Top Online Resources for English Teachers in Korea
March has started and the new school year is beginning. This is a chance for us to try and learn from the mistakes that we made last semester and grow from the experiences that we had in the classroom. I am sure that we all have goals for ourselves such as to be more organized for class, more inspiring, more energetic. Here is a list of online resources that I hope will inspire you to be whatever you hope to be as a teacher! I have collected these seven websites during the past six months that I have been teaching here in Korea. Hopefully these websites offers creative inspiration and offer some support. If there are any websites that you find useful that I have not shared, then please feel free to leave a comment below.
- There is the obvious: http://waygook.org/
This website is a MUST for Native English Teachers in South Korea. It is a forum created by foreign teachers in South Korea and has a wealth of PowerPoint’s, games, and lesson plans. If you are caught with a Korean surprise (a class that you were not planning on and have five minutes to pull something together, go here first.
2. http://mrsbaiasclassroom.blogspot.kr/
This site is a blessing for English teachers in Korea. It is created by a teacher who is currently in South Korea and she regularly posts ideas for your lessons. She is very creative and well-organized and I enjoy what seeing how she approaches the classroom. If you feel in a rut, go here to add some pizzazz to your class.
Genki English offers instructional videos, games and songs for you to incorporate into your class. The creator of Genki English definitely has a fun approach to teaching; I challenge you to channel that level of energy into your class!
This site offers many printable flash cards and worksheets. You can also customize worksheets to suit your needs directly from their site (if you are using their vocabulary).
http://mes-games.com/ This site is also connected to MES-English which has interactive flash games. I can speak from experience that these games are fun in a smaller class (less then ten students), but for a larger class I think that it would not provide the necessary interaction to keep the students attention.
Why not include story time into your lessons? Story telling is a positive way to introduce vocabulary, phonics, rhyme and sentence structure. Starfall offers an interactive and fun resource to tell stories to your students.
Speakaboos is another on-line story telling website, but it is limited in that you can only access five stories for free, so choose wisely! Speakaboos tagline is “Speakabooks ignites a love of reading in children”. They have some classics nursery rhymes such as “Humpty Dumpty” and “Jack and Jill” and themed holiday stories.
Pinterest has a lot of creative craft ideas for the classroom. The downside with using Pinterest is that if you don’t have a project or theme in mind, then you can spend a lot of precious time scrolling through the many images and links, but regardless of this I am a fan!
I hope that this list is useful for you and good luck during the new school year!