Week 3: Best Week Yet!

Big stuff:

• Visitors from Colombo
• Fun classes -- took control!
• Hung out at school for interval (breakfast break). 
• Lesson change for fifth grade
• A new class...?

A doggy friend I made. She sits in front of the school. (That blue thing in the back is a three-wheeler)

Lorax propaganda

Third graders being adorable. I wish I got some close-ups of the pictures :/

Same scene as the picture above but for some reason I really like this picture. I think it's because of the boy in foreground towards the left. He looks like he's dancing...

Grade 4 might be cuter yet. The drawings are a bit more visible here!

During interval. One girl stole my phone. I made into the picture too! (I'm teaching Dilmi how to use the camera)

Photobomb time.

We had lunch here. This is the 8th grade classroom.

Besties <3

They kept saying they wanted to take a "selfie". Where on earth did they learn what a selfie is???

My 10-11 graders. Look at their hair - it's so long and flowy.

The tenth graders in their classroom.

Visitors from Colombo

So first of all - remember those evaluators?
(If you don't -- every school and government facility in the country submitted a report/book and out of all of them 1,000 were chosen. This school was one of the 1,000! I know that number sounds like a lot - but Sri Lanka, for being tiny, has a lot of schools. So now to narrow down that list evaluators from Colombo are visiting to see the place and award a certain # of points.)
They finally showed up on Thursday. Up until then the whole entire school had been nervous. I was teaching that day - it was a Thursday after all. I even had the pleasure of meeting them! It all happened by accident really. The classroom I teach in had been locked so I sneaked up to the office to get the key. I was making a pretty smooth exit when the principal called me back. He took me into the lounge and introduced me to the evaluators (who were currently enjoying their lunch). I was really nervous but it went way better than I could have imagined. A nice lady told me she had been wanting to meet me (I assume this is the head evaluator). She said she had read the letter I had written about my project and complimented my handwriting :). She shared that she thought my project was generous and that I was "a very good Buddhist". (Sri Lanka's majority population is Buddhist - I am as well.). She said she was really impressed and some other nice things. It was all amazingly encouraging. I left feeling super pumped. I was really really happy - I think it's just that it feels good hearing such things from someone important. 

Okay - the real big news here is that the evaluators really liked the project. The next day the principal told me they had given ADDITIONAL POINTS to the school because my project was taking place. Yay!!! The school worked so hard for this evaluation and I am so happy to have been able to contribute. Hopefully they will get high enough points to be selected!

Now to the really important stuff: the classes. 

Grade 3

I have this class right after the school interval (breakfast break). The teachers all go to the lounge for tea and a snack (snack is a total understatement). Anyway, I came into class and the teacher was not there! I was panicking a bit. I can only teach grades 4 and below if there is at teacher present. I alone am not enough - they are extremely scared of their teachers but they aren't scared of me. In Sri Lanka teachers can hit students - it's nothing awful - maybe a couple whacks with a thin stick. I just refuse to do so - I think it's mean. Don't get me wrong; sometimes I really want to (jk). They are so hard to handle though! But that Friday - I DID IT. I made them sit down and start working!! Sure it took a LOT of screaming and waving of arms. But they finally settled down a bit. The teacher came in ten minutes later, thank goodness, I didn't know how much longer my control would last. 
In other news,  the lesson was really fun!  We all drew pictures. I hate to make a lesson just learning. There has to be FUN to it. I know these kids love to draw - I did this last year too. They love to show off their drawings even more :). So this weeks we learned about Nature. They got to draw fun things like rainbows and lightning. We didn't get all the way through with the vocabulary but I'm not really worried. I'm doing this so that they have some exposure to Scholarship Exam material. Look to the left to see pics of their drawings and their adorably proud faces. 

Grade 4

This class went really smooth. Last week they were a tad rowdy, but this week they were better. There is less to say here. I will note that they were familiar with the Nature vocabulary a tad bit more than the third graders. They didn't know everything -- so I still feel that the lesson was worthwhile. They liked drawing almost more than the third graders; I guess they don't draw as much in third grade. Their enthusiasm made the lesson really, really fun. It was adorable to watch them show off their drawings to one another. Their faces light up with the smallest of compliments - I dish them out in English - "pretty!"s and "wow"s are favorites.
The drawings seemed to engage them more. I mentioned that last week not everyone was quite interested in the lesson. This week they all participated and (hopefully) had fun and learned too. 
Here, again, I ended the lesson with stickers. Who doesn't love a nice sticker, right?

