Chloe......... Natural Born Teacher

This afternoon we returned to the Centre to do a little English teaching, watched closely by the local teachers! Our team were fantastic, full of enthusiasm and good ideas. Chloe was especially impressive, here is her report.

Step aside Mrs Speed and Mrs Clarke, it's our turn now.

When we arrived at the school, cue cards in hand, we didn't know how much English the children knew and had no lesson planned, very non-Rookwood of us! Groups were quickly made and the children were very excited to learn.

My group included Harry Sam and Andrew and we started by getting out cards with words like dog and house on, and some more difficult words like circle or trumpet, luckily the children were very quick learners and it was so rewarding that they could soon could understand whole sentences like "I have a dog" and "I play the trumpet".

Mrs Speed was incredibly excited about singing and dancing, the boys may not have looked like they were that interested in the hokey cokey, but I know they loved it really. The children's favourite was head, shoulders, knees and toes, after playing it again and again the song is still ringing around in my head......... shoulders, knees and toes...

The children already knew colours, numbers, alphabet and family. Starting a conversation with them in English was more challenging, but really nice when they could tell you their brothers name or their favourite colour. Hopefully even a simple conversation in English will be very useful in their future.

We did a range of activities in our group, spelling words, counting children, there were shapes painted on the wall of the school, Harry had a great idea to teach them the shapes in English, which was difficult at first, especially triangle, but the children listened and repeated and you could see that they really wanted to learn.

Above is Issie's group learning numbers, all groups of children definitely enjoyed learning. Almost every word learnt set the children off in laughter and excitement.

 

The children even learned our names quickly, although they were very different from the average Sri Lankan name. In this picture Eddie is in mid laughter from difficulty with mispronunciation of Owen's name, ooowaud apparently.

 

Not only did the children enjoy it, but we all loved taking on the role of the teacher.

 

Emmie, who is the mother everyone wants, shows off her skills of delighting children.

 

The look of approval from the Sri Lankan teachers.

All the teachers were very welcoming and we are all so glad we got to step in their shoes, well sandals, for an afternoon.

Afterwards, Mrs Speed asked me if I wanted to be a teacher, but I think that my natural talent should stay in Sri Lanka.

Lots of love to family and friends at home,everyone here is having a great time and really enjoying themselves!

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