Teaching At The School
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!