April's Levels

A Breakdown of April's Levels

Seedbed Starter- This class is taught entirely by Korean teachers. They are the tiniest kids in the school with ages varying between four and six. Entry level English is all you'll hear in these classrooms. How are you? My name is __________. I am ________.

Seedbed 1 and 2- This is the next level, so once the kids graduate/get too old for Seedbed Starter they go to Seedbed 1 and 2, with 2 being the higher level of the two. My partner teacher and I teach the majority of these low level courses. I like them. They can be difficult, because the children aren't great English speakers; however, they get the gist of what you say. The program is very easy to run and is very multimedia friendly. The entire lessons have computer based programs which are very interactive. The kids can come to the white board at the front of the classroom and write the answers on the board. My school claims that these kids levels are on par with American children enrolled in kindergarten. In my eyes, that's a bold, debatable claim, but I haven't been around many kindergartners to test it. I teach four seedbed classes.


Seed 1 and 2- At this level, you can start having conversations with kids. They have a pretty good vocabulary, but struggle to put their thoughts in complete sentences. Ages 8-10. About your average 1st grade level back, according to April. I teach two seed classes.


Sprout 1 and 2- Similar to Seed 2, only these students are better. Ages 8-12. Comparable to a second to third grade American student in English. Now I'm going to hit the "bull shit button" because there is no way these kids are at that level. It's possible some of them, that the best Sprout students have the vocabularies of a second or third grader. Maybe even better, but they don't have the conversational ability of a third grader. I teach 0 Sprout classes.

Sapling 1 and 2- The next step up is Sapling. These children are gifted. They had a speech competition that would blow your mind. The topic was global warming, which I think is a sham, which is neither here nor there, but the kids were WOW! Addressing all the issues of what climate change could do in the foreseeable future. It was impressive. Ages 8-13. I teach 0 classes at the Sapling level.

Junior Master 1- These 3 children are the cream of the crop. There are only three of them, and I have the pleasure of teaching them. Basically, it's like my manager said, "We stuck you with all the rug rats, so, here you go... Here's Junior Master. They can speak and read. Have fun." Emma is 8, Tommy is 10 and Jayne is 10. Their topic today is family, which sounds like a nice easy topic, right? Wrong! We have to discuss South Korea's birthrate "problem" and think of the implications of that problem, try to come up with solutions for that problem and look at other countries to see how they combated their birthrate problem. I love the class, because I constantly learn stuff!