Hello blog! It’s late, and as I have mandatory work tomorrow morning (hooray?) I decided to catch some additional zzz’s while I still could. That being said, some non-programming news and ideas. First, as you may or may not know, I teach English to elementary school kids in South Korea. It’s a fun and generally rewarding job as the kids slowly march off to proficiency in my native tongue. While generally fun, some younger kids can get out of control, which makes classes much less fun (for them and me) so I came up with a simple and somewhat thorough solution.
I split each class into two teams. One side is the “monster” team and the other side is the “hero” team. I then drew a stick figure with a sword and a monster (dragon, golem, giant smiley face). I gave the team who is traditionally noisier more HP (maybe 30 hp) and the hero significantly less HP (15 – 20 hp). The hero gets a sword though, so he can do more damage (probable enough premise for the students not to complain. After all, how could a tiny human have the same vitality as a huge dragon?)
Next I explained the premise to the students. What does the hero want to do? Defeat (slay, kill) the monster to get its treasure. What does the monster want to do? Eat the hero. If the kids are bad, don’t pay attention, speak in another language outside of English, archers pepper their character with arrows. This gets them quiet and self policing real quick. I continued with my lesson, having the kids read and answer questions. If they answered really well or better than the other team they can have their avatar do an action (“I breathe fire on the hero!”).
Yesterday, when the dragon team breathed fire on the hero, the hero team asked to cast a water shield. I obliged, but then pointed out that humans can’t breathe underwater and made them take 10 points of damage. It was a fun day and the students were speaking English, or trying their best to, which is really why I’m here.
Anyway, time to get going to work!
Musings and Learnings of a 30 something 