Don't have that much time, so just going to write a quick one to say I've finally started my afternoon classes! Have now had two sessions, and a third is coming on Thursday.
First time, we had about 75% attendance, which to be honest is about 50% more than I was expecting so a great start! (Second time, surprise surprise, numbers had dropped a little, but let's be optimistic!) I have had to do two groups of 15, both unfortunately on Thursday afternoons - 15h to 16h and then 16h to 17h. This might be more flexible soon, but at the moment it's like that. I decided to start with teaching them about England in general, so gave them a list of 6 categories we were going to look at over the first few sessions. These are Weather/Climate, Places, People, Food, History and Lifestyle/Culture. So started with Weather/Climate (which also ended up including plants, trees and flowers!) as they've already done it in Geography so the ideas should hopefully be nearish the surface. Drew the beginning of a spider diagram and wanted to get them to come up to the board with their own ideas, but it ended up by me more giving them ideas. In reality, they don't know much at all which is in one way very good because then I feel more useful! Got some interesting questions though, and with the Places, that I couldn't answer myself! They know many many of the cities by football teams, so had sooo many questions about was Everton in London and where was Chelsea and Blackpool and all sorts - in the end I had to admit that I am not interested in football AT all, so can't really help them that much except in generality there! Also had lots of questions about the size of England (??) and also what an isle was as I showed them the Isles of Wight and Man. It took them a lot time to get the hang of that one! I'm also on a promise to sing the National Anthem this week, as well as find out the population of Scotland's largest city which I have btw accomplished! (No thanks to my personal geographical knowledge though...)
Last week I wanted to introduce them to some different revision strategies, as they have exams this week and for the 3é it's the BEPC Blanc, which are like mock GCSEs. Judging by last term's results they either can't/won't learn or can't/won't revise because the results were not very good, so wanted to get them thinking in a different way. Sadly, it was me working against 16-20 years in the school system so my lovely flow charts and mind maps weren't totally swallowed I don't think. My aim was to do an example in class, and then for them to take that away as a tool for their revision for this week, but I think they ended up thinking I just wanted to revise with them, which isn't quite the same.
However, we'll keep trying. This week I think we'll continue with the things about England and going to try and get them to write a poem too which will be INTERESTING...! Have also told them to all come at 15h, so kind of hoping they don't all turn up otherwise will be overrun! Haha, so will let you know how all that goes. And also about being on Togolese TV... :)
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