New Schedule

The school gave me a new schedule since the other Primary School teacher is leaving. Now I am only teaching grades 3 and 4, plus two English Activities. Here is my schedule:
 
Monday
1:05 - 1:45, Class 1 Grade 4
2:00 - 2:40, Class 2 Grade 4
2:55 - 3:35, Class 3 Grade 4
Tuesday
1:05 - 1:45, Class 1 Grade 3  
2:00 - 2:40, Class 2 Grade 3
Wednesday
1:30 - 2:20, English Activity  
2:35 - 3:30, English Activity
Thursday  
8:50 - 9:30, Class 3 Grade 3  
10:00 - 10:40, Class 5 Grade 4
Friday
8:50 - 9:30, Class 4 Grade 4  
10:00 - 10:40, Class 4 Grade 3  
11:00 - 11:40, Class 5 Grade 3    

I'm happy with this schedule. In some ways it will be easier because I've only got two grade levels that are closer together in age now, so I can do the same lesson. Planning two 50 minute multi-age English Activities a week will be hard, since its the same students for both of the lessons. In the back of my mind I knew they were going to give me that, since these students paid for the extra English. However, I like that class since all of the students wanted to take the activity - they participate and listen very well! The schedule times are nice too. I have class either only in the morning or in the afternoon. 

Today I started to feel more welcome in the school. All of the teachers have been nothing but nice to me, but today I felt as though they were really being friendly. The English Office Head teacher told me that she told the cooks to make something special vegetarian for me! Even though I don't technically have to be there for lunch because of my new schedule, I told them that I would come for lunch everyday since making sure we are fed is a HUGE sign of proper hospitality, and it would have been rude of me to refuse. And I definitely can't say no because they will be cooking special food for me now :)

Now to the teaching. This week was good. I still had some rough mornings, but overall my classes were great! I used The Very Hungry Caterpillar big book that I brought from home. The students all went "aaaaaa" and looked bright eyed when I pulled it out, which really encouraged me. For the younger classes I reviewed their colors, and had them talk about what colors they were wearing. I then picked a color and they had to raise their hand if they were wearing that color. They got very inventive and started finding random things that had the color and holding it up. 

For the older kids I talked about the days of the week. I then had all the things the caterpillar ate on cards, and broke the class into teams. They had to pick a card and tell me the day - if they got it right, their team got a point. The winning team got stickers! Most of the classes really got into it! They would yell the answer, but the other teams would yell out wrong answers so the student answering would get confused. It was fun!

Next week - American foods!