The Day I Sang in Class
It is definitely against my principle to go in a class without a plan. Well, I almost didn't today as I honestly lacked inspiration last night as I placed limitations to what I could teach my students this morning - they were not good enough to play the games I tend to create; they wouldn't be able to understand; I shouldn't be teaching them too difficult words etc... And so, Idea after idea went down the drain.
I fell asleep on my bed last night while thinking what to do this morning, and when I woke up, I decided not to be too hard on myself and just work on improving their diction and pronunciation. It's not about impressing the other teachers what I am capable of, it's about placing the students' interest first. Still I wondered how their local teachers could teach them using the textbook they used. From what we saw, it was way above their level! Did they even understand?!
I decided on teaching them the song from one of my favourite singers, Christian Bautista. After all, it was quite inspirational and from what I hear from their teacher that they are not motivated, I was hoping that the song I chose did them good.
I started today's lessons working on the words they had learnt in the previous lesson. As I had guessed, most had forgotten how to pronounce the word. I remembered what I learnt at my Emergentics course - that the brain learns better with repetition, and so I made the students read out the words again and again and again until they got their pronunciation right. I then made them form sentences using the words I had chosen for them on the board. To my pleasant surprise, some of them were able to come up with complex sentences! Again, I made them read out loud the sentences they had formed and corrected their grammar and pronunciation at the same time.
I then went on to teach them "I will be what I believe" by Christian Bautista. Again, they learnt new words and how to pronounce them. I went through with them the lyrics, hoping that by the time I did, my 3-hour session with them would be up, but we had time and they wanted to know how the song sounded like. And so, with Christian Bautista singing softly through my ibook, I sang the song! And they loved the song too!
I had wanted to continue today's lessons in the afternoon but my class and the one next to mine requested for the afternoon off as they had a soccer match on. Our local teacher said it was OK for us to cancel classes so we did. It was good for me as I felt really tired - so much so that even the Director of the International Coorperation Office said so!
My students bought me and one of my team mates lunch at their students' canteen. I had Pho (pronounced Fer) while my team mate had a whole big plate of rice and almost 8 varieties of dishes! He was totally shocked when the students served us our lunch. I think they are really excited about our presence so much so that they are planning a dinner-shopping-cum-karaoke sesseion for us tomorrow evening. And they are going to bring me round on a scooter!
Having the afternoon off, I decided to head down to my favourite hotel so I can have my life line of WIFI. It would be more perfect if they people next to me didn't smoke...
We will be meeting out team mates from HUT this evening for dinner and to watch the water puppet show. I hope I can stay up til then. I'm feeling really tired and I'm hoping to get some rest before I start falling ill. I was told to keep warm or I'd get a sore throat soon... and I thought I felt one coming up already last night!
The Hilton Hotel is decked with teddy bears for X'mas this year, Huggy Bear insists that he is the best.. Oh well...
Had the Hilton Club Sandwich last night...
And before I leave, I want to say that I am not the only one tapping on the WIFI here. I see at least 8 other people around me (mostly Caucasians) with their laptops open and get this - they are even using the hotel's power points! I'm not that bad after all!
I fell asleep on my bed last night while thinking what to do this morning, and when I woke up, I decided not to be too hard on myself and just work on improving their diction and pronunciation. It's not about impressing the other teachers what I am capable of, it's about placing the students' interest first. Still I wondered how their local teachers could teach them using the textbook they used. From what we saw, it was way above their level! Did they even understand?!
I decided on teaching them the song from one of my favourite singers, Christian Bautista. After all, it was quite inspirational and from what I hear from their teacher that they are not motivated, I was hoping that the song I chose did them good.
I started today's lessons working on the words they had learnt in the previous lesson. As I had guessed, most had forgotten how to pronounce the word. I remembered what I learnt at my Emergentics course - that the brain learns better with repetition, and so I made the students read out the words again and again and again until they got their pronunciation right. I then made them form sentences using the words I had chosen for them on the board. To my pleasant surprise, some of them were able to come up with complex sentences! Again, I made them read out loud the sentences they had formed and corrected their grammar and pronunciation at the same time.
I then went on to teach them "I will be what I believe" by Christian Bautista. Again, they learnt new words and how to pronounce them. I went through with them the lyrics, hoping that by the time I did, my 3-hour session with them would be up, but we had time and they wanted to know how the song sounded like. And so, with Christian Bautista singing softly through my ibook, I sang the song! And they loved the song too!
I had wanted to continue today's lessons in the afternoon but my class and the one next to mine requested for the afternoon off as they had a soccer match on. Our local teacher said it was OK for us to cancel classes so we did. It was good for me as I felt really tired - so much so that even the Director of the International Coorperation Office said so!
My students bought me and one of my team mates lunch at their students' canteen. I had Pho (pronounced Fer) while my team mate had a whole big plate of rice and almost 8 varieties of dishes! He was totally shocked when the students served us our lunch. I think they are really excited about our presence so much so that they are planning a dinner-shopping-cum-karaoke sesseion for us tomorrow evening. And they are going to bring me round on a scooter!
Having the afternoon off, I decided to head down to my favourite hotel so I can have my life line of WIFI. It would be more perfect if they people next to me didn't smoke...
We will be meeting out team mates from HUT this evening for dinner and to watch the water puppet show. I hope I can stay up til then. I'm feeling really tired and I'm hoping to get some rest before I start falling ill. I was told to keep warm or I'd get a sore throat soon... and I thought I felt one coming up already last night!
The Hilton Hotel is decked with teddy bears for X'mas this year, Huggy Bear insists that he is the best.. Oh well...
Had the Hilton Club Sandwich last night...
And before I leave, I want to say that I am not the only one tapping on the WIFI here. I see at least 8 other people around me (mostly Caucasians) with their laptops open and get this - they are even using the hotel's power points! I'm not that bad after all!
posted by deb at 2:25 PM
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