TV In The Classroom

"Teacher, Teacher.... let's watch 피니와 퍼브 (Pini wa Peobeu)"


My 5/6 grade class wanted to watch TV shows on Friday. Perfect! I wanted to show them TV shows in that day's lesson. We'd just gone over I/You/He,She, It, etc.  and the 5 Ws (who, what, where, etc. plus how) and what better way to have them practice the vocab and answer questions than by watching video clips? I'd actually planned to show them that Mr. Bean episode where he goes to the swimming pool, but I've been so Phineas and Ferb deprived that I quickly agreed to their request. Luckily, there's episodes on Youtube....


We watched part one of episode one (which I don't remember ever seeing before... the dialogue, it was so different from the other episodes). I thought they'd be taken aback by me playing it in English.. but they were so into it that when part one suddenly ended, there was a loud groan of sadness from the entire group.


"Teacher, Teacher... next, Pororo"


Hmm... I like Pororo. It's this Korean children's show that EVERYONE knows and loves... What could I compare it to in American TV? Hmm... I'm not sure, but it's super popular. There's even Pororo  posters in the phone shops that line the streets of towns. He's everywhere, advertising everything.


Ok, I showed Pororo in class. Two of them got excited and said, "Yes! Korean!" Ahah, I see what you did there, student. You just want to hear things in solid Korean, eh? Well... to fix that, I paused the video clip a bunch of times, asking them short questions. "Who? Who is this?" "What color is that?" It worked out pretty well, and they still got to hear Korean words. It was really helpful too because I think they now understand the word "how." I paused the clip shortly after Pororo and his friends grab a hockey stick and swing at a... a ball or fruit or something. "How?  Like this?" I imitated swinging a bat, rolling a bowling ball, tossing something in the air. They immediately understood and tried to explain the movement in the video clip. (Ah I love success moments!)


I don't remember the third show we watched, but there wasn't much time left. One kid kept listing shows to watch.... Oh, now I remember. He asked to watch One Piece next. I absolutely had to agree to this. There were only a few minutes in class left, so rather than search for episode clips, I searched for those videos of funny moments in the anime. I didn't ask any questions though because the video was in Japanese with French subtitles and somewhat crappy quality. Also, there were about 2 minutes left in class. I showed the students my Chopper key chain figurine and they said things like,  oooh, very good!


It was a nice ending to the day.


'Til next time,


-Shirby