Week 4: Beginning of Exams Hits Hard

Every week this girl snakes around my arm and drags me to her classroom (grade 3). She is so cute!

Third graders and their fruity drawings.

I do hope this lesson was fruitful...

Cuties.

The Wednesday class had a surprising turn-out.

As I explain something...or maybe ask a question?

That paper on the board is casually crooked.

The four that showed up... that's 80% of the 11th grade class.

Fourth graders and oranges.

I looked down to realize half my class was hanging out barefoot.

Fourth grade drawings - aren't they grape?

Insert fruit pun here... So cute!!

Attendance and Location.

So I had about half the kids show up to the after school classes this last week. They all go home early to study. At least I hope that's what they are doing... the boys really like to hang around playing cricket and stuff and the principal always complains about how they spend their time :P. 

I was kind of sad I didn't have many of my regular students. I really missed them.

On location: I had a super hard time teaching this week. I didn't have my usual classroom because for exam weeks the students move ALL the desks into the big main hall.

I go where the desks are!

So I taught in the main hall. This meant I didn't have a good blackboard and no whiteboard at all. That really added to the stress. 

Grade 3

Grade 3 went well. Hectic as usual for sure. This weeks lesson on fruits was really fun. They liked the drawing component I add to the lesson last week so I kept it in. 
a) drawing is fun
b) it allows for more time to be spent on each word
c) I like drawing too :P
The kids had fun and they always LOVE getting their little star stickers for a job well done. 
Behavior wise: I controlled them again this week until the teacher came in from her break. I will admit that I was so relieved when she came back though!

Grade 4

Basically the same as grade 3 except these guys got to have an extra fun lesson. This class is way smaller so I took the risk and let kids come up to the board and draw. I tried this last year with second graders and the whole class went berserks. 
Thankfully, the fourth graders handled it well and we got to see some pretty dope art. By dope I mean kinda hilarious. Okay, that's mean, but it's true; I really wish I took pictures of them!

Grade 5 !!

Omgomgomg big news. I am teaching this class 5 days a week!!!
The teacher really likes me; she nicknamed me Dony...I don't know why...she just likes calling me that...
SO I went in Tuesday with the plan of teaching those past exam questions (like she asked me to the week before). HOWEVER. She had just given a practice exam and the class did pretty awfully on the English portion. So when she told me that, I took the chance to actually tell her my feelings on how the kids are learning English. I shared my thoughts on how I thought the full material should be covered well first then suggested we make the past test questions into a mini exam. 
She liked it!!!!
So she wants me back 5 days a week to teach the material from a teacher's guide book :). 
On Friday I started that plan and I started teaching the phrases. 
I had a great dawning right smack dab in the middle of a lesson. 
We had been spending this whole time teaching kids the meaning of each phrase:
ex: I can pluck flowers 
We were treating each phrase like it's own piece. When it's not one piece! It's four!! I, can, pluck, and flowers. They know what I, can, and flowers are. If you asked these kids what "I can pluck flowers" means, they wouldn't know. Or at least they THINK they don't know. In reality, they know 3/4 of the phrase. 
I told them to think of each phrase and four pieces put together. We did more phrases like that. When I finished that day I felt like I really did something USEFUL. And I think the kids loved this idea. Before I left they all ran to bow to me. I had a swarm of kids at my feet (It was a warm and fuzzy feeling). 

Grades 6-9

For both classes (2 o'clock and 3 o'clock) I had very few students. I'm going to take it as a positive thing -- fewer students mean I can spend more time one and one and ensure every student understands the lesson. I think the vocabulary might have been on the easier side but the phrases DEFINITELY made up for that. It took a long time to work on the questions and phrases which ate up time that I had left. 
Personally I think this was one of the more fun lessons I have had. I let students pretend they were shop keepers!
At the end I gave these kids chocolate because I had promised them some -- a sweet treat to end the lesson. Unfortunately, they left lessons on the school lawn and I had to pick them up :(. 

Grade 10-11

If there is one thing I have learned it is this: students lose their love for learning as they grow older. My young students beg me to come everyday, but the older students barely like having one class per week. 
On Friday I had two girls walk in. They said two other girls were here but down by the gate hanging out with some friends (boys...duh). I kind of wish it wasn't a co-ed school; here is why:  When I asked how many people were in their class the 11th graders said just five. I asked why there were so few. Apparently the rest dropped out to go get married. 
I was thinking...actually I wasn't thinking I was pretty shocked. These girls are 16! I'm just barely 16 and I would have been in their class. Married at my age? I'm shocked, slightly jealous, and utterly disappointed.
The second grade has 30+ students. Does that mean they are going to drop down to 5 by 11th grade? 
Aside from that, the lesson went great. They are pretty reluctant to learn but I'm preeetty hard set on teaching them and I usually get my way. I'm happy to say that they really learned something! De-beefing the dialogs made it easier for them to process and get it into their heads.

New Wednesday Class for Grades 6-9

Overall it was a total winner of a class. It was fun I had a tooooon of participation. Results need to be looked at yet but they look promising. Super duper excited to continue these lessons - dialogs are always fun!

Lesson Links: