Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Credit where credit is due!

As best I can tell there is not much creativity in teaching methodology at Temple School Wat Salapoon. I see teachers sitting in a chair in front of their class appearing to drone on and on. There is quite a bit of group recitation. When Shandah asked how I was going to get the class involved in the lesson about gender in English, I made a brilliant decision, I asked, "What do you suggest?" Her idea was, after listing examples of masculine, feminine and neuter on the board, giving the students slips of paper with one example put on each slip. Then the students were to get up and put the slip under the proper heading on the board. I did as she suggested and after a review of about 30 examples I had the students close their notebooks and erased the board. They got about 66% correct on the first try. We reviewed all the answers and I kept those that were incorrect and handed them out again. This time there were only 2 mistakes.
Teaching the 5th grade at 8:30 went very well. At 10:30 I taught the 4th grade and, because she wasn't teaching that hour, Shandah came to observe. The English teacher walked over to Shandah while I was teaching and said, "Al is such a good teacher. This is a great idea." The moral question here is, should I say something to the English teacher? :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Accept the compliment (being a good teacher) and give credit to Shandah for her good idea that is working well.
Michelene