Finished my first full day of teaching at school
today and it was tough, i have a newfound respect for the teachers who
taught me! Firstly i taught the youngest people at the school aged
6-7(class 1) who knew very little english so I taught them the numbers 1
to 20 and some very basic words such as 'sun' 'tree' 'stars' etc.
That went well and the children are very keen
to learn but the lessons can be quite intense nd keeping them busy and
focused for 45 minutes is very hard. This was very much the same for the
next class(ages 7-8, class 2) where I was left with them for 80 minutes
and by the end the lesson had got slightly out of hand e.g. children
playing around rather than listening to me.
It seems as if the children crave praise more
than anything else, even a smiley face on their work seems to brighten
their day and different coloured pens and chalks seem to be enough to
keep them amused. I have also noticed that the children seem very
interested in me because i am English, it is as if they have never come
into contact with English people before.
The children often touched me and were very
interested in my clothes and appearance, i hope just being in contact
with an English speaker will boost their ability to speak English. I was
asked some interesting questions by the pupils sir 'why are you so red
sir?' seemed to be the most popular; the students clearly unaware of the
concept of sunburn!
The third class of the day were very well
behaved and I think i had got better at keeping the class interested by
writing plenty of things on the board to keep them entertained while i
went around the students marking what they had done. I was very
impressed with myself because by the end the students were asking for
another question to learn having just taught them 'how old are you?'
I hope soon to learn the students names and play sports with them and to of course impart more wisdom and improve their English!