The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round and Round and Round

Thursday 3^rd November

You will be pleased to know that I have introduced many old English favourites into the repertoire of the Georgians of the future.  The “Wheels on the Bus” is a winner as is “Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes”.  “One finger one thumb” is universally adored as it involves a LOT of moving around and falling over for some reason.  I use “Incy Wincy Spider” to quieten them down along with “Hickory Dickory Dock”.  I do a combination of these songs several times a day and am finding that my voice is strengthening as a result.  Or it could just be that my 6-week cold and throat infection combo is at long last clearing up.  Moving on curriculum-wise to counting has now expanded my list and now I do “10 fat sausages”, “5 little ducks”, “10 in the bed” and “10 green bottles” which I actually find a bit dreary but the kids love my impersonation of a green bottle falling off the wall.   Yesterday the “Hokey Cokey” was introduced out of sheer boredom from me.  Naturally the boys think this is a good opportunity to crash into each other and fall over.  My attempts at “The Big ship sailed on the Alley Alley O” was a disaster although they enjoyed being in excruciating pain in a tangle on the floor.  I have been pointed in the direction of the correct actions on Youtube and will now have another go on Monday.

I am trying to be a bit innovative in the lessons which means getting the children out of their seats and working as teams but it is not easy as the teachers like to follow the books to the letter.  They are SO rigid at times.  Giving children “Post-it” notes to match letters to images and past tense to present tense verbs.  A friend sent me some number dominos that consist of 2 pieces that join together like a jigsaw.  This has been really useful as each student is given a piece of the jigsaw and as they have to count the items and find the matching number.  Again this involved boys falling over and a lot of snatching.  I have also done “Story time” which was great.  The floor is too dirty for then to sit on so they have to bring their chairs to the front but we sit in a circle and I show and read a story book to them (courtesy of same friend) the teacher translates but they absolutely loved it.  Probably a story time rug would be a good idea.

We finally received almost a full set of teaching materials.  The red teacher’s book is the one we need the most plus flashcards but we didn’t get those.  We did receive the rest of the CDS, DVDs, Pupil books, work books and posters for the more advanced books.  Martin and I have been given our very own set each.  We have copied everything to our laptops and I use mine in the lessons to play the songs and the readings that are in the book.  The school does have a CD player but there are no sockets in most of the rooms so it is a problem for them.

Given that the teachers don’t use the teacher’s books for the upper school, I predicted that the arrival of the teacher’s books would not make a great deal of difference other than to stem the tide of “What can we do?  We have no books!” to justify why there is more Georgian spoken in a lesson than English and why everything has to be translated.  I cannot remember if I have shared this particular frustration but here goes again as I am sure it requires emphasis. They ask a question in English “How many horse are there?”  Then immediately translate it into Georgian but presumably grammatically correct.  The children answer in Georgian and then she says “Kho” (yes) and then “In English” and they say “Three”  So what they respond to is translate into three.  So If I ask “How many horses are there?” They say “How many horses are there?” And I say it again and then they repeat it.  They do not know what I am saying as they have only ever had to respond to the Georgian question. 

Similarly they do not understand anything they read as again they know it is going to be translated into Georgian and it is that that they respond to.  It has taken me a while to work this out.  When I say this to the teacher she says “Yes they don’t understand” but then goes for a Georgian translation with more fervour.  I have taken a few classes on my own at when they did this I thought at first they were taking the mick as I wasn’t their teacher.  I then had to go through a convoluted explanation of what a question is and what an answer is.  “What’s your name?” “My name is  ..” and then explain what “how many” means by counting.  Similarly in a class on my own I was trying to do hangman on the days of the week and they just kept say “Friday, Saturday” so I said “That’s a word, tell me a letter” “That’s a word, tell me a letter” they repeated back.  They got it in the end but if the teacher had been there they would have been bollocked and had it translated again for them.

My co-teacher does not read the teacher’s books.  She teaches 4 different levels and with 3 lessons a week it is hard going especially as it is in English and her English isn’t too good.  She prefers to follow the pupil book as usual.  The problem is that this means she misses out the important parts of introducing new vocabulary for the tasks, warm up tasks and in fact what the lesson is about.  So I have been looking at the lessons, planning what we will do and then leading her.  I prepare the flashcards that we need and write up the essential bits like this lesson we are looking at plurals or whatever.

It has been hard work to do this and I am also looking at the other material that is on the DVD such as words to learn and phonemes to practice and making up posters for the units.   I got a bit fed up of doing all this without any input from her as it is hard work and so have pulled back quite a bit.  I just follow the lesson in her teacher book and work on the fly during the lesson.  To be honest I don’t blame her.  It is unrealistic to expect her to quadruple her thinking time about the lesson ahead.  I expect she will slowly adapt.  She has also pointed out while their training focussed on group work (rather than the good students come up to the board  and write what she dictates while the rest of the class go wild) the lesson plans in the teacher’s books revolve around pair work.  What needs to happen as always is that the lesson is adapted to your particular students’ needs which means even more planning.  Kinaesthetic tasks and explanations (which I try to bring in as much as possible) are thin on the ground.  She is probably horrified at how I explain what “win” means and “first, second” as I had 5 kids run up the classroom in a race!  Surely that is better than a translation into Georgian?