Grading *sigh*
So all before my other co-teacher did the grading since they had to write English and Korean. Then I would go through and make note of all their mistakes and let them know about it. Hopefully, so they’ll learn from it.
Now I took over the grading and allow my new co-teacher to help. I can care less about the translation in Korean. It’s English class not English-Korean class. I grade on the English alone and so does my new co-teacher.
Today I gave a test to 6-1 which happens to be the best of the two six grade classes. Going through their work, my co-teacher grades easier than I do. If they make a mistake I just can’t over look in spelling or whatever that’s a half a point gone. You only can get 10 anyways.
As I was going through I have 8 kids that need to retest out of 21/22 kids. Yeah almost half I know. But some completely gave up and just wrote Korean. Again this is English class, Korean is going to get you nowhere with me. Some wrote things that made no sense at all. It’s getting to the point my mood went down while grading. I wanted to cry. I went through these words and sentences more than 20 heck even 50 times in the past week. They had to write it and everything. YET….YET they still cannot spell wash or special?! Really?! I can’t help them if they don’t want to be helped.
Granted I have some kids that aced the test. Heck their Korean translation was right on. I don’t know Korean that well if at all still. I wouldn’t even try to hold a conversation right now. I need to work on that. Anyways, the Korean translations are already on my worksheet thanks to the previous co-teacher so I can check.
I just get frustrated seeing the same mistakes time and time again. Forgetting to capitalize, capitalizing in the middle of the sentence for no reason, no punctuation marks, and etc. I’ve never seen so much red on a piece of paper in my life.
“Welcome to my house.” turns into “Wellcome to The my hose” or one of my favorites “W _ _ _ _ _ _TO MY Ho_ _ _ _” This is not a guessing game and why are there so many capital letters? Then there’s how “You can study here in the bedroom.” becomes “you stare hear and the bathroom"
Or like with my fifth graders:
How is "There’s a table, a chair, and a lamp in the living-room.” turn into “Their is table and chair and lamp and living-room.” ? Like really? Or “There’s a table and stove in the kitchen.” suddenly turns into “There’s a stove in the table and the kitchen.” I talked to the fifth graders today. Some were like “ah….Sorry teacher!” They saw their mistakes when they got back their books.
Monday I’m going to have another talk with my sixth graders. I’m not doing this to help myself with English, it’s my first language. It’s to help them. I’m doing this because I care that they know at least the basics. Especially since sixth graders graduate soon. I feel like it’s a never ending battle. If they don’t care about English, it feels like they don’t care about me. Then it’s like what was the reason for me being way over here away from my family and friends to teach kids that rather stare at the ceiling and misspell everything than to pay attention for a minute. Or better yet pretend they understand and then fail.
You can repeat what I say, yet you can’t respond correctly when I ask a question that we just went over? They can write what’s in front of them, but call out a word their brains shut down. What is this mess? From a person who has studied multiple languages I’ve never seen this or done it.
Something has to give. I can’t keep this up. If I don’t correct their mistakes, they’ll think it’s ok to do and never improve. If I continue they might get worse. I don’t know. Has me feeling a bit blahish now.
Anyways until next time.