20201230- Kevin has changed... little by little

First he begins to write Chinese characters really well, he was even invited to participate in a competition at the principal's office and got his compliments. Then he discovered that he can play tennis on his own quite well... he can play for an hour or two, just by hitting the ball against the wall...he's been more polite. and would care for his own belongings. I think it's a great improvement. Yesterday he went to bed at about 9:20. He woke up early this morning and practically just dragged me to school. I praise him for his improvements. Claire has been great, always. She attends to other people's feelings. She's polite and joyful. She knows what she should do. She accompanies her young brother...and she comforts me when I am mad or not well. She's great. I heard a lot of people saying good things about her. Jamie's narrative is becoming ever so complete and whole.

 Thank you God. You've made me realize the difference of my voice towards Jamie and Kevin. No wonder Kevin often thinks that I am mean to him. 

This morning Claire danced the dance of their school and practiced piano. I think she's got talent in singing and dancing and music. Kevin played violin pretty well.  I read 弟子規 this morning to the sister and the younger brother. They went up to the third floor to play this morning. I plan to take to Sigang to understand more about the Magic English class.   

20201211_a refreshing start...

 I prayed to God yesterday to give me some insights into English teaching. And he answered! He told me to RETHINK using WHOLE English method in the classroom and proposing activities that are seemingly unrelated to the language content but to complete the mission children MUST use the target vocabulary and language patterns. I like this idea.

Yesterday Claire had an allergy on her skin, which was worrying. THis has never been happened before. I wonder what has caused it. We went to the Night Market afterwards, and spent a lot of money. :(

This past week I had to request my father-in-law to take Kevin to school, which was embarrassing. Today I managed to wake him up earlier. He practiced calligraphy.  And went to school on time. He also PACKED his violin and books on the van. Bravo!

Jamie packed his own bag yesterday, too. I shall give him a good thumbs-up!

This weekend we are going to Taichung. I want to go to IKEA, and show them some Christmas lights, and bring mom out to lunch and bath in the sun!

In view of Kevin's low self-esteem and difficulty making friends, I made him a list of THINGS TO do to win a new jump rope. I hope this will help him.

1210_every step of the way...

 Dear God.

Every morning I wake up, although I feel tired and worthless, you always make me feel better afterwards, by giving me some suggestions, and love, and care. This morning I wake up, it's already 6:30. You told me to wash my face, after sorting out the laundry and exercising. Although I was still rushing, Kevin was quite cooperative today. He made it to let his grandpa take him to school this morning, though he forgot his masks.

And thank you everyday for giving me ideas on teaching. I think it is all wonderful and my students have enjoyed the activities you've proposed. This morning Jason suggested that for Grade 4 I can make 'no baking needed cookies'. I think it is a great idea.

Claire is able to read some Chinese books on her own. She would read to his brother and ask him to repeat after her. I still rush to get Kevin to school so I missed out some necessary equipment for him everyday. Today it is the mask. I hope he will perform better today at school and I will read him stories in English every day, like 廖彩杏 and 汪培珽.

20201205-About Life

 妹妹這兩天感冒，鼻音很重。昨天，孩子們去圖書館借、還書。我則去了安平的賀伯美髮店剪了頭髮。設計師的功夫很好，我覺得成果很不錯。而孩子們則去和爸爸吃了對面的火鍋店，爸爸照例給他們施行了很多的規定和限制，他自己本身常常不遵守規範，卻ˇ給孩子一大堆莫名其妙的規範: 例如，要跟他睡...要跟他洗澡否則不能怎樣怎樣...限制很多。昨天孩子們又重新聽了胡桃鉗。我覺得故事很複雜，但不會難懂。我希望今天能夠讓Kevin學著自己安排時間。並且能督促他練小提琴和鋼琴，妹妹也一樣。求主給我清明的心智，和效率。和溫柔的心。和沉穩的靈...能好好的引導他們，向善的靈去走。

20201203-God who knows all

 THis morning I made breakfast for children! 

I made tomato toast for Kevin. Ham and cheese sandwich for Jamie and Claire.

Claire begins to enjoy the book ' No more monsters for me!' She loves to listen to it. 

She'd asked me to read it through these two nights even though she was so sleepy and tired. 

Jamie would hang on to the last minute until he's tired and all sleepy.

Good that their fathers didn't have much to protest.

As to Kevin, he insisted on writing calligraphy before he went to bed last night. It seems he really likes it. I complimented on his writing this morning.

Claire likes to play like a teacher; she used my microphone set and she'd always packed it well in the little box that comes with the microphone. THe speaker doesn't work but she said it's ok.

She also can play Secret by heart. I should practice violin with Kevin.

Thank you God 20201201

 I am trying to do, everything you wish for me to do.

Yesterday, Kevin was scolded harshly by me, because he wasn't ready to do anything about his homework when it was already past eight. In fact, he was quite good when I told him to memorize the content of his book. 

Jamie and Claire were just playing hard when we prepared for the dinner and after the dinner. They seem bored at times. Jamie came to ask me to play with him. He woke up this morning to ask for a hug and I gave that to him. I also read everyone of Claire's designated books last night. Claire played piano and found she was able to memorize the tune she's practicing.

Kevin didn't practice last night but he has been helpful these days about preparing for my school's stuff, which was great. 

