July 19th

Unfortunately no huge insights today, just a very nice day at the Project. I was teaching the 4th and 5th class boys and girls today, which is always good fun and I feel I can achieve much more with them given their stronger base in English.

We started on the 'School' topic today, talking about what school they go to, what class they are in, what subjects they study, what their favourite subject is, what their uniform looks like, and whether they like their uniform or not. There were a few new children in the 5th class boys group but they seem very well behaved and are at a similar level to the other guys in the class. Everyone did really well in the discussion sessions but I think I will need another session to consolidate as usual. I also managed to teach them the use of before and after and they seemed to understand - we talked about what they did before they go to school, and what they do after they get home from school. We also focussed on some plurals when talking about the favourite subjects - some of them said 2 subjects so I taught them when to use "my favourite is.." and "my favourites are..." Again, they seemed to understand but I shall find out whether they did or not when we consolidate on Wednesday! It is really nice working with these groups as they are all so eager to learn, very polite, respectful and I can have a joke with them without the whole class then getting out of hand.

One of the lads decided to give me a sweet and touched my feet as a mark of respect, and then I got even more sweets when a girl called Sabrun brought sweets in as it was her birthday! I have found that they all really like having photos taken of themselves, so I have changed from the stick approach (the threat of calling in Dharmendra) to the carrot approach (photos at the end of the lesson) and it seemed to work well and I have managed to get some really nice photos of all the classes as you can see below!





















I have also been thinking a bit about my dissertation ideas, and it has been suggested that I could look into the effects/issues of the Commonwealth Games, and I have been shown a very interesting article that seems to side with the pessimistic view that I also hold about these games! Not sure if I could write a balanced argument on this topic though, as you can probably tell from my last few blogs last week! We shall see.