Today was our first day back at the schools since our trip up north. This was also our first regular day of classes. Yes, we were present for the first day of school, but there were really no classes conducted that day. Today however was totally different. I saw 8 periods of learners and taught 3 of those periods myself. I went into the day not knowing how much I would or wouldn't be teaching. I didn't prepare anything because something told me that Mrs. Emma would be prepared with lessons for the day. I did however have the back-up plan that if she didn't have anything and left me again, that I would spend the time teaching the students routines, attention getters, and doing name games to learn their names.
My hunch was correct however, Mrs. Emma was fully prepared for her classes. She began the day with a home ecology class ( I'm not sure if I will ever be teaching these periods since it's all about the culture here and I don't really know it, but I enjoy learning as she teaches it). Then the second class was a maths (yes with the s) class where she was teaching about rounding off numbers to the nearest whichever place. I watched her teach and took notes. I was pleasantly surprised as she used many great teaching strategies to help her learners including but not limit to: choral response, relating to self, direct instruction, individual response, choral reading, kinesthetic movements, linking to prior knowledge, and humor. She also had adequate homework assignments prepared for them.
I watched Mrs. Emma teach these first two classes and then at the beginning of the second maths period she had to run to the office so she asked me if I could start the learners off with the correcting of their exercise from the day before. Feeling confident I agreed to do so. The learners were finished with this task and Mrs. Emma was still not back, so I proceeded to go on with the lesson as she had taught it to the first class. Mrs. Emma came back in the middle and motioned for me to keep going. When we ended the period, she expressed her happiness in my ability to keep going without her. I sat through her teaching home ecology a few more times and then it came to the last two maths periods. She asked if I wanted to teach again and I gladly agreed. It's a totally different experience teaching to 44 learners whose names you don't know and whose desks you can't really get to. I loved it though, felt so good to get back in the groove of teaching and I just love maths so much!
My lunch/dinner of an amazing sandwich, wheat thins (ish), grapes, and ceres orange juice (my favorite) after a busy first full day of classes
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