Our first day of teaching

Today we had our first teaching day. As we are still in training, it wasn't a normal day's teaching, but a special "Super English Day" at the same school that we visited last week for the school entrance ceremony.

Super English meant that the 8 AETs were divided up into two groups, and then 4 of us together took a class. We skipped the first period; second period was half year 3, half year 4; third period was half year 1, half year 2; and then we had a full period each with years 6 & 5.

I came out of the first lesson with the year 3s on a high. Programming had never been that exciting. We had sung the hello song, taught body parts and played hokey pokey. The kids were so enthusiastic and energetic. It was great. They were so excited to see us.

Then we repeated the same lesson plan on the year fours. It went ok, but they were a bit more "cool" and a little less responsive. The hokey pokey was a little more dangerous, as there were some hyperactive boys.

After that period, we had 20 minutes to regroup, before launching into our 1/2 lesson. This lesson included teaching the hello song, introducing ourselves to the students (with handshakes), teaching a few animals, and singing Old MacDonald had a Farm, (with a few modifications to make it simpler). The year ones were gorgeous, a few were a little scared, but once they got over that, they were great. The year twos were pretty good too, not quite so enthusiastic, but still good fun.

By this stage, my throat was getting sore from belting out various songs, but we had no time to rest, it was on to year 6. The year sixes were a bit tougher, they were a bit above what we had to offer. Also, we had a full period, rather than just half of one, so we were a bit more challenged to keep the momentum up. They enjoyed the activities once they got involved, but were reluctant to involve themselves. We made a few mistakes, and played some games that turned out a bit too similar, but it still went well.

After the year sixes, it was lunch time. We got split up and sent to different classes. I sat with one of the year 4 classes. We got almost cold corn soup with bread rolls, a strange salad, and milk. Reviews varied, but I think the soup would have been quite nice if only it were hot. I sat with a table of girls, who were quite shy, but hit on a jackpot when I started reading the English on their t-shirts/jumpers/pencil cases/face washers etc. They didn't care for me to translate, they just thought it was amazing for me to read it out. At my table of 6 (plus me), only one wasn't wearing clothing with English.

After lunch, we had a quick re-group to fix up our lesson plan for the year fives. We modified the activities slightly, and the whole lesson flowed much more smoothly. Also, the last teacher was really great and involved, which helped.

And that was a 5 period day. Some schools we will have to teach at all six periods. We all felt wrecked. Programming had rarely left me that tired... However, I'm feeling a lot more confident in my ability to run classes, especially as future classes will be better planned, with the homeroom teacher being involved in the planning, rather than being thrown in the deep end. I did, however, need chocolate to recover some energy.