On Curriculum Design

I'm hoping to find opportunities to design "fun" curricula, centered around activities such as "acting skills" (i.e. theater arts, drama, making plays and performances) and the arts. It is also exciting to teach English by means of teaching other "subjects," i.e. teaching science class, social studies, history, even computer skills or mathematics using English as the medium of instruction.

As an example, one of the best classes I ever had that I designed myself was when I was teaching "art" to a group of 2nd and 3rd graders with low-intermediate English ability. During each class, I would pass out paper to the students and we would look at famous paintings or drawings by artists. I would teach them vocabulary: colors, shapes, ways of describing lines and moods of pictures. Then we would do exercises where students would draw their own pictures and we could discuss them: "What's that?" "It's a cat." "What color is it?" "It's blue." The kids really loved drawing, and it activated their imaginations so that talking about what was happening in English was fun and painless.

At my last hagwon job, on my last day, I decided as a sort of "farewell activity" to teach the type of debating skills class I was doing with my most advanced students, but to one of my lowest level classes. Although they were only high-beginning level students, the results were actually quite amazing. I have posted an outline of my lesson plan for that day and some video clips from the class.