First Teaching Week

So Yesterday marked the end of my first week of teaching at DUF. In general, it was pretty good, and things definitely improved as the week went on and we got used to things.

We are teaching classes 2 - 7; class 1 and the kindergarten classes were deemed too difficult for us to cope with! After Monday, we were wishing class 2 were in that category as well; they are really difficult. But betweenus we've managed to come up with some various teaching and inspiring/disciplining strategies.

The lessons we teach are Reading, Spelling and General Knowledge. Oh the irony after two years of complaining about taking General Studies! GK lessons are from a text book, so we know what we are supposed to be teaching, but it's all really boring, so we're doing our best to make things more interesting with activities, games and challenges, especially with the 2 oldest classes who are near enough to our own age that we can just have some fun.

Friday afternoons is GAMES for the whole school. This is the first year they've run it, and it's a wee bit disorganised. Celia and I ended up with 50 kids to split into 2 teams and play baseball with for an hour and a half yesterday. I enjoyed it at points, but it was hard work, and I was very glad I brought my whistle with me to India.

We're looking forward to being able to get some class projects up and running to brighten up their classrooms as well; we've already managed to get some amazing pictures out of a couple of classes; some fo their favourite characters from stories, and others of their favourite part of the Winnie-the-Pooh story I read them. I knew that book would come in handy at some point.

Alex and Elise are coming for a sleepover tonight, so that'll be fun, and then tomorrow we're going to visit Freny and hopefully she'll be able to help us with some more lesson planning.

TTFN xxx