As you may have guessed they were very excited yesterday and today. My one complaint is that the teacher for the third graders just doesn’t show up sometimes… she takes a bit of a late lunch and in that time it feels like all of the underworld breaks loose. This week one boy hit another with a rock. Then, one boy stabbed another with a pencil. Finally, some girl got pushed into the blackboard and she hit her head. You get the picture.

 I am convinced there are two things that keep me from controlling them like the teachers can.
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1. My age – I am an Akka (big sister) not a Madam. That said, at my age, I just don’t naturally command respect very easily. 
2. The fact that I don’t hit. I just don’t believe in hitting kids. Here, prefects and teachers hit to command discipline. That’s just not my style. I believe everyone should be able to be disciplined without using physical methods…

Everything went well learning-wise. We did a lesson on Fruits. Everyone loved this one. I don’t know why – maybe they were hungry – but they really participated a lot in this lesson. 

​Nothing new here. We are just trying to get through all the content. I don’t like thinking about it just because it makes me nauseous to think we won’t make it through. I guess we just have to keep pushing through!

​I think my prayers were answered because fewer kids came. That sounds mean. I am sorry. …but I have to come to terms with the fact that, honestly, some students come to just waste time. It’s one thing for a student to not want to learn but it is another when they inhibit someone else’s ability to learn. I want these to be functional classes not just a rowdy mess. I feel like this week we were a real functional class. It really bothers me when students come and just sit on their phones. I have to wonder why they are in the class. This happens at my school too (where I am a student) but the difference is that this class is not required. Maybe it is significant that they show up at all. That seems like wishful thinking though. 
So in other news, we did a lesson called Taking a Trip. They really liked it because I had a lot of activities built in. We even went outside to do some of them. That said, I actually came up with a few new activities here is one of them: 
‘Speed Round’
It’s a memory activity I disguised as a game. Basically, everyone stands up and I go around the room asking a question. The question is usually a translation one: ‘Translate cat into Sinhala’. If you can’t do it by the count (finger count – hold up fingers, don’t speak the number because then it fudges up their focus) of four you sit down. So as the rounds go on you reduce the seconds they have. The time is adjustable so if it is really new material you can give 5-6 seconds or even longer. 
The kids LOVED it. Their competitive sides really showed. 

This is easily my favorite class of the day. It is amazing! We actually work! I mean look I honestly feel like I have been complaining a lot. I feel whiney. And not to be whiney – but I hate to sound whiney. (hehe) I will say it for the last time: the last two years have not been like this. The students were loud, they had fun, and their attention did stray. However, I could handle them and we were productive. This year it feels like I am fighting a war. However, I would never, ever want to stop. It is a war I am willing and honored to fight. Sometimes I do get tired and I might complain to cope but I hope no reader takes this as a sign that I do not enjoy every moment of what I do. I do love my kids and the school. They have become an undeniably important part of my life. 
That said, I can tell you will confidence, the eleventh graders have been real champs. They show up after doing lots of after-school classes and they stay quiet when I ask them to. They do not however do any homework. I assigned an ‘essay’ (it was just a paragraph) and only two people did it. Then, on Tuesday I assigned three sentences. Actually I said they could choose to do one to three sentences. Guess what. Two people did the homework. That said, my suspicions are confirmed. There is absolutely no point in assigning homework. I have no way to make them do it. I guess I could give them a ‘reward’ for doing it…but I just don’t have the funds for something like that. I will have to consider something like that for next year. 

We had a fun time until it got too wild to control… for example today one kid BIT the another one. HE BIT HIM! I remember my third-grade class and I promise you no one bit anyone else… 
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The teacher was on a long lunch break (again) and I was left all alone. The poor kid just sat on the ground and cried. I felt awful. The other students were nice to him – one boy offered him a king coconut. (A king coconut is the sweeter version of coconut. It is orange and you can eat the inside flesh and drink the water). Being unable to control the situation I ran off to find the teacher and get her to come supervise. 

