Monday, July 28, 2008

The day started out in a bit of a panic. The copy machine at school was broke and I needed 40 copies of a crossword puzzle for my lesson at 10am. This especially stressed me out since today I was to be observed by my teachers and academic advisor. I think that was one of those times when you go into “teacher panic, I need something new mode.” Luckily and by the skin of my teeth, one of the other teachers was leaving school to make copies for her class as well. PHEW. Just in time for class I had my crossword puzzle.

I had to teach English today. For the lesson I had planned to read the book, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Joffe Numeroff. As I went through the book beforehand, I noticed a lot of words the year 2 students most likely would not understand. To combat this, I made an English to Bahasa Melayu chart so we could practice the vocabulary words before reading the story. After I had introduced the English words to the students, I then had them teach me how to pronounce the words in Malay. This turned out to be such a useful tool; as I was reading the story, I could see the children glance up at the word chart when I came to the specified words.

Without observing other English classes first, I may have not thought to do this but after seeing Puan Anis teach I was able to pick up on her method of breaking things down to an understandable level. I think this experience, especially time spent in the English classroom will help me better understand how to handle ESL students or even to adapt lessons to students who are struggling. As for the book and the pictures, the students loved it! I found out they are rarely or never read to by their teachers. WOW. That was my favorite part of school when I was young. I am glad I was able to switch things up a bit.

After reading the book and asking a few questions about their favorite pages, I had them complete the crossword puzzle I had made for them. I was a little surprised at how fast they flew through this. I overestimated the time it would take them to complete the activity and I was left with about 25 minutes of class time to fill. Whoops. Luckily, one of the other girls had mentioned earlier playing Hangman with their vocabulary words and I ran with that idea. For about 15 minutes I played Hangman with the students, using the words from the book as well as the food words they have been learning and practicing. Even with this though, there was about 15 minutes left in the hour-long class. Luckily, Puan Anis jumped in to help me improvise and fill the time until class was over. Timing and planning are two things I have to work on in my future teaching. Overall though, I felt really proud of the lesson. I enjoyed teaching it and I feel like the students enjoyed listening to the book. Their behavior was great until we started to run out of things to do. This says to me the students are only antsy and chatty when they lose interest and feel a lack of connection to what is being taught. Something to consider based on my previous observations of some classes as SKTM.

In the evening, my host family took me to meet and visit with Yong’s brother. He lives about 5 miles away from their home. I learned that his home is right next door to their childhood home. It made me wonder if staying and living near your childhood town or home was typical and I found out it is fairly typical for adults to live near or in their same neighborhood. Her brother and his wife, plus some of their children (older than me!) came to visit and meet me as well. And as usual, they brought out tea and food for me to enjoy. Thank you Malaysia. I know I keep being told if you are plump that means you are well taken care of, but as of now I’d skip that cultural benefit.