Teaching: The Good Times

Oh how the days seems to fly by and drag on all at once. Sorry It's been so long since I've posted but it's been a busy life over here across the sea haha. I must say that children can be such a joy and yet such little terrors all at once :) After my first day of school I knew I'd have my hands full this semester. I just finished my first full week of classes and boy was it hard. However, it was also very fun and rewarding.

First let me give you a short rundown on how our teaching works. In our group we have 18 teachers and then 2 head teachers that run the show. Each of the teachers teach 1 primary class and then either elementary, basic reading, or ELE. Primary classes are mon-thurs from 3-5 and are our main focus. 3 teachers teach the really little beginning class, 9 teach the 2nd year kids and 6 teach the third year kids. I'm a 3rd year teacher.

The teachers are divided into groups of three called "rotations". Each teacher has a certain area that they teach English in such as shop, arts and crafts, kitchen etc etc. I teach Drama :D. So throughout the two hours of class, the three teachers rotate their homeroom kids between each other so each group gets three lessons every day. In class the kids are presented with the English language in the context of the activities.

My homeroom class has 11 beautiful kids that I adore... most of the time ;). Maggie, May and Alice are the three amigos. They are the cutest little girls but can be very feisty, and can have little attitudes at times. Jack is my little man, with the big personality. He's the shortest one in class, but he sure makes himself known. Tony is my shy guy, I have to coax him a lot to get him talking, but he responds well to praise and just takes a while to warm up.

This last week we had a blast in class. My classroom is decorated with a fish theme. Before classes started I found a set of paper fish cutout and just ran with it. So on Monday I took all my kids "fishing" and they each caught their own fish to put their name on and use as a name tag on their token bags. (The kids earn tokens for using certain types of language that change from lesson to lesson). Tuesday we talked about the moon and outer space and built a "rocket ship" out of our chairs and some construction paper so that on wed we could fly to the moon. On our way we battled asteroid fields and then searched for moon rocks after landing. Thursday I read my kids the story of a boy who thought an alligator lived under his bed. I brought a blanket and pillow and some costumes and had the kids hide under the blanket as one pretended to be an alligator and then we set a trap to catch it.

My kids got a kick out of all my lessons and I gotta say I sure did too ha ha. I'm really looking forward to more fun with them and I only hope I can keep up with them. They're all so smart!!