A New Beginning - my first day in school

It was my first day in school today. I was so excited that I got there too early and the school was still locked. Booooo to me! hehehe

Generally, my first day of assisting was really fun. I joined Ms.Jo on her 3's and 4's class (they say "ms" instead of "teacher":-( The routine is almost the same in the Philippines though the load here is a little lighter because teachers only handle 1-2 subjects like English and Math or Science and PE etc. In Manila, pre-school teachers handle ALL subjects. Gosh, toxic! Anyway, the class started with "Circle Time" and we had singing and dancing with the kids. I learned a new action song today called the "chicken dance!", and I found the kids really cute dancing and stomping and walking like chickens as the music played. Then Ms.Jo went on to teach English. Her letters for today were M and N. What caught my attention during her teaching was the sound of the letters she mentioned to the kids. She said that the sound of letter M is "ma" and that N is "na". I didn't think that was right but I kept quiet because I'm new and I am not even fully hired yet so I don't think I have the right. It was a good thing though that teacher Jo asked me a little later if that was right and I told her that as for me it should be "mmmm" not "ma" and "nnnnn" not "na". The technique is to pronounce the letters without a vowel in the end. Say for example the word MEN, if we will follow the sound "ma" the kids will read MEN as "MAEN" and worst if N is "na for them, they might even read this as "MAENA". whoa! terrible! But if you teach them just the sound mmmmm,,, the kids would be able to blend the word MAN as they say MMMMM AAAAAA NNNNNNN = MAN. Well, that's just a tip. And for parents, my suggestion is to teach your kids the "sound" of the alphabet first before teaching them the "name" of the letters. Because kids will NOT be able to read by knowing the letter names but by blending the letter sounds and that's what we simply call PHONICS:-) At the later part of the day, Ms.Jo taught Parts of the Fish for Science class.

The highlight of my day was the time I spent with the kids at the library while waiting for their mom, dad or yaya to pick them up. Kids would come to me and ask me about dinosaurs, solar system, sea creatures etc. Then came this little girl who requested for me to do storytelling of Jack and the Beanstalk. I was already in the middle part of my story when another teacher told me to take note of the kid behind me because he might fall. When I looked around, there were already a lot of kids crawling around me wanting to hear the story. It was really cute to see these kids very eager to learn. Too bad Ms. Meenah (the owner of the school) called to speak with me and so I had to stop my story. The childen were frustrated!:-(

The main challenge that I see in any case I work in this school is the language barrier. My goodness, when they all start speaking in Chinese, I'm just so totally lost! Also, I met 48 kids with mostly Chinese names!!!! And I had to memorize them! waaaahhh!!!!! I guess I will be forced to learn the language slowly or else I'm dead. hahaha, Other than this, I think the whole teaching adventure waiting for me is going to be a productive and a very interesting one. Praise God!