Teaching Diary 0604 Social Studies City versus country

In today's grade 5 lesson, we've watched several videos about 聚落，and make them write note on page 60-64, on only a very basic structure of the teaching contents. We need to cover more about other cities that are mentioned in the textbook. Children don't seem to be very interested. Tomorrow I'll play 聚落生活，which summarizes this chapter. Then moving on to the Population part. I might give them an assignment this week on rights, and population changes, then moving on next week to different areas of Taiwan, which will take a good two fully compact units.

Grade 2- What would you like to eat? I'd like some...  According to God's instruction, I made them sing a tune along with ' What would you like to eat?. I found they like it and would repeat it after class. The videos we watched are some TACOS but not very interesting and two on Spaguetti that I really like (Jamie Oliver and how Italians.. ).  To follow up, I'll make WST on the match between the food and the country, and How Much Is it?

In Grade 1's class I presented the conversation as shown on the videos. We've first seen the video of 'singing walrus' on How are you. Children then come up to the stage to present the conversation pair by pair. The recorded contents are not entirely unused but they should be recorded again which will be scheduled for next week.

Grade 3 classes I was fortunate to have two students come up to present the famous cuisine in Taiwan. I then extended the discussions to other interesting local foods- like beef noodles, milkfish porridge 椪餅，that are special to Tainan.

Teaching Diary 0514 - teaching demo, 5th grade social science the reverse...and taming of the 1st graders

Wow...
I had a 'calm' demo class today. I didn't picture that... I was all nervous and fretting all over and because I didn't have time to put my ideas into works I pretty up stayed up all night (slept for 4 hours) But thankfully everything went smoothly... It was a bit dull in the middle but I didn't let it stay that way. I went down to look at students' works and to help them...it was great... thank you God... thank you for regulating my sleeping and working hours yesterday so I've had sufficient time to sleep and work.  Even if there are some flaws they are my mistakes to be corrected...
As to the 5th grade social science, I let them watched the video clips of 5 different shows and let them describe how they feel about these different types of shows... these include a musical, a ballet 'swan lake' (and thank God to let me find the most important part of the dance), Cirque du Soleil, a traditional puppet drama, 如果劇團... it was a lot of fun...some students quite enjoyed them, if not all... in the second class I separated them into 6 groups to work on the duties of 6 different administrative offices today. The children did poorly at the first try... some even didn't know what a president does.  But I think it'll turn out to be okay in the end....
As to Grade 1 English...thankfully due to the confidence I gained from the 3rd period Demo class, I was able to main some orders and have some progress in my teaching... I also specifically named some naughty ones to stay after class to clean up. I praised their works and they were happy about it.

Teaching Diary 0424

Grade 6 general.

As God's instruction, I brought all Grade 6ths to the library. A mission impossible to their home teacher. I had two rules for them: don't talk to others and keep the reading to yourself. I then designed a simple worksheet for them to reflect on this library experience. THey were quiet and quite able to follow my rules, which included putting everything back when they leave.

Teaching Diary 0423 Grade 5 Social Science G2 G1 English

I really thank God this morning for me not being too late.
This morning's Grade 5 Social Science was quite tough...but I managed to find some useful videos for children to understand the cause of the wars and the policies the government had been taken after taking over Taiwan.

Teaching Diary 0422 Grade 3 Earth Day

I changed the order of teaching from continuing to talk about and improve one's weakness to Caring for the earth.
I showed them the World Population Clock, talked to them about energies, reusable, non-reusable...etc. We talked about Human Rights before WWII.  We saw the impact from turning off the light for one hour for earth can have on saving energies in Taiwan from 關燈一小時. We also talked about sea level rises from Al Gore's Inconvinient Truth. We also saw how the lack of drinking water can affect thousands of millions of people from Luc Besson's Home. We talked about climate refugee.
Today happened to be the Earth Day. A good time to reflect on this. Thank you god.

Teaching blog 0421

This morning I had the infamous Grade 1 lesson. The first one with foreign teacher Jason was catastrophic... nothing can be taught...some children were running around and others were not listening...
I prayed to have the second class, by myself only, to be going on well. I decided to start by letting them be quiet for a moment and the ones who can do well to sit down. They could do it. I went on to talk about 'liberty' and 'following rules'. Liberty can only be gained by following the rules. Tricky isn't it? Thank God they understood. I then had them practice making a small role play using their head bands. It worked. We have four groups acting in one class. How amazing! Thank God for helping!

Grade 2 English was in the first period. I did not prepare at all just had a vague idea about how to proceed. I started by singing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, and pointed out to them the correct positions of eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.

Grade 4 Health lessons, we finished the Puberty and Hygiene PPT about the girls. There were some chattering. But I think most likely it was because that children didn't understand the English part. I think basically if we pass on the message about Puberty, the lesson is adequate.

The final Grade 1 class was a mess...I listened to God at the beginning and preached them about the RIGHT attitude in a class...they were quiet. At the end, I tried to manage some children's misbehavior and I used a cane to tap loudly to draw their attention. This really hurt my ears. And I doubt the result was productive.

Teaching Diary 20200413- 3rd G Social 6th G General

In today's third grade Social Studies we talked about the areas where they shop and the evolution of paying method. We looked at a clip introducing four types of paying methods and I asked them to discuss in groups the merits and disadvantages of each paying methods and make a comparison.

In 6th grade General I lead them to see from air the beauty of Taiwan and the destruction human beings have brought to this beautiful island, the home we live in. I also show them a video of Michael Jackson singing Heal the World.