The lesson was the Natural Environment. It was fun and pretty regular stuff. Nothing much to say except this rainbow made everyone laugh...

​This class feels like it is moving slower than last year’s which worries me a tonne. On the bright side, I am teaching them the right way from the beginning. Remember my revelation about how teaching meanings of words are more helpful than treating each phrase as its own entity. Breaking the phrase to identifiable parts (individual words) makes it easier to learn other phrases with the same words. 

I just hope the pace begins to pick up soon. I hope it is my imagination but I think this year’s kids are a bit too excitable. 

​Another disaster… Everyone was so loud. In both classes I found myself going horse. I will admit this year there are waaaaaay more kids to teach. I don’t think this is a bad thing – more kids are good – I want more people to be interested. Sadly, I can’t control them all. I think next year I am going to create some kind of enrollment system so I can have fewer kids at a time. The working idea is that I would allow 10-15 kids per class. The drawback would be that I would have to host more classes – thus have shorter classes. However, I believe it would be worth it as I feel that half the time in the current class is wasted by me having to try to control the students. 

By the way the lesson was Activities. There really isn't much to say except that we had a tough time going through the material because of the size of the class. 

​This class was equally miserable. I know, I know – I am sounding really negative. Sadly, I want to document what is actually going on. There are four boys from the 10th grade that come and do nothing else but play on their phones. I don’t even have words. They won’t leave but they won’t pay attention either. It is a huge distraction for the other kids too… On top of that, the sheer number of students make it so the class gets wild pretty easily. They just can’t stop talking! It’s so strange – I beg them to stay silent or at least listen while I talk and they just do not. 

I know...total clickbait title. One of the students broke a red pen on me. I didn't see it happen but students pointed out the red "blood". It ended up on my forehead and skirt so I thought I hit my head and was bleeding everywhere. I legit got super scared!  
Annnnyway...
I started finished my first official day of teaching yesterday! Whew was it TIRING. Let’s start from the beginning:

I wasn’t supposed to teach for a whole hour here but I did because the teacher would not let me go. Eh, I guess I should have been more forceful but trust me you do not want these teachers on your bad side – without them, I wouldn’t be able to control the class. That said I couldn’t teach grade 4 yesterday so I did it today instead. The lesson for both classes was an old classic: Animals and Colours. You just can’t go wrong with this lesson. Everyone always loves it! 

For the third graders, I let the kids come up and draw the animals on the board– it worked out well last year but this year the drawing caused some serious chaos. 
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This one poor kid was trying to draw a lion (sadly he was no Picasso, but I mean who is?) and the class laughed and laughed at him. He took it quite well but the class took a while to settle down again. 
I don’t know if I was just really tired yesterday but teaching felt really hard. I can’t explain it. It almost felt like the students were extra enthusiastic. I am hoping it will be better next week. 
Today, grade four was basically the same but the drawings were on a different level. Check out the cow. 

​This was a small class. Which is a good thing because the teacher left me alone to teach them. Usually, a teacher stays but this year I guess I am on my own. I could control the kids (sort of) and it went well. It’s a very basic lesson – just review honestly. At least it should be review – but it seems somethings are new to the kids. The link below should take you to the page with all the Scholarship Material – the lesson is simple. I write each phrase then we break down the words and try to guess the meaning of the whole phrase. In the end, I give them the Sinhalese translation and they write both the phrase and the translation. 

​They didn’t show up! I don’t know if there was a communicating error or something but hehe no one came…
 
Better luck next week I guess – I will be sure to get the message out and around to everyone. However, if I am completely honest I don’t think any of the students really wanted to come which is too bad – this is just a hypothesis, I hope to be proven wrong. 

