Pippa learning English!
Wow last week seems to have gone in a blur!
Me and Caitlin have been properly teaching for a couple of weeks now and although my classes are not saints by anyone's standards, it hasn't gone badly! Last week I started off with the topic of Occupations, and one of the first things I noticed is how the ability of the kids vary. Each year has 5 or 6 classes which are grouped by ability, but it is general ability, not ability in each class. So my class 3/1 has some kids who are fantastic at English, but others who are awful at it and are fantastic at maths or music instead. It does make teaching the classes more difficult because while some kids are really enthusiastic, others sit at the back and obviously don't care about what you're trying to teach them - it's a challenge to get all the kids to take part in the lesson, but it's not a bad challenge and I'm looking forward to trying different things to try and get them involved and enjoying class.
I've been finding that my Matthayom 3s (age 14 - 15) are often worse behaved than my Matthayom 1s and 2s, and today found out why! Apparently kids can leave school after M3, so a lot of the time the kids who have decided they're going to leave after M3 don't care about school so don't try. M1 and M2 are only just past the cute primary school stage so are more pliable!
I missed quite a lot of my lessons over the last couple of weeks - last week we went into Nakhon Phanom to sort out work permits and visas etc., and missed a while day of lessons (we just had to go to Tescos to get cake mix too of course!), and the week before that on Monday morning we met with some of the teachers from St. Josephs Catholic Primary School where we are going to teach every Friday, on Tuesday morning we went with Pee Fah to the hospital to get a note saying we were healthy enough to get our visa extended (took blood pressure, weight and height - a very thorough check I thought!). On Wednesday we spend the day in Nakhon Phanom getting something with our visa done, then went to the temple (3rd time for me, first for Caitlin!). It was really nice, we spend the day with one of the English teachers from NaKae Pitt. and he bought us a huge lunch and ice cream - it was really sweet of him! However, missing this many lessons last week meant that so far this week it's been a bit of a rush to try and all of my classes at roughly the same point (continuing with occupations this week), but so far I think it's been successful!
We are only teaching the older kids at the primary school - Lucie (our Thailand Rep) phoned us to ask how it was going and when we told her that we were teaching the younger primary kids she said that we should ask to teach only the older ones, because it will be more beneficial to both the children and us. We also felt that we don't know enough Thai to teach the younger kids - we observed some lessons, and the teachers had to use a lot of Thai to explain what they had to do, and it would be extremely difficult to try to control the class while explaining something they don't understand, especially the nursery kids who we were originally going to be teaching! The older kids are absolutely lovely, their English is fantastic though!
Wow last week seems to have gone in a blur!
Me and Caitlin have been properly teaching for a couple of weeks now and although my classes are not saints by anyone's standards, it hasn't gone badly! Last week I started off with the topic of Occupations, and one of the first things I noticed is how the ability of the kids vary. Each year has 5 or 6 classes which are grouped by ability, but it is general ability, not ability in each class. So my class 3/1 has some kids who are fantastic at English, but others who are awful at it and are fantastic at maths or music instead. It does make teaching the classes more difficult because while some kids are really enthusiastic, others sit at the back and obviously don't care about what you're trying to teach them - it's a challenge to get all the kids to take part in the lesson, but it's not a bad challenge and I'm looking forward to trying different things to try and get them involved and enjoying class.
I've been finding that my Matthayom 3s (age 14 - 15) are often worse behaved than my Matthayom 1s and 2s, and today found out why! Apparently kids can leave school after M3, so a lot of the time the kids who have decided they're going to leave after M3 don't care about school so don't try. M1 and M2 are only just past the cute primary school stage so are more pliable!
I missed quite a lot of my lessons over the last couple of weeks - last week we went into Nakhon Phanom to sort out work permits and visas etc., and missed a while day of lessons (we just had to go to Tescos to get cake mix too of course!), and the week before that on Monday morning we met with some of the teachers from St. Josephs Catholic Primary School where we are going to teach every Friday, on Tuesday morning we went with Pee Fah to the hospital to get a note saying we were healthy enough to get our visa extended (took blood pressure, weight and height - a very thorough check I thought!). On Wednesday we spend the day in Nakhon Phanom getting something with our visa done, then went to the temple (3rd time for me, first for Caitlin!). It was really nice, we spend the day with one of the English teachers from NaKae Pitt. and he bought us a huge lunch and ice cream - it was really sweet of him! However, missing this many lessons last week meant that so far this week it's been a bit of a rush to try and all of my classes at roughly the same point (continuing with occupations this week), but so far I think it's been successful!
We are only teaching the older kids at the primary school - Lucie (our Thailand Rep) phoned us to ask how it was going and when we told her that we were teaching the younger primary kids she said that we should ask to teach only the older ones, because it will be more beneficial to both the children and us. We also felt that we don't know enough Thai to teach the younger kids - we observed some lessons, and the teachers had to use a lot of Thai to explain what they had to do, and it would be extremely difficult to try to control the class while explaining something they don't understand, especially the nursery kids who we were originally going to be teaching! The older kids are absolutely lovely, their English is fantastic though!
We got a rice cooker from someone at school and a huge bag of rice to go with it which is fantastic! Means we don't have to spend as much money on rice, so we can buy more shiny things instead! :) Caitlin was quick to begin the process of destroying it though... We also borrowed an electric pan from the school, and she used the rice cooker's PLASTIC spatula in it... This was what happened:
I'm still unsure how she managed to not notice such a huge amount of spatula melting into her pan, but she's special :)
We were at our friend Pippa's house a couple of nights ago, and decided to have a night where none of us was allowed to use the translator!! The idea was that she would learn more English and we would learn more Thai. It was actually loads of fun, but I have a feeling that Pippa was one of those pupils that played up a lot...!
We asked her to write in English... Her response was "Thai, English SAME SAME!"
We asked her some questions...
It was hilarious!! Not sure how much she learned though...
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