Week 2

Week 2 is a pretty interesting week. I was given the opportunity to conduct lessons for grade one students for 3 consecutive days, one lesson per day. So on the first day, I did the usual introduction of Singapore that I did for the past week (in mandarin, yes :/ ) Being only in Grade One, it was necessary to simplify the usage of words used such that they can understand what I'm trying to bring across. The next 2 days, I taught the kids the song 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes' and played Hangman with them. Having gone to 3 classes consecutively in a day, I could tell the difference in the way the teachers 'manages' their class in the way the children behaved. It's amazing how teachers play such an  important role in students when it comes to their upbringing. Then again, this makes sense since students meet their teacher half the time in a day.

So while conducting lessons with the Grade One students, there was something that I felt was an obstacle among students when it comes to learning English, not only for the Grade One classes but for the entire school.
1. They are too shy to speak English.
2. The proficiency of English among students in the same class is different among the individuals.

In school, students start learning English only in Grade Two. Before that, some parents will prefer to send their children to tuition classes to learn English. As such, they are more familiar with the language than some of their peers resulting in them being more outspoken than the others, leaving the rest with little chance of wanting to learn.

Overall conducting the lessons for Grade One students was fun and it allowed me to experience firsthand challenges that teachers face.

One of the Grade One class

This week was also the week where I began conducting English classes for students with higher competency level in English. It was opened to grade 4 students and above and each class will send about 2-3 students. So I was expecting a class of about 20 students. In each lesson, I will pick out newspaper articles that are relevant to the students, pick out keywords and let them watch videos before asking them to share their views on the topic before the end of each lesson. Hoping that by the end of my 6 weeks with them, they will be more brave in speaking English.