Another Day in School

Today, Friday, was another day teaching in the school - this time with all four of the 5th grade students. I assisted Danaji in the Maths lesson, then assisted Balaji for Science before break. Next up I was on my own teaching Arts and Crafts. The children had shown a lot of interest in Australian animals after talking about animals in their Science lesson, so I had shown them some of my photos from my Flickr page. They had been so excited to see some of the Australian birds that I decided these would be a great topic for the Arts and Crafts lesson.

My initial plan did not survive first contact: I had planned that the children would choose a bird, draw the outline, and then use whatever materials they wanted to make a collage or a mosaic to create the colours. Despite me explaining it in simple terms and breaking it down into steps, I couldn't convey my idea to them. I tried to demonstrate, but after I had drawn my own outline one of the boys took my picture and begged to have it. I tried to tell him that he could have his own, but I soon realised that they were accustomed to a lot of help in this lesson, and that they wanted to be given a starting picture to work from. Once I realised this, it was a bit trickier for me! I had to draw an outline for each child of the bird that they chose from my photographs, and as the only way we could view them was on my phone, I also had to organise some careful sharing and some annotation so that each child could see what colours their chosen bird was. Tricky though this was, it was also incredibly rewarding - the children seemed to marvel at my very average drawing skills, calling out "super" and "very excellent drawing madam!". It was so cute, and each child seemed so excited to have my basic outline to colour! Most of the children did not really like my idea of using mosaic and collage to colour in their birds, and asked to be allowed to use colouring pens instead. My best friend from home, Sarah, is a primary school teacher who has worked with young children for many years, and I remember her talking how important it is to allow children to create their own games, imaginary worlds, design their own play, and so on. I briefly reflected-in-the-moment on our conversations and decided that it was more important that the children were engaged and creating themselves than that they were following my directions, so I said that of course they could use colouring pens instead. As soon as they had what they needed, all 4 of the children became really engrossed in what they were doing. It felt amazing to have worked towards supporting this level of enthusiasm in 4 young children.

Engrossed in their work

They all finished colouring at different times, and as each one finished I encouraged them to use their own imagination to embellish their pictures. One boy asked for help in drawing the tree his Rainbow Lorikeet was sitting on, and then finished decorating it himself before adding a couple of his own drawings as well.

First to finish colouring, before adding his own embellishments

One boy wanted to keep quite true to life and made minimal embellishments, and the girl in the class used her imagination for the colours on her King Parrot, and to add glitter to the bird and other embellishments to her picture. They all looked fantastic.

King Parrot (in a new variety of colours), Rainbow Lorikeet, Eastern Rosella, Crimson Rosella

Lots of the Indian people we have met stand very formally for photos and look very serious...

As the children all finished at different times, they were looking for different things to do at different times. Ronny and Alex came into my classroom during the lesson, and although when Alex arrived he was a bit of a distraction, he also showed the children how to use my little point-and-shoot camera. It was so cute watching them take pictures of each other, and then seeing Alex try to teach them how to take selfies! Alex and I talked a little about this later; about what it would be like if one of the children became interested in photography and went on to learn more. We both talked about the amazing things they could achieve in a variety of ways if they were able to photograph village life, whether it be artistically, for community development marketing, for recording social history, or simply as a career in taking portraits or a hobby that brings enjoyment.

The children's photography skills - with Mr Alex 

The children's photography skills - with Mr Alex and me

Learning the art of the selfie...

After lunch, I taught in the children's English class. The subject teacher, Gowsia, very kindly offered to take some action shots of me teaching to prove that I am becoming multi-talented on this placement ;)