First Day of School

Today I taught in a school for the first time. 

Morning assembly

The class sizes in SEDS' Ananda Vidyalayam school are very small, and of the 4 children in my class only 2 were present today. The proper teacher did not arrive for the first lesson, so turning to the correct chapter in the syllabus book I thought I could carry on without them. Unfortunately, the subject was ‘General Knowledge’, and the lessons were about Indian history, culture, monuments etc – so without knowing the answers myself there was nothing I could actually teach them from the syllabus book. Instead, I made up an impromptu English lesson.

My class

I had noticed that the children knew quite a few question-and-answer routines, but seemed to know them by rote rather than really understanding. This meant that if you kept the same sentence structure but altered the details of the question slightly, many of the children could not still understand the English. So for my first lesson, I focus on going through the question words. I wrote all of the question words on the board (who, why, where, which, how; and the children added how many – how many and how much are a bit more complex to explain so I hadn’t planned to work on those yet). Then I got the children to make up questions using the question words. I corrected the grammar of the sentences they created, and then we practised asking the questions. Once they could say them well and understand the meanings, I started asking the questions to the children so that they could answer them. We did lots of repetition because repetition is pretty crucial in learning a language, and then at the end of the lesson I did some directions with them – forwards, backwards, sideways, left, right, up and down. We did this by using actions and I had them moving around the classroom and jumping up and down. It was really fun, and the kids were so cute and clever.

  

Our breakfast wasn’t available before we went to the school, so after the first lesson we had to go back to the house for breakfast, and then back to school between their morning break and lunch. I assisted the teachers in English, maths, and science before the school finished for the day, and I rode on the jeep for the home-from-school run taking the children back to their homes in the villages around SEDS. 

The homes in the villages were very different to Australia or the UK. Many of them had only one room, and some had no internal plumbing so the women were washing pots and pans outside. Piles of firewood were outside some of the housing for cooking fires. Several houses had lean-tos or yards outside housing goats, cows, or buffaloes, and many were painted in wonderful bright colours.

When we got back on the jeep, Alex and Ronny were waiting for us to arrive back so that we take Rajan out for a drive, and they invited me along too. We went back to the Sanipalli hill  on Rajan’s request, and saw lots of birds, some more lizards, and a monkey on the way there. On the way back Alex spotted a mongoose and I spotted a hare, but I wasn’t quick enough with the camera to get pictures of either.

We finished off the evening with dinner, plus a couple of beers to celebrate that the encroachment issue from a few days ago is finally settled (barring any repercussions that may occur of course…)