How did week 6 come around so fast?! Here's a run down of what I got up to...
I taught numbers. Prathom one learnt 1-20. I had a few difficulties with some of the numbers above ten. Eleven was being said the same as Elephant. I had to draw an elephant in every lesson to get them to listen to the difference in the words! Many struggled to remember thirteen. Fifteen was often said as 'fiveteen' because they were matching the pattern that works for many of the teens, saying the number and then teen. Seventeen was really cute because it sounds more like sewenteen, v's are really hard for Thai people to say!
With Prathom 2 and 3 I went through numbers from 1 to begin with to check their pronunciation and to see where the majority of the class knew up to. Many of them, with a bit of recapping could manage up to 100.
Once you know the words for the numbers 1-20 and then 20, 30, 40 and so on, it's really easy to work out all of the numbers between 1 and 100 which the children grasped really fast. With some of them I pushed it further to saying numbers like 167, and many could do it with no trouble.
I had two amazing boys in one of my better behaved Prathom 3 classes who were really eager to learn. By the end of the lesson they worked out how to say 7777 just through me showing them some number patterns at the start of the lesson. Geng mak! (Very good!). When they saw how pleased I was with them they gave each other an accomplished high five which then made most of the other children in the class want to try out harder numbers.
I played a jumbled numbers game which I got the idea for online. I would invite two children to the board each with a pen or chalk. I would name them team 1 and team 2. I would write ability appropriate numbers on the board jumbled up (low down on the board, Thai children are super small!). When I said a number the first person to circle it would get a point which I tallied on the board. The children from Prathom 1-3 loved this game and everyone wanted to get involved. When all the numbers had been circled I would count out loud how many points each child has, then I would name the winner and get them to celebrate by saying 'I win!'.
Another game I tried was bingo. This worked with a couple of my Prathom 3 classes but just getting Prathom 1 and 2 to draw a 9 square grid, no matter how many times I demonstrated an easy way, was painful and not worth the stress. It also seemed difficult to explain, especially compared to my jumbled numbers game which they understood fairly easily.
I went to a Prathom 3 class one of the days and I was told that the children were colouring in a picture for Mother's Day so I didn't need to teach them, just watch them. I instantly felt a bit worried because if anything happens I don't speak the same language as them and they only have a basic grasp of some English words. About 20 minutes in one of the girls were crying, through gesturing and pointing, and the smirk on the face of the boy sitting behind the girl I worked out that he had not been very nice. The only way I could work out to show him I wasn't happy other than raising my voice in English which would have been hilarious to him, was to gesture myself being sad because of him. I'm sure that told him :/... A few minutes later a different boy had upset another lad. Through gestures and my 'teacher glare' I tried to get my message across but I'm not sure how much it worked. The difficulty with me disciplining the children is that first of all, they don't understand me and second of all, the Thai teachers hit the students as punishment, sometimes for very small things like facing the wrong way. This means that any glare or angry face isn't taken too seriously because they know the final step of being hit won't happen as they had never seen me do that.
At the start of my numbers lesson in a Prathom 1 class, Fern, the teacher went out for a couple of minutes, which was fine they're not normally too badly behaved. However as I was getting them to repeat numbers I realised that more and more children were producing rulers and whacking the child next to them with it. This may have been mocking what the teachers do as their weapon of choice is normally a ruler. I decided quickly to put a stop to it so I walked around confiscating everyone's rulers. The children looked terrified and I had their attention. At this point Fern came in and thought I wanted to hit the children with their rulers which helpe me realise why the children looked quite so scared. I had a quick thought to turn this into some learning so I decided we would count the rulers. One, two, three. Every ruler I counted the children looked more and more scared sinking into their chairs slightly. I guess they thought when I got to the end they were going to get hit! Not ideal!
So what happened the rest of the week?
I had constant chalk board hands...
Joy got interviewed a lot as part of the children's English lessons. One of the questions was what is your favourite Thai food? She said fried banana and fried durian, no prizes for guessing what foods we were brought loads of over that week!
I cooked some more meals for when we wanted to 'Gin kow'. (Directly translates to eat rice but means breakfast, lunch and dinner. Because we have rice at every meal it makes sense!)
Lan took us out for dinner to get Som Tham (Papaya Salad) at her favourite resturant.
We had sticky rice with it also which you can see above in the brown containers.
Seeing a fish like this on the table would have slightly horrified me if I had seen it around 2 months go. However, having had fish like this a few times previously, I know how delicious it is so I was very happy to see it's little face.
Lan getting stuck in!
Lan's monkey, Tonkaow came along as well and thoroughly enjoyed his chicken wings and ice cream. Just look at that little face!
Mr monkey was ignoring me in the car, I guess when you're 6 years old, angry birds is a lot more exciting than one of the farang teachers that your mother babbles to in another language!
However, it's not in Tonkaow's nature to sit still for long!
We were then joined by the smallest, three year old monkey, Baiboon. She said 'I love you!' My heart melted, it was the cutest thing ever. Lan also told us that Baiboon had been saying that she missed the farang teachers! I don't think Lan will notice if I smuggle her monkeys back home with me...
We taught Lin and Jeff how to do a proper good creepy face, for no good reason other than it was hilarious.
Chloe Court: creepy face expert
We can be normal too...
Friday was a special celebration for the Queens Birthday, which also marks Mother's day in Thailand.
Winners of the Mother's Day colouring competition.
Myself and Teacher Pennapa.
The girls doing the Traditional Thai dancing were amazing.
Two of them unfortunately had outfit mishaps as their skirts began to unravel!
As part of the celebration, they put on some songs for the children to sing along to. Quite a few of the younger children started crying during one particular song. It was clear that some were actually crying and some were crying because their friend was, but myself and Joy couldn't really work out why, or why no one was doing anything about it. We spoke to Lan afterwards about it and she said it was because many of the children's mothers are away working. Jeff, one of the boys that is always in the English room and is miles better at English than all of his teachers, aside from Lan, sadly doesn't live with his parents. They both live and work in Bangkok while Jeff lives with his Grandparents. I think it just be the same situation for a fair few of the children.
After the tears we had a quick photo shoot, lunch and then Lan dropped us off at the bus station so we could get a van to Surat Thani to start our long weekend on Koh Phangan!
Myself, Joy and Oyrya
Joy, Poi, me, Lan and Cham
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