Feeling like me

Today is the first day that I actually felt luke my typical self. I woke up this morning not feel tired, enjoyed my day at school, remembered a few names of students at preschool, and also at the village, worked on lessons and did some shopping. I realize that there are aspects of routine that I really love and appreciate. Feel much more confident and comfortable, when I can remember how to get to a place and communicate with others. 

My main focus for the day was simply to be helpful but also mindful of my short time remaining. Tomorrow is Thursday which means I only have two more days with students! 

At preschool we observed but also helped the students eat, play nicely, and assemble little bears made of cut out shapes. I also did quite a bit of singing. To the point where my host said “You must sing at church.. you have a nice voice!” (Or something like that lol) I told her “thanks yes, I do but along with everyone else; not with a microphone or anything 😅). Plus, it’s probably pretty hard to mess up “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and a “Wheels on the Bus” lol. 

After preschool (the call it upper kindergarten) we went back to the hostel and I started working on my plan for the students in the village. I had to get a little creative. I wanted a theme for the day, to add more context to our learning, and to do more age appropriate lessons as the ages range from 6 - 15 and students have different levels of experience. 

There is a Lonely Planet tourist book in the hostel which I used to introduce the concept of table of contents, glossary, and index. I asked “How do we learn new things?” and of course I got about four different answers about the web… “The Internet, Google, search a website, Google (again)” And another student said, “ask somebody old”, which I agreed; that was a great answer! But of course, I had to say “books!“. I explained that we are tourists visiting, and we needed to learn about their country Sri Lanka. So then, I divided the groups into older students with bigger vocabularies and reading experience, and the younger students were learning words and improving their comprehension. But I think the goal was to show the students more about the reason why they are learning to read. I hope to convey how much opportunity reading and comprehension will give them going forward. I want them to be curious about learning to also enjoy reading.… More on that tomorrow!

Today, The older students were asked questions from the Lonely Planet guide about locations in Sri Lanka, restaurants, attractions, and other details that would prove they understand how to navigate table of contents, glossary, and the index of a book. That was rather new to them. But if they have pleasant personalities and a good understanding of their country, they could be great tour guides and leaders in the hospitality industry in Sri Lanka one day.

For the younger students, I spelled out scrambled letters of names of popular cities in Sri Lanka. They had to unscramble the letters in order to figure out the city name, and in some cases we gave them clues about the place. Many Sri Lankan words are rather long, so this was a good game for practicing letters, listening, and phonetic spelling. We got through about 10 words and the students were engaged the whole hour to hour-and-a-half.

Lastly, as a combined group, we played the game “I spy.” Students had to find something in the room that begins with a certain letter and ask the others to figure out what they saw in the room. It can be pretty hard, keeping the entire room engaged in the same game so we did have a few students completely caught up in their own conversation. Definitely reminded me of my teaching days for you’re always thinking about how to differentiate instruction and keep students engaged throughout the entire class period.

I know if I had more time with these students there is so much I could do!… Again, more to come on that tomorrow.  The group of about 12 are so sweet, curious, and willing to be there, it really is a joy to teach them and I welcome the challenge of figuring out how best to do so,  given the limitations!

And to wrap up the day for dinner, we have some food that really reminded me of Home. It was curry and roti essentially. Paratha, to be more specific and we had had chicken curry today with some split pea dahl! Check out the pic!

And my curry and roti below. From a while back.. I think I overdid it on the jeera that time so it wasn’t as yellowish as it usually is.

Until we meet again, I’m pretty tired. See you tomorrow!