Third Week

NEW LANGUAGE
Oh wow. Time has flown by. I cannot believe that I'm almost at the end of my Indonesia journey. As of now, I am just so glad that my Bahasa Indonesia vocabulary has expanded. I have learned so many words and can already give instructions in Bahasa Indonesia, though not as fast as Indonesians speak, Thanks to Pak(Mr.) Alin, the vice headmaster who happens to be Bu Linda's brother-in-law. He's the one who has been talking to me most of the time and teaching me Bahasa Indonesia while doing so. He's been very helpful to me. I'm starting to like Indonesia very much.


STUDENTS ARE NOW DIFFERENT!
My struggle this week was that I found out that students in here are easily bored. They just put up with me last week because I was new to them. This week they started to lose interest. The boys were starting to talk and play by themselves at the back. This happened for two days, and I didn't enjoy teaching then. I knew I had to change my strategy or the whole week would suck for me and the students, too.

LET'S HAVE SOME FUN
Wednesday came, and I turned my lesson into a more enjoyable lesson. Thanks to my mother who gave me this idea. I was teaching the Heaven and Earth Six Sinawali in Arnis this week, and simply demonstrating and letting the students follow me was clearly not fun enough. So, at the beginning of my lesson, I divided the students into four groups and explained that we will have a game (with the help of my translator). I said that they should pay attention to the rules and instructions so they'll know how to win. This instantly got their attention! :) It worked like magic, I'd say. Also, I taught the girls first, then the boys. After giving a short background on Arnis, I demonstrated the first 3 steps, then let them do it with me. After I let each group do it, I started the game and let them do it by themselves. I informed them that if one of the members of a group makes a mistake, I will subtract points from them. If not, they get 4 points. Thus, the game began. There was jeering, shouting, and fun!  I wrote their points on the board. I made it into 3 rounds and this is how it went:

Round 1: steps 1-3
Round 2: steps 4-5
Round 3: steps 1-6

It was definitely more effective and I'm so happy with the results. I held their attention for the entire period without appearing too strict. There were times when the teasing was too much and so I just told the students that if they get too noisy, I'll subtract from their group's points. This instantly made them behave better. Can I just say this: I love teaching!

They're more cooperative now!  ^_^