BEEN BUSY TEACHING!

Hello all!  I have been so busy that I have not had the chance to write a post on my blog.

I have spent the last five weeks teaching English at the Ecole Francaise. I have worked four days a week teaching two classes, each with 28 five-six year olds. the children are like a mini-United Nations as they come from all over Africa and the world! They speak between 2-4 languages. Many are great little interpreters and translators and they are only five!

I have had to wake at 5:30 each morning and be leave at 6:45 to be at school for 7 o'clock. The children  start arriving at 7:30. School starts at 8 am with the first break at 9 o'clock. 15 minutes of eating and 15 minutes of play. They have one ball and no toys or sandpit to play in. They mainly play in the dirt, run around and get into fights over the ball!

The children go inside from 9:30 to 11 o'clock. This is when we do rotational activities. I called them "LEARNING LIONS". They really got to like doing these activities, much like Busy Bees, but they needed lots of training and help to learn how to work quietly, co-operatively and independently. They are now really good at doing their work.

At 11 o'clock, it's outside play again, with more dust, running, fighting and rolling in the dirt! ;0(
Afterwards we come in for some direct teaching time and then some play before tidying up and going home (!!!) at 12:45.

But, I had to stay back until 1:30 to teach "Soutene" which is a language support group for those children needing help learning English.

I was on duty every break, except one and would not get a chance for lunch until I came home at 2- 2:30! Whew! My days were exhausting. It sure feels like more than five weeks to me! The children were adorable, just so many interruptions by poor behaviour that stopped our learning. It is very frustrating as the teacher to constantly be stopping the teaching for this and the children who want to learn do not like it either! My sticker charts became very popular and my prize box even more so, if someone got 10 stickers for "doing the right thing". I know that many of the OSS children can do the right thing and be switched on and focussed for classroom learning.

So here are some pics to compare your classroom with my classroom.

Every child loves Lego!

We made a garden and learnt about many things related to plants.

We are learning to sit, cross our legs, put our hands in our laps,
keep our mouths closed and listen to the person speaking.

Teaching how to cooperate and play a game.

They loved dominoes.

Learning to line up quiety in two lines/

I read them "The Sunflower that Went FLOP!".

We counted petals on flowers

I read them "The Very Hungry Caterpillar".

The Sunflower that went flop!

Lots of stories I put on my laptop for the children to see,
 as the school did not have many stories in English.

GSA. GRande Section A.
Can you find me?

Grande Section B
Where am I now?

This is the whole school!