Today marks my first full week as a teacher! Hooray! And
many more to go... Here is a summary of my day yesterday, which is pretty
similar to my usual teaching days.
I had to go in early to greet parents/students at anuban
(nursery school/kindergarten). Each foreign teacher has to do this once a week.
So I arrived at school around 7:20am, and was at the kindergarten gate by
7:30am. The kids arrive with their parents on motorcycles, taxis, bike-taxis,
in cars, or on foot. The head anuban teacher would try to get the kids (1-5
years old) to say “Good morning” to me, and I tried not to look to awkward when
wai-ing the parents. FYI the “wai” is how Thai people greet each other: you
place your hands in a prayer position and bow your head. I just don’t know if
I’m doing it properly, or at appropriate times! Anywho, at 8:00am, the school
has their assembly, so I went up to the English teachers’ office to grab my
things. Each day is divided into 7 periods, each 50 minutes. The first class
starts at 8:30am.
In the morning, I had two classes – 4.1 and 3.2. Each grade
has different levels: 1 and 2 are the best, and are in the English intensive
program at my school. For 4.1, are doing a unit on health and working on body
parts and injuries at the moment. This morning was one of those mornings to
me... I forgot my pencil case (with all my white board markers) and the paper I
was going to get the class to draw on. Was not pleased with myself. I attempted
to write on the board with markers that were near death. First, I played Simon
Says with the kids. It took a while to explain. Explaining activities is the
hardest thing to do because you have to use more complex language. At first,
they didn’t get it but after a few minutes they caught on. After that, I
reviewed the injuries we talked about the previous day. I attempted to get the
kids to mime out injuries in pairs, and one would ask “what happened to you?”.
That didn’t work especially well – so far, pair work doesn’t really seem to
work in general. A few pairs will get it, but most won’t and just sit around
and talk in Thai. After that, I did a final review of the words/phrases, and
the kids asked to play Simon Says again, which I was more than happy to do as I
forgot the paper for the drawings I had planned for them to do... Oh well, will
have them draw tomorrow! Also, I have really no idea how I’m going to be able
to explain words like “carbohydrate” as the unit goes on...
Next, I went to my 3.2 class. The 3s are much more
rambunctious than the 4s, and therefore are harder to control and keep
interested. Let me rephrase that, they are basically insane. They LOVE games, even
more than kids at home. Whenever we play anything, they yell and scream and are
1000%T into it. Unfortunately, this means they hate everything else. Well, they
kind of liked to sing. Today, we were working on “Mine, yours, his/hers”. I’ve
been teaching the 3s the “itsy bitsy spider”, so I did that as a warm up. I
think they mostly like doing the hand actions. After, I introduced the words,
and demonstrated them by taking items from the students and asking other
students “is this yours”. That kept them entertained for a while. Then I tried
to do an activity out of their workbooks, but it did not work at all. I feel
the work book we have for the kids is much too advanced, so it’s hard to pick
out what will and won’t work or is worthwhile. I’m planning on asking the Thai
teachers to see the exam so I know exactly what I need to teach the students.
So I gave up on the work book, and had them toss around a ball saying “This ball
isn’t mine. Is it yours?”. Like all games, they LOVE the ball game, and tend to
get very loud and wild. But they are practicing speaking, and some of the
students can even be heard coaching each others on what to say! So I don’t know
if the ball game is a good idea or not haha.
For lunch, we eat in the school cafeteria. Our school makes
delicious noodle soup, and I’ve generally been eating that. One thing about
kids in Thailand is they eat A LOT of sugar. It’s indescribable, really. For
example, in the noodle soup, the lunch ladies will but in a spoonful of this
sugary syrup. Then the kids will proceed to heap MORE spoonfuls of regular
sugar in their soup. I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth, so it really baffles
me. Sugar also goes in many other dishes, on fruit, and basically on any food.
I can see that some of the kids have bad cavities in their teeth. Every day
before lunch, all the students have to brush their teeth, but I guess teeth can
only take so much sugar.
After lunch, I had a break before my 2 afternoon classes. So I caught up on the news with the American election (yay Obama!) and prepared for the afternoon. The classes themselves were much the same, with a few exceptions. For the 3.1 class, I didn’t use the work book and went a bit slower. Then at the end, I wrote words all scrambled on the board and tried to get them to figure out what word it was supposed to be. This one kid, who is a bit of a trouble maker and doesn’t seem to keen, was ON IT. He figured all of them out first, even the hard ones. I was very impressed! He was basically jumping up and down to give his answers too. Crazy...
For the 4.2 class, I did the same thing as the morning, but
remembered to bring paper for their drawings. I told them to draw themselves
with an injury and write a sentence that described it (IE I broke my leg.).
Once again, lots of very meticulous drawing. One thing was moderately
hilarious, some of the trouble maker boys were running up to show me their
drawings – one had cut off his leg, another had a stab-wound to the neck. So I
told them to write, “I cut my leg/neck”. I was able to take some pictures,
which make me smile. I wonder if I will get in trouble for letting them draw
gruesome images... but they were writing! And making associations.
The thing I really took away from today is how some
activities will engage the students who are causing trouble or not interested.
I guess that’s one of the keys to teaching. Note from today (Thursday), that
same trouble making kid in 3.1, who did really well with the word scrambles, won
the game I played in class today (introduced vocabulary, and make them face off
and slap the correct word on the whiteboard with flyswatters). He basically
beat the entire class. Crazy. Because earlier in the class, when I was trying
to introduce the material, he was talking, and distracting the other students.
I almost took away his chair to make him stand, but I was torn because I felt
that would draw even more attention to him. Maybe I’ll get him to stand in the corner.
I assume he makes trouble because he is bored? Hmmmm...
Anyway, here are some of my students’ drawings. Enjoy!
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