Teaching: First Week

I entered my first week of teaching, with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Firstly, I had no real teaching experience, just TEFL. Secondly, I was teaching children who spoke a language  that I could barely understand.

My very first lesson was with a Kindergarten class, aged three and four. I decided to do a lesson on Numbers and Colours and bought some stickers for the kids if they did well. They impressed me and picked up the names of all the primary colours really quickly. For one of the exercises, I selected one of the children to come upto front and everytime three or four would come upto the front, regardless of whether I picked them. So, it was pretty funny having to usher some of them to sit back down.

For the Primary and Secondary classes I had, I put together a presentation about myself. My Family, where I am from, my interests and what I knew about China. I brought in an England football shirt and some match tickets, as well as a BBC ID Pass from my summers work there. Everyone seemed to love looking at these, although I thought there was going to be a stampede when I showed the shirt!!!

They all appeared to be genuinely interested in me, and all found it hilarious when I tried to demonstrate the Chinese I had learnt. They were in hysterics when I tried to pronounce 'qing wen' (excuse me), so that was pretty fun. At the end of each lesson I let them ask me questions and a lot of the older girls asked for my telephone number, which was pretty awkward!

I closed every lesson with a quiz on my presentation to see if they had been listening and bought some Oreos as prizes. Mind you, cost me a bomb as I got a pack for every class! Definitely worth it though, as they loved it, the smiles were priceless!

And then the autograph signings in the lessons switchover...crazy! Signing one boys cheek was probably a highlight. I wonder what his would've thought when he arrived home with 'Ryan', written all over his cheek!! Haha. 

Overall, the first week was a real success and very enjoyable. I think everyine enjoyed the lessons, and more importantly, learnt something. Next week, I am telling them all about England and getting them to do short group presentations on China, which should be interesting!

Well, that's all from me, I hope anyone that has read this found my re-telling interesting and let me know what you guys are upto!

Ciao x

P.S. I am starting to get pretty damn good at Ping Pong!