I've been keeping pretty busy working at American Corner. Yesterday, I led a film club. We watched Million Dollar Baby and will be having a discussion about gender roles and stereotypes at the next meeting. It's a pretty good movie. The only issue is that it can be hard for an ESL student to understand the dialogue. The actors have a pretty heavy southern Missouri accent, and of course, Clint Eastwood is notorious for speaking in a gravely voice.
Today, I led my first reading club meeting. I'm always so thrilled to see students on time and ready to learn. I have a feeling this might be a bit of a struggle in my Teach for America experience next year. This was the first time, really, that I felt like I could employ some of my teaching skills. Discussion is great, and it's really valuable, but reading club gave me a chance to develop vocabulary, listening, speaking, and reading skills. We started with a Level 1 ESL short-story about Aladdin. I had the students read the chapter (about 5 pages) silently to themselves. The we read it aloud through a combination of choral, call-and-response, individual reading, and listening exercises. Throughout the passages, I asked questions for reading comprehension. We also did a grammar exercise to choose "what" or "where" for the beginning of sentences. There would be a sentence, for example, "....did Aladdin find in the cave?" and the students had to read the sentence aloud and decide to use either what or where. I think it was really helpful, and the students recognized their mistakes right away when they read the sentence aloud. We also had a grammar discussion about near synonyms. We discussed the differences between "aim", "goal", and "purpose" and when to use these words properly.
Some things I want to improve on next time. I have a mixture of ages and skill levels. Some students are seven and others are twenty. I tried to give the younger kids more reading practice, but when I asked comprehension questions, one older kid kept answering all the questions. I need to come up with a better way to manage responses--perhaps pair share first or some creative way. Ilana, the other Fulbrighter, used a great technique for over-sharers. She gave the students 5 pieces of candy each, which they lines up in front of their desks. If you answered a question, you got to each a piece of candy, but you couldn't answer the next question (which is GREAT because they are chewing anyway!). I'm definitely going to try this technique out.
After some frustration and going back and forth trying to nail down times and dates, for my adopted project, I finally got a phone call! On Friday, I will be traveling to Istaravshan to conduct teacher interviews for the new Access program in Shahriston. Shahriston is a beautiful little mountain village in Northern Tajikistan. I am kind of taking this project under my wing. I will be starting a new school for bright and disadvantaged students in Shahriston. I may end up relocating to the village, which is going to be another adventure! The trick with Shahriston is to go there before it is winter and the roads get closed. They also speak mostly Uzbek there. In Khujand, I've found most people speak Russian first, Tajik second (opposite in Dushanbe). Ah, I will still plunge ahead and try to become proficient in Tajik! I got the number of a Tajik teacher in Khujand, so I will take classes for as long as I can.
Anyway, sorry for the length of this post. I know it's a lot. Exciting times are definitely ahead, and I'm beginning to really work out a routine.
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