[Heidi Kwalk]

Hey Jimmy, remember Korean written language is all phonetics. If you scroll up a few posts in this thread, you can see Gerlinda's post about her idea to teach her students how to read Korean. She also has a Youtube video link to help you learn letters with movements/dancing. Once you know how to read, it will be much easier to learn the language. And there are those Korean dramas... on Netflix too. I recommend Mr. Sunshine which was a huge hit in 2018. It is supposed to be a historical drama but the plot where the main character--Korean slave boy/or a lowborn-- comes back to Korea as a US officer during the time of late 1800s to early 1900s is so highly unlikely--more like impossible, it bothered me a lot. But it was entertaining nonetheles, I thought. A good way to learn a language--with entertainment. 

As for Korean K-pop culture and their phenomena world wide, I just don't get it. Maybe I am just too old to appreciate it. 🙂  It looked like they're more of a huge teenage girls following.

[Heidi Kwalk]

I love your idea for this lesson. Hangul is all phonetics--a set of what we could call consonants and a set of vowels. Put the sounds together, and voila! You are reading Korean.  I tell my friends sometimes that I could teach them how to read Korean in 30 minutes! They won't know what they are reading, but they will be able to pronounce the syllables. The movement that Professor Jung-Kim showed us to go with the "letters" is a great activity for students who need those movements to help them learn. Students will feel accomplished and motivated for knowing how to read a whole different language!

[Heidi Kwalk]

Tiffany, I already told you over our lunch on one of our Saturday seminars that I used your sijo to teach what a "twist" is. Thank you for that. It really helped my students understand what a "twist" could look like in a sijo. We also use Time for Kids in our class. What an interesting idea to have students write a sijo summarzing an article. That would be so different than writing a paragraph summary of an article. 

[Heidi Kwalk]

Hi Kim, 

I had to really think about how to teach this form of poetry to my students, too. I also used past winners sijo as a mentor text for their poems. After reading about ten winning sijos with my students, this is how I had my students approach it. Instruction: 1) first line is introduction to the scene; vivid image of a place/setting of the poem; 2) Zoom in on the scene as if you are using a magnifying glass to focus on one specific thing; or draw your readers attention to something else in the scene; 3) lastly, do something that the readers are not expecting--like a surprise!  And as in all writing, I told them to write about something they know well or something in their heart right now.  A sijo scholar might frown at the way I taught the form but based on what my students produced, I feel like they got it!

[Heidi Kwalk]

Hi Brenda-Jean, I totally agree with you in that it sounds so contemporary when you read the English translated version of sijo. However, reading the original Korean version, the words used for say "government official," is the ancient word for the "government service exam" in ancient China we learned about earlier in our seminar. I think translations--especially from one language with the culture so different than the translated culture-- can very well muddy the meaning and setting. 

[Heidi Kwalk]

I have not heard of the so-called "low born" or the "commoner" status people of Korea referred to as "slaves" until very recently. It bothered me at first but when I think about it, it is what it is. This class of people did not have any means to move up the social stratus. They are in fact bound by inherited status to work for the lord of the household--the aristocratic status.  When studying slavery in America, this would serve as a good source to compare and constrast the enslaved people and their status in society. 

[Heidi Kwalk]

This is a very well organized, comprehensive, and reliable and respectable website--well, it is Columbia University's site after all! I love that such prestigious university's site has such treasure trove of resources dedicated to the educators of history. I am wondering if this is a trend in the field of history in general. That is, history  scholars realize  that the way history has been taught in the past is just not working. I have seen at least a couple of articles in the last year about the decline of history majors in colleges. Are history scholars and scholars of education, are they realizing the best way to impact the history understanding and history education of the future is to impact the school teachers and provide them with the best tools, resources and training?  If that is the case, I believe they are on the right track!

[Heidi Kwalk]

Thank you for sharing SHEG website. It is highly respected website and I knew that SHEG has great resources for incorporating primary sources for US history lessons but I did not realize they also had world and ancient history resources. Sam Wineburg the researcher behind this resource also has numerous books out including Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts and more recently Why Learn History. He also has a twitter account @samwineburg and tweets history education related information out there. 

[Heidi Kwalk]

This website is very user friendly, especially for my 4th/5th graders. It is readable and the format is attractive with images to engage young students, too. I also like the list of European explorers at the bottom of the page, all of whom are in our explorers unit. My only concern in the source. Whose website is this? Is it reliable?  Perhaps this will make for a good sourcing excercise for the students. Students could also use this website to verify facts with number of other resources about Marco Polo. 

