2/7/11
Today we went to a primary school to help teach English
8am-3pm. My background knowledge from education classes definitely helped. One
of the most important things to do as a teacher is demonstrate and model
exactly what you want the students to do. That is even more vital here in
Thailand where we can’t even begin to try to speak the language. The students
really don’t know English, so the only way to communicate is through actions.
It was really quite humorous as I was basically playing “charades” to help them
understand what they needed to do.
We taught four classes of kindergarten and one class of each
first, second, and third grades. We used large flash cards with simple English
verbs-fly, jump, swim, walk, run, climb, etc.-that the kids copied down in
their notebooks in both English and Thai. That activity only took a few
minutes, so I was able to use some skills I learned from teaching-taking the
available resources to improvise and come up with new ways to teach and make
learning fun. I held up the cards and covered the word at the bottom so the
students could guess the correct words. I had them spell out the words verbally
in English to practice the correct letter names. For the kinesthetic learners
who learn best by moving around, I had the students stand up and act out the
word that I said to be sure they understood the meaning. We also had some
letter flashcards available to use so I asked the students to spell out some of
the words with the letter cards. With the younger classes, we put the letters
of the alphabet in order from A to Z and went through the letters together.
With the older groups, there were picture flashcards with matching letter
flashcards. With those, I did my best to demonstrate how to play the matching
game when the cards are turned face down. At first, they all kept grabbing and
turning over the cards when it wasn’t their turn so for round two, I had them
put their hands on their head when it wasn’t their turn. Thank you, student
teaching!! J
Things I learned today:
·
it is possible to communicate without knowing
the language
·
love crosses language barriers
·
everything we do in life prepares us for
something later on down the road
·
take advantage of every opportunity to learn and
be challenged
·
do what you can with what you have
·
everyone learns differently
