I’ll be doing
plenty of teaching in the coming week – teachers and students!
My usual weekly
teaching load is four classes of Spoken English and one of tuition. I also spend time observing and advising in
other teachers’ classes. The remainder of my week is spent investigating the
curriculum that is currently being taught and finding resources to support it.
As the year goes on I will be looking at what modifications the curriculum
needs to make it more relevant to students’ needs.
This coming week
I will be teaching four lessons of Global Studies while our Belgian volunteer
is climbing Mt Kilimanjaro. The current topic is African History and I will be tackling
Tanzania in the Colonial Era. I have a lot to learn! I have ‘googled it up’ and
put together a timeline of important events. Now I have to find a way to teach
it that is possible with the limited resources available but will make the
information real for the students. My biggest problem will be the language I
use – I have to keep it simple as the students, especially the beginners, have
fairly limited vocabularies.
Doing my lesson
planning will be useful practice for the workshop I’m running on Wednesday
afternoon which is on – Lesson Planning! The ‘flyer’ said
Why should we
intentionally plan our lessons?
How can we plan
our lessons in a way that is quick and easy?
How can we use
planning to make our teaching more effective?
How can we use planning to
be more accountable?
I hope I find out
before Wednesday!
The Spoken English
is going well. In the week just gone the students have been devising and presenting short rôle plays on topics from other subjects – ‘Teaching the
use of Microsoft Word’ from IT, ‘A visit to the doctor’ from Life Skills, ‘The
Slave Market’ from Global Studies and ‘Getting the bill at a restaurant’ from
mathematics. Hilarity ensues when the computers are too slow to load and the
teacher becomes impatient with the students; when the would be slave owner
wants to pay using M-pesa; and when the waiter tells the customer that her restaurant
is too ‘classy’ to sell Ugali! We have a lot of fun and I think we are learning
to speak better English.
I’ll let you know
more about the workshop after Wednesday. I’m hoping that at least the
Afternoon tea
provided
will get them there and then I can keep
them interested. In the meantime at least all this planning is a distraction from the disaster unfolding at the MCG this morning (my time) and I hope the head cold that has me staying inside and keeping warm with many cups of tea will be gone by Monday.
