Sohinee's Travel Journals

July 2nd-

I started my day today at the NIIT foundation  office where I met Sapna Aunty, Rinki Didi, and Abhilasha didi. Rinki didi accompanied my dad and I to the center where we will be teaching. They gave us a background of the current system and how Koshish runs. It turns out that we are actually volunteering at the Koshish Technology Center (KTC). KTC is adjunct to Koshish for English and IT. Koshish itself is a remedial school for the students from the slums who attend the government school Sarvodaya. The student to teacher ratio is 1 to 90 at the government school they attend, and therefore they need remedial schools to gain the knowledge they are expected to have.

More about KTC: We started the visit at KTC by meeting Anu Aunty, the English teacher. She showed us her structured curriculum which include books and lesson plans. They have different levels as well, for example, students of grades 6-8 are level 3 and grades 9-12 are in level 4. Some of the expectations that we had set previously aren't all accurate(see more below), so I made sure to understand everything. The batches of students are divided by gender. The boys come in the morning from 9:00-10:30am. The girls come from 2:30-4:00pm. The kids are of all different ages and skill levels. 

The internet is not always running, they have problems with their internet connection. My dad is helping them get an internet connection to solve this problem. 

I think that email will work better when we need to communicate with them during the school year. The main thing with our plan during the school year is it must be interactive so they can participate and apply the English they have learned. Our program is not as much teaching them English as it is helping them apply and supplement the English they have learned at KTC through games or various fun activities. 

I worked with a batch of girls from level 3. They know a fair amount of English, a lot more than we thought they did. The first game we played was the matching game, and it was quite easy for them. Everything I asked them was more advanced than we had planned. I asked them questions such as "What did you do today" and "What do you like to do?" First I spoke with them in Hindi and then I translated in English. I spoke with them in English as much as possible, but I did speak a good amount of Hindi with them as well. They asked me multiple times if I could give them harder questions. They want to learn sentence structure and more grammar. Most of the things we had thought were too advanced to teach them right now  are exactly the things they want to learn. Much of the vocabulary we had thought of is too easy for them. 

I am planning on looking at the books that Anu Aunty uses and creating games and fun activities tomorrow. I'll email everyone the curriculum they are currently using. 

I was very happy with the batch I taught. All the girls were very motivated to learn and most of them were not hesitant to ask questions. There was one shy student and a few girls that did not know English as well, but its clear that they all want to learn English. It was very encouraging to me, as their teacher, to see so much interest. I'm not sure about other batches of students, but i'll be teaching this batch of students for the duration of my stay in India. Prior to meeting the girls, I was unsure of how students would react to a fellow student teaching them, but the reaction was great. 

The main thing we need to work on is changing our current curriculum to something they find more challenging for the students. Of course the only people I worked with were from level 3, but maybe we can use our current material to help the younger students. The students also need help with critical thinking and logical thinking rather than just memorizing what they have been taught. So maybe we can create scenarios or  where they could use and improve such skills.

After 1.5 hours of teaching one batch, the electricity went off and the back up power was depleted, so we had to end our class. Anu Aunty was worried that the electricity would not work for 2-3 days, so she said she would call us later if it came back. We got a call about an hour back that the electricity came back, but we need to keep in mind that if there is no electricity, there is no light to teach inside the building. 

I'm looking forward to teaching the students for the rest of my trip. It was a great experience for me and they seemed to learn something as well. 

I haven't given the girls a written assessment yet. I can ask Anu Aunty if they have one available. We need to make sure that everyone understands we aren't taking over their jobs as teachers, we are just helping the students apply what they have learned. 

 

I'll be using the game that Vidya posted on the google doc today. I'm also going to plan some scenarios or role plays that they have to act out in English. Anjali, do you mind sending me the storytelling description again? I think that would help them with their understanding and logical thinking. I think I can try charades and pictionary today as well. 

 

The idea of English books is great! They told me yesterday that they like to read and they would probably love some new English books. Something  with a simple vocabulary would be better. I know they currently have some books and movies at the center. I haven't taken a look at them, but I've heard they have movies such as The Pursuit of Happiness and 3 idiots. I can have them watch one of the movies and then give a 1-2 minute speech in English about the movie or what they learned from watching it. 

July 3rd-

I asked the children to write small role plays so they can understand the logic and order. They had difficulty and it took them a while to create their own lines after understanding my example. I feel they were less interested because it was quite difficult for them to grasp. I asked them to write a small story, about 5-6 sentences, to bring tomorrow. I told them they could think of a story in Hindi and translate it into English.  I want to see if they can understand how to convert sentences from Hindi to English correctly. 

I need help in creating games that we can use. The matching, pictionary, charades, and one of these things is not like the other were relatively easy for them. I tried making it more difficult by asking them to create sentences with charades and pictionary. Hopefully with the notes my dad took, we can think of games easily. I found that they can grasp the instructions of a game fairly easily, but its harder for them to think of a story or create something themselves. I need to find a middle ground as yesterday was easy and today was a bit too difficult for them. 

July 4th

Thanks so much for creating the tests and giving me ideas! Those are great suggestions! I actually played the Guess What I'm Thinking game yesterday. They really enjoyed it and learned something as well. They probably had the most fun with that game, so I would say it was quite successful. 

I'll use the relay race today because they have a lot of fun with competitive games. I am also going to print out the assessment for grammar and vocab and give that to them today. This will really help me see what level they are at. 

My dad has a cousin who runs a publishing company for school textbooks. They have given me a variety of resources we can use. including lesson plans, textbooks, activity ideas, etc. for grades 1-8. The people i am teaching are supposedly in grades 4-6 but after looking at the textbooks, I have seen that books from grades 1-3 have a significant amount of material that would be difficult for these children. When Vidya and Riya come here, I'll pass on the materials to them. While I feel that the KTC students would benefit from having these books, we need to discuss this as the EEP team before i can hand them over as we don't want the Koshish teachers to feel we are taking over their jobs. 

About the NIIT instructional materials, we asked Sapna Aunty on the first day if we could get a copy but she declined and said they were intellectual property. My dad will try asking her again. 

I'm really enjoying our team work and progress! Keep up the good work everyone :)