This morning's lesson

I thought you might like to share the excitement of my morning's lesson. We started with greetings (Hello teacher how are you today? very loudly) and then had a chorus of The wheels on the bus. Now I have my ipad I can look up the words etc so I can introduce more variety.

The first half lesson was with the split group with the starters (about 10 of them 6-10 yrs) looking at abc books, doing activities like matching names with pictures etc. Once I get them going I swop over to the improvers group (25 or so - changes each day and ranging around 10 - 12 yrs) who are learning phonics (ai = ayy today) and grammar (negatives of I am).

I am teaching both groups simultaneously with the person whose translating helping out, particularly with the starter group. After the break, during which one of the bigger girls was getting me to pronounce Khmer (badly) and I was playing a fusion of football and basketball with some boys, we had a new book.

Yesterday whilst sorting through a pile of old magazines at the guesthouse, I came across a very tatty copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar with a bit of the first page missing and a bit of scribble but with the remainder intact. I read it out line by line with Pisey (my current translator) saying it in Khmer so the children could understand. Well, you should have seen the looks on the children's faces. They were enthralled by the story and the holes in the book. When I turned the page to show them the very fat caterpillar after eating all the fruit and food, they just broke out into cheers and excited chatter. The book was perfect for them as they have caterpillars here that turn into beautiful butterflies.

 

This is Sophal one of my bigger girls helping Socheata, one of the younger ones, to draw the caterpillar on to the blackboard but sneaking a look at the butterfly picture too. I got the whole group to draw something from the book which was very absorbing - so much so that we ran out of time for our final song of the session. As you can see from the classroom walls, the pictures go up and are much looked at by the children. This makes the room which is a bit of a storage space a little brighter. Towards the end of the day it is so dark (especially as we are having some afternoon downpours from the cyclone off the Phillippines) that it needs as much help as it can get up. We have lighting but no power so the lamps and the fan don't work.

The children are in uniform as they have been to school since 7 am - in my afternoon group they are in their play clothes as my lesson is an optional extra for them. This accounts for the constant drift of children through - there are always new ones each day while others just disappear. It is customary for the children to say at home one or two days a week to help with their families, daily education being a new concept. And, of course, there's all the holidays - three days off next week for the water festival.

Oh and they leave their shoes at the door (except me - after slipping around on the wet tiles one day, I decided that I would keep mine on notwithstanding the cultural norms!). No-one has said anything about it - I take them off in pagodas of course.

 

That was so much fun this morning, and I get to do it again this afternoon!

 

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