Tuesday, July 8, 2008

“Tank yoo, tea-chea”

Practicing the -sh sound, here with the word fish.
This entry comes a few days late, because I am now touring Vietnam and have a very tight schedule. Nevertheless, it's better late than never.

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Today, I took a break from teaching of the teachers. It was time for me to give teaching the students another try. My first short experience was so exhilarating that I was nervous with excitement. I taught four hour-long sections, one each of third, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. Since the teachers were all familiar with me from having attended my internet classes, it was a smooth experience. They were all comfortable to just take a seat and let me lead the classes.
Without seeing the word, kids had to recognize a color and point to it on the board, and say it out loud so everyone could hear.

I brought candy to reward the students who tried hard. Since many of them are very poor, any type of food is a tremendous motivator. Noting that their texts are complicated and sometimes irrelevant, I created my own lessons—one about colors, and one about special sounds. The colors were aimed at the younger children, and the special sounds aimed at the older ones. The special sounds lesson I built with some basics, and as I noted other letter difficulties, I adapted it for each class.
We played a game where I showed objects and they had to call out the name of the color.

English pronunciation is very difficult for Asian mouths, particularly the “l” sound, as well as “x,” “z,” “sh,” “f,” “th,” “thr,” “b,” any word that ends in “s,” and others. I worked with the older children on these difficult sounds, and they were riveted. I transformed their “feesch” to “fish,” “powpo” to “purpule,” and “bock” to “box.”

Here, we are matching the color to its name on the board. If I look sweaty, that is because I was--it was at least 85 degrees in the classroom.
For the younger children, we worked on colors. First, I showed a flash card with a color on in, and worked with them on the pronunciation. First, we said the color
names as a group, then I called on them individually to come up in front of the class and practice it where I could hear them better. They all sang along in unison and it was evident that they were all trying very hard. Next, we played a color game. I asked them to find objects in the classroom that were the color we were More pronounciation practice. The word blue was esy for them, and there was no shortage of volunteers.saying. They had a hard time understanding what I was asking them to do, until the teacher explained in Khmer. To each child who found an object that was green, yellow, orange, red, black, brown, pink, etc. I gave a piece of candy. They were so excited about the game that we actually went past the bell in my first two classes.
Here, I am working with kids individually, practicing the words. For their effort, they were rewarded with a piece of candy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are a natural teacher Tom! It sounds very rewarding. They probably learned a lot from you.

Please be careful! Take care - we love you and can't wait until you get home again and can show us all your pictures. Call me when you get home!

Love you,
Mom

Joyful Pilgrim said...

uh-huh - teaching children is "exhilarating," is it? do I hear another career calling? Hurry back - it's too quiet now..
Take care,
Ruth

Tom said...

Hi mom and Ruth,
No comment about the career bit...if I could make enough to support myself doing it, maybe, but I plead the fifth. (Too many eyes reading this blog.) The best part was that I was a guest teacher, so they were on their very best behavior. I had a lot of fun, but I cannot wait to be home and everything be back to normal!!

Anonymous said...

Tom,
When do you get home? I thought you would be home by now. Call me as soon as you can and let me know how you are doing.

Love you,
Mom