​11:00 – 3rd grade (Introduction to Scholarship Exam Material)
11:30 – 4th grade (Introduction to Scholarship Exam Material)
12:00 – I  eat lunch and nap ;p
1:30 – 5th grade (Scholarship Exam Material)
2:30 – 6th grade
3:30 – 7-10th grade (Structured intermediate lessons)
4:30 – 11th grade (O/L exam practice)

​Greetings reader, 

I finally got a start on the grade 10/11 lessons. Honestly, I didn’t have to change that much with these lessons. Talking on the Phone, Talking to the Doctor, Talking to the Waiter, and Talking to a Tourist were all lessons that went from a 0% on the pretest to an 80-90%+ on the posttest. I can’t be more than happy with those. The rest needed little alteration as I did choose to add few more phrases to beef up the dialog here and there. Nothing I did sticks out as particularly significant :P. 

However, I am doing one thing I believe will be a big change in the lessons – I used to have a few lessons focused on verbs and tenses. I am scrapping those. These are things they will learn in school and frankly, my structure is not as solid. All I mean is that my way of explaining may be a little confusing for them because I do not speak Sinhala well enough to lay out the complexity of English tenses. I am replacing the two lessons (Intro to Tenses and Finishing Tenses) with a dialog called Making plans. It will incorporate verbs of different tenses so the students can at least practice and review past, present, and future tense verbs. 

In other news, I will be going to Sri Lanka soon!! Next month!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!! I am super excited; I love going back home <3. 

Sadly right now I am stuck in the bog that is AP testing week. Honestly, I should be studying right now but I am posting this as a break to myself…

Until next time!

​Hello reader,
 
So, I did not actually end up getting anything done this month. I wanted to start on the grade 10/11 lessons. That sadly did not happen. Hey now, I am only human. I do however feel a bit disappointed. I feel like I am so close to being done but I just need to push through these final bits of revising. I have been busy lately too. I feel like my work with the West Side Story has reached an all-time high. It has been stressful and all that but I hope I can finish the year strong regardless. My grades are also in kind of a limbo right now.
My Spanish teacher describes my life as spinning plates. You take time to spin one plate and meanwhile another one starts to fall so you must run after that one and then another one falls and etc.…
So right now I am just running after plates. Hopefully I will have less plates to manage soon. Although, I doubt it considering AP testing season will start soon.
 
Until later,
I hope to have more for you!

​I started on the intermediate set of lessons. It’s been okay so far. I completely got rid of In the Classroom. It had to be done! It is was way too easy. I added some different, more relevant activities to the Activities lesson. I am not going to lie, there is no real way to make editing vocabulary lists sound interesting. I miss the hands-on work so much. Don’t believe me? Check out my screen saver. It’s been this way since June. My friends always ask who the random kid on my phone is. I tell them he is my child (‘cuz let’s be real; they are all my kids <3); they get super confused haha.

Well in other news, school is kicking my butt and testing my will to go on. Jk. But really. Check out my BC calculus work key. The derivatives. Oh, the derivatives! I have been working on another mini-documentary.  This time it is on a female math-genius at my school. It’s been fun getting to follow her around and film. I will definitely post the link when it is all done.
 
It’s the end of winter so it is slushy and gross outside – so I am more than happy to use my lessons as an excuse to stay in with my fireplace ablaze and laptop for company.
 
Until next time!

​I am back!

I can’t get over how boring the posts are… I can’t wait for June when the teaching adventures start again! (I also can’t wait to get out of the snow!)

So what is going on so far? 

I am now done with grades 3 and 4 lessons! We are moving on to fix the 6-9th-grade lessons. There are lessons that were too easy so I am either cutting them all together (example: In the Classroom was much too easy) or making them harder (example: Activities needed to step up). 

--> Same link as the last post (the document has been updated).

As for me, I am starting the new year with a new goal: reduce my stress. I feel like I am consciously putting myself in stressful situations and I just want to take an effort to calm down more. Well, let’s see if I actually succeed.

(My cats are helping me chill. Don't they look crazy relaxed??)
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​Until next time!