Happy June!
Here is a bit of an overview of teaching at the primary school.
I teach every weekday morning at Scorpion school in Nongkhai. At first I was teaching with two English girls, but now they have left so I teach with one girl from Switzerland. We bike to the school which takes about 10 minutes and start our first class at 9am. The order of the three classes differs throughout the week. So Monday might be 4,5,6 then Tuesday 5,6,4 then Wednesday 6,5,4 etc. The grades do not seem to exactl coincide with US ones. I'd say subtract one. So grade 6 in Thailand is about a fifth grade in the US. A bit about each class:
Grade 4 - There are 13 students. They are about 8 or 9 years old. There are only 4 girls and the rest boys. They are extremely enthusiastic and energetic. Their English level is on the low side but they always smile and enjoy whatever we are doing. We are currently working on teaching letter sounds as well as basic conversation skills (as we're doing with all the classes). These include What is your name? How are you? How old are you? What do you like? etc.
Grade 5 - There are 8 students. They are about 9 or 10 years old. There are 3 boys, 5 girls. They are the best behaved class and hardworking but enjoy a good game. We are starting to show them how to put sounds together to make words, as well as concentrating on conversations.
Grade 6- There are 20 students. They are about 10 or 11 years old. There are slightly more girls than boys. The girls liked to play with their cell phones during class, but we quickly stopped that. They can be a handful of a class, but they are also the most advanced in terms of English and can do lots of writing (copying sentences mainly) fairly easily. Again, we are working on putting sounds together and conversations.
After the three classes are finished (one hour each) it is 12 noon and we eat lunch with the other teachers in the staff room. There are about 4 other teachers at the school (besides the little kids teachers) and sometimes one or two of them will eat with us. They speak very little English but they do try to speak to us together. With our little bit of Thai, we get by.
When we leave the school, all the little kids that we don't teach (maybe 5 or 6 years old) run up to us on our bikes and want to touch our hand or hand us flowers. We hear choruses of Hello! Goodbye! as we leave. It is a nice way to end the morning.
The teaching is definitely tiring, but the challenge is nice. I have been using the internet to help plan lessions and get ideas for songs and games. Also, I am pretty lucky as I am pretty much the only volunteer who has stayed at the same school the whole time, everyone else has swtiched around. Some people teach at the Monk school during the day to the teenage monks and some teach English at the college for Business and Tourism to 14-22 year olds.
Next post will be about teaching the monks, which we do in the evenings! Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day Weekend!
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Are you not switching because you don't want to, or is that just what you were assigned?
ReplyDeleteI don't know anything about Thai language...is it like Chinese or Japanese where phonics would be a totally new concept for them?
Funny that you have some of the same behavior problems there that we do here (cell phones). LOVE that they run up to you as you're leaving! Are you able to use any of the Words Their Way word study games there? Or is it too difficult due to supply differences (printing, etc.)? What kind of games are you using?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great post!
Deids: I'm not switching because I'd like to do the same classes consistently to see their progress and really get to know the kids. I haven't really had a good opportunity for switching either. Thai is like Chinese and Japanese in that they use characters. Phonics is new to them, although they learn it a bit in school. They pretty much all know sounds now, so next is putting together 3 letter words. The trick is that they just try to memorize EVERYTHING. It's a bit hard to break them out of that mold and actually think about the sounds. They also are taught to repeat everything and just copy. So asking them their opinion or what they like, they just want to copy you or look very confused!
ReplyDeleteDeb: The behavior is challenging because I don't speak Thai so there is a lot of jumping up and down and gesturing what to do or not to do. At least a lot of gestures are universal worldwide or I'd be in trouble. I haven't used any Words Their Way, although we are starting to put together short words, so maybe I could.. Printing is pretty cheap.
- Vi