Vidya and Riya's Travel Journals

July 5th-
July 5th: Hi everyone, 

Riya and I arrived yesterday to India and we are currently staying in Faridabad with my grandparents. Today is Friday July 6th and we have just talked to Sohinee's dad about meeting up and learning more about the children at KTC/NIIC. We are waitng for Sohinee to wake up right now as it is 7:30 here but we do plan to meet her today around 12-2 in the afternoon. We're essentially meeting with her to better understand in person what it is that we should be teaching and also together the three of us will attempt to create a more advanced lesson plan for the different batches of children. After we meet with Sohinee we will definitely send another e-mail re-capping everything we went over. Riya and I think we should make a google docs with this whole group's e-mail on there so that there can be a solidified curriculum that everyone can view on the google docs and if anyone needs to add any changes/make suggestions they can reply and edit directly onto that document and there can also be live chatting going on as well. I will make the google docs shortly and add everyone to the list so we will all be able to view one solidified document and add/edit curriculum as needed! 

Thanks, we will update you as soon as possible. We are so excited to meet the children! 

July 6th-

Riya and I met with Sohinee yesterday at NIIT and we had a discussion with Anu Aunty and our parents as well. Sohinee shared with us the details of the teachings in person and we realized that since the children are more advanced than we thought and really only need to learn grammar and no vocabulary, it may be pretty difficult to integrate fun into the grammar lessons. But we will definitely have to be thinking on our feet for a little bit until we figure out a solidified plan of how to go about teaching the children grammar in a fun way. As of right now Sohinee is still trying to figure out how to make the lessons fun as well as teach the children. Sohinee told us that the children make fun of each other if someone does not know English and they are usually very embarrassed to answer questions and if they don't think they can answer the questions they will simply not answer questions, but they can easily talk amongst themselves. Riya and I have been thinking of doing the teaching in a more casual way such as a class discussion where Riya or I will ask a very simple question in English such as: What do you do during the summer? And the children can respond one by one in English with of course very simple answers while we help them/correct them along the way. This doesn't have to be done during every lesson but it will make the lessons a lot more intimidating if they see everyone participating. Also if they get embarrassed Riya and I decided that since Riya cannot speak Hindi that well, I would ask her a question in Hindi in front of the whole class if someone was getting made fun of and she would have to answer in Hindi and since she doesn't know how to speak it well, her Hindi would not be that good. This way the whole class would be able to understand that even one of their teachers cannot speak Hindi that well but they are still trying to learn it. Hopefully this will make the children more comfortable and make them more easygoing when trying to speak English. Riya and I already went in and said hello to the girls Sohinee was teaching Friday afternoon and introduced ourselves so if they come back Monday they will recognize us. Otherwise Riya and I will be joining Sohinee on Monday to watch her teach and chime in when we can and then Tuesday once we see Sohinee's teaching style and help out a little bit we will begin with our own lessons and games. Now we are just waiting until Monday so we can observe the children for ourselves and then we will write again! 

July 10th-

Hi everyone! This is Riya I am giving the update on what happened yesterday with the kids. Vidya was sick so it was Sohinee and I who taught the kids.

In the morning class we had all boys and one girl. They were older kids so Sohinee and I decided to split the class into two teams. We wrote down five words on the board and had each team create their own story using those words. A lot of the kids had creative stories and just needed a little help translating them. Once Sohinee and I helped them out they wrote it down in their notebooks. We decided that for the next class with them we  would have them create skits and do some roleplaying. For example one kid can be a store clerk and another can be a customer and they would have to interact with each other as they would if they were to be in that situation.

In the afternoon class I taught girls who were really young and still learning vocabulary and Sohinee taught the older girls. In my class I played pictionary with them and they really enjoyed it especially because they got to draw on the whiteboard. After that I would tell them a word such as APPLE and then they would have to spell it correctly on the board. If they made a mistake then I would correct them. Unfortunately the light went out about 40 minutes into the class and Anu aunty came in and told the kids that class was over because there was no fan or air conditioning. To my surprise all the kids told Anu aunty they didn't want to leave, they said they didn't care if there was no fan. They still wanted to play and learn which really touched my heart and made everything we are doing all the more worthwhile. We ended up going on for about another half hour and then I had to send them home because it was getting late. So for the younger kids the games we had planned work well with them and they can spell so we can also do games such as hangman.

I am having lots of fun here and I am looking forward to the next week in a half of teaching the kids!

~Riya