Successes of the week

First, I'll explain the video.

This little girl (God bless her heart, I have no clue what her name is) loves coming to English class. She's in first grade, and she's super smart. She's also a little quirky.
I have dolls, which I occasionally use when I'm teaching. I found them in a storage bin, and I thought they would be a good way to entertain the 1st and 2nd graders and also to occasionally annoy the other classes. They work, to a greater or lesser extent.
Anyways, the point of the video is that she saw them on my desk and started doing this skit with these two characters. I have no clue what she's saying. I think I heard the words "mother" and "spoon" and "I don't want to." Basically, I thought it was pretty cute, and it's a good segway (is that not a word?) into the main topic: Winter Vacation.

These first 3 weeks of winter vacation (there are 5 or more, total) are not what you'd think. Each week, a different group of grades gets to come into class for an hour and a half a day and learn English. This is something that they (their parents) can sign up for. Lucky them. This past week I had the first and second graders.
I was given the task of coming up with all the material on my own, and I decided to base each lesson upon different episodes of Spongebob Squarepants, as kids seem to like it out here.

Success #1: Meow Mix
I don't know if you realize it or not, but each language has it's own set of onomatopoeia. So, one of the words that I decided to teach them on Wednesday was "meow" (which, in Korean, is "ya-owng"). I think on that day I was teaching stuff like "drink, eat, jump, drive" and some nouns as well, and I had no clue how to fit in "meow." Then, I thought of the Meow Mix commercial. So, after teaching all the other words, I threw this on the tv and just let it play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JuVHCJVYf4&feature=related
The first graders went berserk. The second graders were pleasantly amused, but wow, the first graders were going crazy over it. You would not believe how many times they asked me to play that video over and over again.
Regardless, now everyone is well aware that cats in America say "meow." (I have a bad feeling that's the only thing anyone's gonna remember from this past week.)

Success #2: This guy

I needed to teach them some adjectives: scary, dark, and dumb. So, I went online and collected a bunch of images, and just threw them up on the screen and asked the kids if the images (or people in them) were scary, dark, or dumb. Everyone is now completely aware of what dumb means, thanks to this classic shot. (type in "dumb look" on google images and this should come up)

Success #3: Don't ______!
Korean attaches "don't" onto the end of the verb, rather than how we do it. Both ways are pretty simple (I think our way's a bit easier to understand, but not by much), so I thought it would be a good idea to teach this concept to them.
I taught it on Tuesday. On Thursday, when I was about to start playing the video for the day, one of my students said "Ryan Teacher, don't stop!" He meant that he didn't want me to pause the video and ask them questions about it. It really makes me happy when a student uses something I taught and applies it to a real-life situation.

Success #4: "Teacher, Patrick is dumb."
The little girl who did the puppets told me this after Patrick (one of the characters on the show) did something really stupid on the TV. She told me this on two separate occasions, actually. Before this week, she didn't know Patrick's English name, the word "dumb", or probably even how to use "is" correctly. So when she told me that, I turned to her, smiled really big, and said, "Yeah, I know." It made me so happy because I hadn't asked a question or even paused the video. It was just something she wanted to say. It's one of those teaching moments I won't soon forget.