[Heidi Kwalk]

Hi Kim, 

When I was having my students write sijo for the sijo poem competition, I exchanged a few emails with the contact person at Sejong. She told me that they are revamping the website for the next year's competition. So, it looks like we will have more improved website next year. I had to submit all my students' poems one by one for them because I did not want them using their email addresses to submit their poems as my students are young. It was rather time-consuming to do it that way which is why I gave them feedback about it. As mentioned in my previous post, I am planning to teach sijo every year and have my students participate in the competition. Looking forward to nxt year and hoping I don't have to spend so much time uploading my students' poems. 

[Heidi Kwalk]

What a great website and full of resources to teach about Asia! The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan will be on my lessons plan for next year. Silk Road is a  topic  that does relate directly to 4th and 5th grade. It is hardly mentioned in the program we use and this resource can be a valuable resource to go with that lesson. Additionally, resources on China can also be used during the Age of Exploration and discussions about how Marco Polo impacted the Age of Exploration; resources about India on the website also can be used as the European explorers were seeking a route to India as well. 

[Heidi Kwalk]

Marcos, I too have watched this movie on Netflix. I thought it was very much a westernized version of a horror movie or as Koreans might call it in Korean, a "ghost story."  And for those who did not watch the movie, I do not mean "westernized" movie as in cowboys and Indians. What I mean by "westernized" version of a scary story is that the idea of zombies shown in the movie is more a western culture. There were a lot of horror movie cliches, probably purposefully done. Their intended message of the movie is clear though. Koreans like many other Asian culture value family unity and  respect for older generation. In this modern Korean society, the long standing traditional Korean values are fading as modern life style with modern technology push aside the traditional values of family unity. Koreans also traditionally respect nature. The film highlights the environmental damages in current affairs; this is done subtly by showing the newsfeed on the internet that the main character looks at in his office in the scene where he's eating his lunch at his desk.  Perhaps this "westernized" version was intentional by the film makers to emphasize the western/modern culture pushing aside the traditional values. For classroom purposes, students can compare and contrast the modern lifestyle between Korean and America: Korea is also a modern country. What is same and different about modern life in Korea and modern life in America. 

[Heidi Kwalk]

Thanks, Dennis! These are great for elementary school children. My students wrote a haiku at the beginning of the year.  After I learned about sijo poem at this seminar, I taught sijo form to my students and had them enter the contest. They were pretty darn good--cute! I am disappointed that no students were recognized but students sure had fun with it. I had suggested to the Sejong contact person that they should have another category for elementary schools so they are not competing with the highschoolers. She appreciated the idea but she doesn't think it will happen for at least another couple of years as they had just added the adult category just last year. 

I appreciate your link to jueju form of poetry. That one will be a new one for me to add to these repertoire of poetry forms to teach.

[Heidi Kwalk]

Chinese American Museum is located at the southern end of Chinatown in Los Angeles in 578 N Los Angeles. Its building used to be part of the firehouse building. Currently, the museum has an interesting exhibit called the Lightscape. It is a work of Nick Dong and Wu Chi-Tsung, the two Taiwanese born artists. It is a representation of Chinese landscape painting but with a modern media. The artwork incorporates lights. It is a creative juxtaposition of ancient Chinese and modern and advanced China that it is today. I think this artwork is a symbol of China itself--ancient yet modern and advanced. 

The museum has a permament collections of early Chinese Americans in the area. One of the permanent exhibit is called the Origins which shows the orgin and the rise and their struggles of Chinese-American communities through the time. The exhibit called "Journeys" shows the immigration history of the Chinese people and in particular to Los Angeles area. The exhibit explains the changes in immigration laws and events over time and how the people's lives were effected by the changes. It displays personal artifacts and personal experiences. Sung Sing Wo's General Store exhibit is an interesting exhibit. It is a recreation of the actual store that was in the Garnier Building in 1890s. This building was located there from 1891-1948. There are merchandise sold at the general store at the time such as food and clothing and furnitures. There is also an herb shop complete with the authentic Chinese herbal medicine cabinetry/little drawers. With racism around the time, Chinese had to help each other and provide for each other. 

 

 

 

[Heidi Kwalk]

I could use the image/painting of Marco Polo with the emperor in the classroom. When I use primary source (image, photos) with my students, I use the Library of Congress primary source analysis tool found on this link: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/primary-source-analysis-tool/  I can go over each section of this analysis tool as a mini lesson: 1) observe/details  2) think/infer  3) wonder/what questions do I have about this primary source.  By going through these steps I am reinforcing critical thinking skills that can be applied across the disciplines. After I hook my students with this primary source image and analysis of it, students can read about Marco Polo as a secondary source. After the reading is completed, students go back to the primary source analysis tool and fill out the last part called "Further Investigation." This is where students could research anything that interest them about Marco Polo and his time. This could be assigned as an extra credit as well. 

 

 

 

 

[Author]

Posts