A foot in the door

My conversation clubs are probably one of the highlights of my service thus far. I would not have imagined that at all. I think I approached working in the classroom with trepidation in part because of language. My school places a higher emphasis on Russian than on English with majority of students at the most saying "hello" and not much else. But my clubs are pretty fun. I have on average 6 students mostly between the age of 11-14. My other club has about 16 students ranging from 7 to 18 years old. Want to know what is winning them over?

MOVIES!

The last movie I showed them was Coraline. I separated the older kids from the younger kids by giving them their own post-movie tasks. For young children they learned essential vocabulary related to what really stuck out to them such as buttons, eyes, pumpkin, spider, family, etc. The older children got questions related to danger for example and would they do something they really did not want to do. I also asked them if they would trade in their family for a different family. Be glad-the resounding answer was no.

Now we are working on Princess and The Frog, a carry over from Black History month.

The other club that has a large turnout and high participation is What say you-Beginners English.

We play pictionary, actor, and 5 second fill in the blank. Pictionary is definitely fun. I'm amazed at how easily roused the students get when they want their friends/classmates to guess the correct answer. Pictionary usually turns out to be a stick figure for everything on the white board with a bunch of impression dots to say LOOK HERE! THIS IS WHAT WINDY LOOKS LIKE. LOOK SEE..RIGHT HERE! I'M BANGING THE MARKER ON THE BOARD AND IT'S A STICK FIGURE. CAN'T YOU TELL THAT I JUST DREW THE EPITOME OF WINDY !?!!!

Actor is also interesting because I'm finding out that there is a bit of an imagination block with the children. So I often take them outside the classroom to show them how to display words or phrases such as putting on clothes, opening an umbrella, climbing inside a box, etc. It never fails. "Miss Malaika Miss Malaika, burda gel!" This means " teacher, come outside and show me what opening an umbrella looks like because I don't know." I squat down as close to eye  level with them and show them what it means to open an umbrella. The light bulb goes off in their head and I believe I am planting that imagination seed right then and there.

The other thing we do is a race game called 5 second fill in the blank. I write a load of sentences and each student has 5 seconds to fill in with the correct word or preposition, whichever I recently taught them. Extra points for reading the paragraph out loud. This amounts to loads of scribbled writing, pushed in marker tips, and some real hoots and hollers from the winning team.

Are they ultimately learning English? I think so but I don't push it on them. I think it's more important that they can use their own brain rather than someone telling them what to do. It's more important to me that they use reasoning than reciting the same ole "how are you, what is your name, I was born, la la la". It's more important that they trust their own instincts as opposed to being led astray by something that looks good but really isn't going to get them anywhere. And I prefer them to display however they wish, their own confidence and self esteem. In that process if they learn how to introduce themselves in English, talk about their favorite things in English and can tell you their astrological sign in Enlgish then OLDO (meaning fine, alrighty then, okay)!

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