Lyn's First Day Teaching

Today was my first day teaching. Wednesday and Thursday last week I met my classes (except one grade 4 class) and observed how Sandy taught. Today I got to actually teach them :) Now I'm having trouble not writing this like the books are written. It's actually kinda difficult, I was just going through them to make up a test and some questions so if my wording is odd, I'm sorry, it's the books fault.

Anyway. I thought I was going to start with the Grade 4 class I met while observing Sandy and I would meet the other Grade 4 class on Monday, however I was wrong. It made me a little nervous because we didn't know each other, but it ended up working out very well. They seem like good kids and I'm excited to get to know them better. I had originally decided to take it easy today and tomorrow because we only had a two day week so I didn't really want to start anything too in depth right before a weekend. This plan seemed to work with my Grade 4 class, but my first Grade 5 class was crazy. I told them about the new rule, No Korean Allowed At All, and they still spoke in Korean almost constantly to each other. I was getting annoyed so I started the unit with them and ended up giving the whole class -5 points because I don't know their names yet. The girls were upset, but the boys ignored me, I think I'm going to have a lot of problems with that class. The second Grade 5 class, however, was amazing. I kinda love them right now. They actually asked to start their unit, so we did some reading. They're going to be interesting. My first Grade 6 class was fine, not a lot of problems with them, they also wanted to do work, I was a bit surprised because I mentioned that I was willing to go easy today and tomorrow. But who am I to not let them work :)

My next two classes I will problem end up talking about the most here. I think. My second Grade 6 class is a rather advanced class, this was the first class I remembered in the beginning of class I wanted them to make name-cards for themselves. They are very good speakers and they are out of the books so I get to have fun with them. Since they are advanced I asked them if there was anything they wanted to learn about, I'm very open to doing anything, even if I have to do outside research to teach them. I got some blank looks, but then finally one of the girls suggested they do a story game. The first student starts the story, s/he writes three sentences, covers the first two and passes it along, the next student continues the story from that one line, writes three lines, covers everything but the last line and so on. They started working on a story for Sandy now, I'm amused what the first three have written, they are certainly creative boys. My Grade 7 class I started the same way. After they made their name-cards (I remembered for them too, barely), I posed the same question and got even more blank looks. I tried to coax something out of them to very little end. The girls started to give me some feedback, they also seemed interested in my language lesson so I might do word roots with them, but the boys were silent and rather uncooperative. I was a little surprised because normally it's the other way around. Finally, after this lasted the entire class period, I told them that their homework was to come up with something they would like to do in class. Hopefully they will think of SOMETHING. I really want to have fun with these two classes, I hope that once they get to know me they will help a little more.

All in all, I had a rather fun first day. I made up my first test tonight (though it's a "Sandy Test" not a "Lyn Test" as I told the students, because it's one they should have gotten last Thursday from Sandy), and made up questions for readings. I feel teacherly :) it's fun. Now I shall sleep and hope that tomorrow goes as well, or better (hopefully better in some cases).

~Lyn