22 September 2008

First Day of School

After a semi-anxious night of sleep I was ready for my first day of school. Originally Mrs. D told me to be at the school for 8:00am, but at around 7:15am she phoned me to ask/tell me to come earlier. I was annoyed because we had arranged to meet up on Saturday and she never showed up. I told her I need to shower, get dressed and eat something and that I will be there as soon as possible. Well in the end I got there for 7:50 so technically I wasn't late I was earlier since we had agreed on 8:00am.

When I got to the school gate the technician guy came to register my finger print on the finger print scanner. Its like a clocking in/out machine you may or may not have at work. But I guess this way no one can clock in for you lol (damn >_<). After that was done Mrs. D and I went to our office and waited until 9:40am to have out first lesson. She also informed me that the Headmaster said he wants us both to be at the school on Mondays for 6:40 for the raising of the flag (ah wah di rars O_o). 6.40 that's a bit extreme to come to school and we will have to wait until 9.40 to have our first lesson, that's a joke. Also the Headmaster said he wants us to be in school by 7.40 each day, ahhhhhh why so early T___T.

Well anyways I had my first of 5 classes today, 4 of them were the Junior classes and one of them was a Senior class. My plan for the lesson was to follow the book I had received from the agency however during the lesson it seemed like the children were struggling. First I introduced myself and told them I was from London, England. The whole point of this weeks lessons are for the students to learn greetings and introductions. I read out some examples of greetings for the students and got them to repeat what I said. Then I asked the students (with the help of Mrs. D) to practice with the person (or their friend) sitting next to them. Once they had finished this I selected a few students to come to the front to demonstrate their English conversation to the rest of the class. The students who came up were given a sweet that I bought from the Supermarket, this is really to encourage them. But I hope they dont think they gonna get sweets everytime they come up to demonstrate. Dorian what have you done >_< lol.

Oh yea in the first class before I said anything except "Hi" as I walked in the class the students begun to sing. I was thinking whats going on, they all sang the same song fairly loudly was cute thought lol. At the end of that first class the a couple of the students gave me a bird, yes that's right a baby bird lol. It sat in my hand and wasn't scared of any of us. I asked Mrs. D why doesn't it fly away and she said its because its too young. But I kindly gave the bird back to the students because I can barely look after myself let alone a bird. The bird resembled a sparrow or something like that.

After 3 Junior classes I had my first Senior class. Immediately I was stunned to see twice as many students in the same size classroom. The class was over packed to the point where you couldn't really walk from one end of the class to the other. Another thing to note is the different ages of the students, some are really young and some are really old. It seems like they have a system like America as in, if you don't pass you stay in that same grade for another year. As soon as I began the lesson it was obvious these students couldn't understand what the hell I was talking about. These students seemed less enthusiastic to learn unlike the Junior students. They also didn't understand my instructions (or Mrs. D was telling them something else).

The students ended up doing the lesson in the wrong order, they came up to demonstrate before they had even practiced. This flopped the task because they were not prepared because they had not practiced briefly before hand. It was said that the Senior students English abilities are poor compared to the Junior students, mainly due to them not liking English as a subject. You would think it would be the other way around i.e Senior students better and Junior students not as good but I guess not. Hopefully I can change that by finding out what the Senior students like (if anything lol) about English.

Ah well it was clear from all the 5 lessons today that the students enjoy getting sweets (more so the Seniors they were all shouting for sweets, big kids lol) and playing Pictionary. This was the game I decided to play with the students at the end of the lesson. Unfortunately some of the students English skills were not that great and they could not read certain words like House, Dog, Radio, Computer and Fruits. This made the game slightly difficult for them since they only knew the Chinese word for these things. I had to help them occasionally by drawing for them, because they either spent to long drawing or drew something totally different to the word. One girl drew a Cat when the word was Car, but I guess this is a simple mistake for them.

So day one is over, only one lesson on Tuesdays but I will have to use the rest of that day to restructure the lesson and dumb them down. It appears the books from the agency are too difficult for the students. So the lessons from Wednesday onwards will be easier for the Juniors and even easier for the Seniors.

Will update with more happenings as time goes on.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

oh, our good English teacher, Dorian! Well done!

---Megan