Nampo area, which was all decked out in Christmas lights. I would have taken more pictures, but I didn't want to look like a tourist. Plus my hands were cold. Here's a lopsided one anyways:

The fried rice was kinda salty, but not bad. I would gotten a nicer picture if I didn't have to follow Rimando's cardinal rule of no pictures until after two bites. 

We went to the Thursday Party in Jagalchi afterwards where I failed miserably at darts, but improved significantly at beer pong. Cheers~

Saturday

Paying 112,000 won for my first K-pop concert in Korea was completely justifiable. Epik High makes great music, and they were awesome live. I actually remember some of their songs from high school days, and was able to hum along even though I didn't know the lyrics.

Our tickets!

 

The stage

 

Tablo

Fanboying

They got a good picture though.

First song and I know it yay!

Last song encore! Also worth mentioning, my slightly creepy zooming in on Tablo's adorable daughter Haru, perfectly timed to the "you" of  Mariah Carey's All I want for Christmas is You.

Afterwards, we all trooped over to SOL in KSU for a couple slices of the best pizza in Busan before heading home.

Sunday

Didn't do much in the morning except paint my nails and stretch while skyping my parents. I met up with some friends to play basketball later. We tried out a court near Busan National University of Education. It's located by the Oncheoncheon river, and a couple of my students saw me and hollered "Stella teacher!" which made me feel like a rock star. 

After the game, we went to the B.B.Q restaurant in Dongnae with the super thick-cut pork belly, where I saw another one of my fifth graders.

Basketball family

 

Gotta do those stretches

 

Protagonist of the party

May be useful blackmail material in the near future. With that said, sorry Alex.

It was a glorious weekend indeed.

Friday Afternoon Class Nunchi Game and Angry Birds Family Feud

Another quiet morning with no classes; it's exam day for the 5th and 6th graders today. Although, I do have a 3rd grader class at 11:30, and three afternoon ones later.

For my two lower level classes, we're playing the Class Nunchi Game.

How to play:

We're reviewing days of the week and holidays, so this activity gets the kids reading and speaking. We start with the students sitting one corner. For this slide, the first 3 students would have to stand up and say Saturday!

If this slide is up, the next 2 students have to stand up and say Merry Christmas!

Next 2 students say Happy Halloween!

 I added in some Korean holidays too. 1 student would stand up to say Peppero Day! for this slide.

Any student that makes a mistake would be out. We go up and down the rows so that everyone is playing in order.

To make sure the whole class is concentrating, when this slide goes up everybody has to stand up and say Happy Birthday!

I have about 50 slides prepared, so I'm hoping to play several rounds with the last 7 students standing winning candy for each round. Hopefully it'll turn out well.

For my high level class of 4th and 5th graders, we're playing an updated version of Angry Birds Family Feud. I added general questions such as these:

And also, the occasional one to troll them:

Off to teach my 3rd graders about weather now.

Serene Boredom

Thursday, 1:42 pm

Today was a good day. My grade 4 classes this morning were all cancelled due to it being exam day for 3rd and 4th graders.

I spent the morning reading, and I finished Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk. I hated it. The short stories were tedious. There was no character development, narrative complexity, or relationship between the stories. The first one about the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival was a sad ploy utilizing nudity and shock value to coerce you into continuing the book, which got progressively more dull.

My classes for tomorrow are also cancelled, except for the afternoon ones, for which I'm already prepared for. I plan to use tomorrow morning to lesson plan for next week.

Next Tuesday, I will be doing a presentation on children books for the Reading Club to encourage my 5th and 6th grade students to read more English books. I haven't fully decided on which ones yet, but I compiled a short to-read list books for myself as well. I will be spending this afternoon catching up on children literature and enjoying my coffee.

List

Artemis Fowl (re-reading it)
Number the Stars
The Graveyard Book
The Mysterious Benedict Society
The Box Car Children

Birthday Weekend

I turned 24 this Monday, and celebrated with the new family I found in my awesome friends. Despite having eaten huge Thanksgiving feasts the previous two nights, I was ready to celebrate with more good food and wine. On Sunday, we met up at Gwangan station at 7:15 to head on over to Table49, where I already made a reservation.

Table49 is an Italian bistro. The food is really good, but the price is definitely steep. I guess that's what happens when you eat western food in Korea at a beach location. 

Curse you, Michael.

3,2,1...model face!

Then we headed over to a little cafe for some cake, coffee, and desserts.

Monday was the actual day, and my co-teachers were thoughtful enough to remember and wish me a happy birthday. They also got me the holidays edition of the Busan city Starbucks mug, which I wanted but was too cheap to buy for myself.

This is what the mug would look like, if you unrolled it into one flat piece. 

(photo credits to google)

They took me to eat Korean street snacks after school, at a cozy home style restaurant run by middle-aged ladies.

That night, I met up with the girls for a late dinner and drinks at Celtic Tiger in Seomyeon. I expected to have a nice meal with my friends, and go dutch. That would be it, and I would be perfectly happy. But my amazing friends not only treated me, they surprised me with gifts and cake too.

Oh and the food was yummy too.

I'm definitely guilty of taking my friends for granted sometimes. Sometimes I forget that it's important to be kind, generous, and forgiving all the time - not just when I'm in a good mood. I resolve to be a better friend from now on, for always.

To be honest, I never really liked celebrating my birthday that much. But it was really nice to have friends who care making a fuss over you, and telling you "thank-you for being born". With no sarcasm, mind you. I feel extremely lucky this year, for the friends I have and the people I love. Thank-you friends, for being so loving and so lovable.