Teaching Day in 4P

Day four in the classroom Emily and I got to teach our lesson. Since our first day at the school, the kids were very interested in our lives and asked many questions. We decided to do an activity that told them more about us and our country and we could learn more about their country. This week was a little different , they have been testing every day so we used our lesson as a sort of break from the curriculum (but making sure is still connected to it in some way). We chose to show them pictures of our home, family, pets, school, and the flag to help get their thinking juices flowing. I then taught the students how to use a venn diagram when comparing two items. We gave the students an example of how to fill out the diagram using similarities and differences between the American flag and the Jamaican flag. After that, students were able to come up with their own ideas to fill out the two circles. They were asking questions about our country that Emily and I didn’t even think of comparing, like “Do Americans have a McDonalds like us?” or “Do you guys celebrate Santa Claus at Christmas?” I was surprised that most of the students said they never believed in Santa Claus. This teaching experience taught me how to maintain a classroom with ~40 students (or at least try to) when needed but also how to sit back and allow students to communicate and form their own questions and ideas. I enjoyed being a part of a classroom with a different structure and curriculum. I learned different attention grabbers and classroom management techniques to use in my future classrooms. My teaching experience at Alpha has made me fall in love with teaching children even more than before.