TESOL Training and Teaching

Since my last post, I have been extremely busy. Hence the no updates. I trapezed into my TESOL training last week. I spent eight hours in the classroom everyday day, learning how to teach English. I was able to create my own lesson plans and then present the plans to my class. Which is kinda scary, because I am creating lesson plans for 5 to 13 year olds and then presenting them to a class of 20, 30 and 40 somethings. However, I needed to act as animated as if I was presenting to a child. Teaching is a performance, it really is. I honestly didn’t even know I had this side of me, or that I would find so much satisfaction from it. I have one week left in TESOL training. Then I will take a exam and be placed in a school.... Insert squeal.

The first lesson plan I created was on expressing emotions in English. I picked this topic because at a very basic level, I want my students to be able to tell me if they are sick, hungry, tired, happy, sad, etc. My theme of this lesson (the theme is what makes it exciting for the kids) .....came to me when I was walking around the market. I walked into a store that had about 60 pool floats hung from the ceiling. The store had a random assortment of things. Everything from plug in fans to dolphin paper plates. Inside the store, there was a live koi pond, (yes) it had a tiny bridge over it as well. I kept seeing angry birds. Angry birds as in.... the silly video game that everyone played on the toilet in 2011. So I decided to theme my lesson around angry birds, because they have a range of emotions. This would also require me to design it like a video game. And kids love video games.

My lesson plan started with a paper plate toss into baskets. I placed tape on the floor and the kids had to jump from each taped x and then toss their paper plate (there was a angry bird face on it) into the basket. Then I moved into vocabulary with pictures of angry birds showing different emotions. Then I jumped into a couplet, which is a sentence that you repeat several times. Ex) Are you angry? Yes, I am angry”.. My cool down was a worksheet on matching emotions photos with English words..

My second lesson plan which I presented the following day was on “My School”, areas and places within a school. Jaco our teacher picked these themes. The third day I presented a lesson on Christmas. For the Christmas lesson plan, I got to work with a TESOL partner. I was really lucky because I got an awesome partner (shout out to you Tammy!!.... also she is wearing “the future is female on my snaps page). On Monday and Tuesday this week I went to an actual Thai school and I was able to teach the “My school" lesson plan, which I did solo. The next day Tammy and I taught the Christmas lesson plan. I love teaching. I am slowly getting into my teacher voice, aka I am constantly almost yelling, while smiling, and pronouncing very slowly. This can really wreck your throat by the end of the day.

I am going to be traveling to a high school camp tomorrow, it is my first kinda paid gig! (I’m being paid in food). My TESOL teacher Jaco thinks my personality would work well with older kids. We shall see, I am excited to get experience with both. My TESOL class ends next week and I am looking into booking a yoga retreat somewhere for a few weeks, then hopefully transitioning into a summer camp as school beings in May.

Be sure to check out the snaps and sketches tap for photo and sketch updates.

Xo- Felicia

For some reason in the middle of February we had to teach a Christmas lesson. So I invented a snowman toss game. The kids loved it.. Not very much English was spoken, but hey sometimes you just need to have fun.