School Teaching Practice Week 1

 1/2/21, Monday

We reached the school by 9:15 AM as instructed by the Principal and were all ready to meet our kids. The coordinator Ms Dahlia Deepu informed us that the student who were of four batches: Science (2), Commerce and Humanities would be attending the classes in batches that too on alternate days. Ms Dahlia helped us in setting our personal timetables and was there with us on the first class.

Ms Dahlia briefed us on the focus areas (7 chapters) that was to be covered and asked us to prepare our lessons for the coming days. As it was our first class, we assisted Ms Dahlia for the day's class so that we were accustomed to the class climate and get an idea on how to go about with our lessons.

 2/2/21, Tuesday

Today we went to our respective classes. We got students from the Science and Commerce batch. I began the lesson Rice written by Chemmanam Chacko. Within the first day's interaction I understood that the students were more comfortable with code-switching. To capture their attention, I played a lyrical video of the poem in Malayalam. Once the students got the theme of the poem in mother-tongue they all synced well with the rest of the teaching. 

 3/2/21, Wednesday

As I went on with the classes I could notice that the children had a very short attention span. It was indeed a herculean task to have them on the same page. The only way to that was to relate the instances of their text with famous movie scenes.. that always worked. While I took the lesson, I also gave them question answers based on their previous question paper pattern. 

4/2/21, Thursday

Today I completed the poem and was consolidating its central themes. The discourse construction for these children were often based on the themes they learn throughout the year. So I made them practice writing a formal letter. I was shocked to learn that being 12th graders, they still had no clue on writing formal letters. I showed them a few examples and made the format clear to them. 

5/2/21, Friday

Once I ensured that the children were thorough with the lesson, I moved on to the next one The 3L's of Empowerment, a speech by Christine Lagarde. The class was an all girls batch and they were all motivated to learn the lesson as it was exclusively applicable to them. The children gave a lot of thoughtful remarks on several social constructs and it was indeed a wonderful session. 

A few snaps of the week