Just finished our Reggae unit. The practical part resulted in this - not bad for a majority of total beginners!
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As a new teacher to the school not knowing any students names, I always call the role at the start of each lesson to ensure I'm saying names right, put faces to names and of course, check that each class member is there. I recently started calling names using different language greetings including Maori (our 2nd language anyway) (Kia ora/ Tena koe), Tongan (Malo), Samoan (Talofa), Thai (Sawadee Kap), French (Bonjour), German (Gutentag), Filipino (Kamusta), Mandarin (Ni Hao), Japanese (Konichiwa), Fijian (Bula), Hindi (Namaste), Italian (Ciao), Spanish (Hola/ Buenos Dias) and Khmer (Soostay).
I'm into languages as a hobby and love learning bits and pieces where I can, so mostly it was just for amusement - at first the kids were a bit shy and weirded out, but slowly and surely they are responding with other language greetings and growing more confident to do so. This fits with my own belief that language and culture is interesting and fun and I'd like also to think that for our students who come from various cultures and backgrounds themselves, it shows an interest and respect in them. Although our school is not as multi-cultural as many urban schools, we do have a small percentage of Chinese, Filipino, Pacific Island and others in our midst. Using my newly learned Mandarin with my Chinese students and Filipino with my Filipino students is fun! I'd like to learn and use more language in the classroom - although mine is a music class, I can't see why multiple languages can't be an added feature! I've had some interesting moments both in class and outside lately. It seems that I can get so caught up in trying to be innovative, modern and interesting that I forget to throw in some some good old fashioned stuff - both content/ lesson-wise and behaviour management-wise too.
Many students whinge and moan about doing book work and especially crosswords and word finds (which they did daily with the previous teacher) yet when I gave them these exact tasks yesterday they enjoyed it and did it without question. Some were even like "oh cool, a word find!". Granted, these sorts of tasks are not something to be done daily (what single task is?) but they are worth doing from time to time. The other experience was with behaviour management and it happened at the local gym where many teens from our school train. The standards there have become a problem lately and we decided to sort it out - I have been hammering them and very short with some of them and because it's not at school and a part of my personal time I have taken the liberty of being less 'PC' with them as I'd be at school. That said, I'm still aware that I'm an adult and a teacher and have to be careful. What I noticed is that these teenage boys respond well to firm clear hard instruction with no mucking about. Yes, some moaned and gave me less than pleasant looks, but ultimately they did as they were told and some have even displayed an increased respect toward me, both at the gym and at school. Lesson: It's good to explore and try new methods, but old school ways remain very effective at times! |
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Teacher/ Musician from Northland, New Zealand. |