Interval

I hung out with some girls from my grades 6-9 class during their interval on Friday. It was a blast! I didn't bring my own breakfast this time. Sri Lanka has a very generous culture. When one student does not have food she borrows a lid of a food container box and goes around and everyone gives them some of their food. It's a heartwarming sight. I didn't want to take any of their breakfast because I'd go home soon for lunch anyway. I promised I'd bring my own breakfast next week. <3

Grade 5

The teacher told me to teach the kids questions from the past Scholarship Exam English section. There are like 4-6 English questions per year. On the surface it sounds like a good idea - past questions can make reappearances. I just don't think it's such a great use of time. Their exam is like a month away but they have SO MUCH English material to cover. It's just that the past questions are good and fine but they are included in the material book (it's a teacher's reference book that covers the English material for the exam). I feel like if all that material was taught in the systematic and orderly way the book shows - their chances of knowing it is higher. The past questions are just kind of random and all over the place - there is no categorizing method at all.
On top of that the way she wants me to teach it is super unhelpful. The students and I have the same book. I write the phrase on the board and they don't even look at it - they just read out the translation printed right next to the English phrase. 
Okay how do you know I'm not just paranoid? They sometimes scream out the wrong translation. They haven't even looked at the phrase I am talking about! 
I just don't think it's useful....................................
I am planning to make some use out of it though. I am going to make flashcards for EVERYTHING. I'll teach them the material first then go back and practice with flash cards so they don't just read out of the book. 
Agh. I just don't think it's that good :/
but I'm going to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt. 

Grades 6-9

Attendance was sketchier than usual. But that's probably because term tests are coming up for them and they need to study for those too. My regulars came and Friday definitely had more people than Thursday. It was peaceful. Haha that was a joke. It was as hectic as usual. They are less rowdy than third graders but I wouldn't call them angels for sure. Especially this boy named Ravimal. He brought a match box… and tried to burn his paper… and succeeded…. Geez kids these days. Other than almost burning the classroom down nothing major happened. The lesson was, well, let's just say it was okay. This week we learned about activities and I found out that the activity verbs I had chosen were too easy. Luckily I teach two days. For the second day I found four "new" words and added that into the second day's lesson. I really didn't think the verbs I chose were that easy. Then again, I have a lot of students from last year in this class and I taught this lesson last year too. I guess I just have to keep it fresh! Everything else went well. I think they grasped everything. Luckily the questions and phrases were new to them so the first day really wasn't a waste. What kills me every time is that students sometimes only come for the second day. So then I have to quickly reteach the lesson from the day before. I don't want to discourage anyone from coming - so I guess I'll just have to bear with it. 

Grades 10-11

This class really wanted to do dialogs and their wish was granted. I showed them a conversation between two people who haven't seen each other in a while. I thought it would go well. Key word there is thought. The difficulty in my opinion is appropriate. However, understanding each phrase takes a while and two days wasn't enough to learn 15ish lines. I think I need to cut down the size of the dialog so that they can digest it easier. I was also disappointed that they were SO shy! I thought they would like to come up and act out the dialog - I was mistaken. I think making it shorter will make it less intimidating too and maybe then I will have more participants. Wish me luck on that. 
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More on the dialog I used: I say the difficulty was appropriate because they could understand some of the words. They just couldn't put together the meaning. That said I am not so worried that it was very difficult.  

THE NEW CLASS!

I am adding a new class! Wednesdays 1:30 to 2:30. For grades 6-9 to learn some dialogs. No pretests or posttests -- just for fun! 

Lesson links:

Grade 3 and 4
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AsZWLUkNJsmeozxN6_Rb0ZXdL6kpDTjR34X8r_Ej38w/edit?usp=sharing

Grade 5
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ixXfNXphmSXnKax3b_msKCrdYatxTzHJNI0bBkHUdlE/edit?usp=sharing

Grade 6-9
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Su6xeXanw5Cjw0BOLz3g4mc-MP39RY41LnXDwS1yksc/edit?usp=sharing
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​Grade 10-11
​https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HsjCeDaerc5YQ4HxJzyjsuTPfHry63TAAJmABb-Scuc/edit?usp=sharing