TGIF

Friday, August 24, 2012

I felt like this has been the longest week of my life...and it school didn’t start til Wednesday! Today was a pretty smooth day at work. I’m feel that my students are starting to get use to the routine and some of my rules. One thing I have noticed is that the students may not be as mannered as other students. I think it is partly because English is their second language. I had to give a quick lesson to my fourth graders on the proper way of asking to go to the washroom or getting a drink. “Lynette, I go pee”,  “Can I go pee?” or “Can I go water?”. After realizing that many students were asking these questions incorrectly, I had to explain to the class that “pee” was not the appropriate language to use when asking to go to the washroom. After saying and writing it, modelling it with them and even correctly the odd student, I think they got the point. Mission accomplished.

 (a more up to date photo of my class)

So yesterday I found out that part of my teaching schedule involved teaching Grade 1 ESL three times a week. I don’t mind. It’ll be different teaching such young students...and on top of that, they are just so adorable. However, my biggest concern was walking into a class and realizing they knew no English. When I walked into the class of 15, I introduced myself and told them I would be their English teacher. I told each student to tell me their names. I can be really bad at names sometimes. Being in such multicultural classrooms in Mississauga, I sometimes would have the worst memory when it came to remembering names. I thought I would have the same problems in an Inuit community. I kinda assumed the people in Hall Beach would have “traditional” Inuit names. Well I was wrong. Almost all of the students had “English” names, which really makes it easy for teachers like myself to remember. Now back to the first graders, we sang the ABC song (which they knew), and I asked them about colours, numbers and animals, which they also know. However, from what I gathered that period, they didn’t know how to write the letters of the alphabet. At least I have a starting point with them.