Hello everyone! I decided to start documenting my experience of teaching Rohingya Refugees. Before you read these entries, I first want to say how much I enjoy teaching them! Every time I join the meeting, I see everyone’s smile and eagerness to learn. It’s heartwarming for me to see how excited they are to learn despite their circumstances. Their optimism and motivation to keep learning inspires me to not only try as hard as I can as a teacher but to work harder when I’m not around them. Though I have been teaching the refugees for only about a year now, I must say they have taught me more than I have done anything for them. They taught me to value what I have, to value the opportunities I have, and it makes me want to help people who are not as fortunate as myself. I feel very lucky to have this experience to be able to communicate with the refugee children so closely, and I find myself looking forward to seeing them every weekend.

10/22/22

Hey everyone! I have been teaching grade 4 English for the past month to far and it’s been really fun. We read passages like “Anne’s First Day” and “An Angry Incident” in which the students answered questions too. The students were a little shy so I had to call on some of them to read. After that, we had time to learn about adverbs and clauses which more students participated in because I think they felt more comfortable with raising their hand the more we did exercises together.

12/17/22

Today my students learned about bugs by reading about different types of insects and answering some questions about it. They seem interested in learning unique facts about each bug which is really good because it made them pay attention. We only learned about them for the first half of the class and prefixes and suffixes for the next half of the class. Fortunately, more students participated this week and last week so I hope this pattern continues!

2/11/23

There was a school assembly so I only had half an hour with my students. We just learned about punctuation today which they picked up pretty quickly which is good! Then I made them alternative reading a passage and then answer a question. Everyone in the class was participating and engaging which I was really happy about today!

5/21/23

My students came back to school after a long break and they seemed excited to be back! I decided to make the work a little bit more challenging today so we worked on smilies and metaphors. I didn’t think they would understand the difference between them right away, but they did which I was happy about. After that, we learned about how adding “-ing” at the end of a word means we need to change the root word. (For example, adding "-ing” to the word “take” means we need to take away the e.) This was a little confusing so I think i’ll review this concept next lesson.

6/3/23

Hey everyone! Today, I taught my students about direct speech (where to put quotations, periods, question marks, etc.) They understood that pretty quickly, but I just hope that they can remember for the future. I made my students do some practice sentences on where to put quotes and periods which they did well on. After that, we did adverbs which they found a little more challenging, but they still understood what to do. Thats all we had time for but we got a lot done today! :)

9/13/23

Today my students took turns reading "“All Summer in a Day.” After that, they answered some questions about the passage. All my students were really engaged in reading which I found surprising in a good way! After that, I did a lesson on synonyms. They didn’t find this too hard so the lesson went by pretty quickly. The last thing we did was learn about suffixes which they did find to be more difficult. I think I’m going to review this next lesson to make sure they know the concept well. Overall, they did a good job today! :)

11/25/23

Hey guys! Today I held a lesson about connectives (so, because, then, etc.) This wasn’t hard for them to understand so we moved onto something else quickly. I taught them how words that sound the same have different means (like weak/week, flour/flower, pear/pair, etc.) Some of these were hard for them to understand but others like weak/week were easier. After that, I decided to end with them alternating to read Chapter 1 of “Carving the Sea Path.” They had a hard time pronouncing some of the words which I would just correct, but they did a good job.

12/9/23

This is my last lesson with grade 4 until they go on break, so we just finished reading chapters 2-5 on “Carving the Sea Path.” This took us a while to finish but we eventually did! After this, we only had 5 minutes left of class so I showed them a part of the Jurassic Park movie since it might be the last time I see them for a while. :(

1/27/24

Today we started by reading a poem called “Finding a Friend” and answering some questions about it which didn’t take us very long. We then read "another poem called “Words Are Ours'“ which took us a little bit longer to read but not too long. I have never shown poems to my students but they seemed to really enjoy reading them! For the last 20 minutes of class, I reviewed some concepts like adverbs and sentence structure so my students could leave the lesson having those concepts fresh in their heads.

3/9/24

Today I decided to just do lessons with my students, so we started with learning about pronouns. This didn’t take us long at all so we moved on to learning about commas. This took us a little bit longer but they eventually got the hang of it. I think I am going to review commas next lesson just in case they forget quickly. Lastly, we learned about possessive apostrophes. This didn’t take that long because my students read a lot, so they already knew about possessive apostrophes.

5/27/24

Today was a little noisy which is fine because that means the kids were awake and well. We started off class by reading and answering questions about passages. We finished that pretty quickly, so we moved on to reviewing synonyms and antonyms.

9/21/24

Today we watched a video about vowels and then did some practice about it. The students found it pretty easy so it was more of a warm up than an actual lesson. Next, we learned about adverbial phrases (an adverb is ‘soon’ but an adverbial phrase is ‘quite soon.’) My students seemed to find this lesson more fun than the other lessons because they kept laughing and seemed really engaged in learning about adverbial phrases.

11/23/24

Today we started off with plurals and prefixes which took us a while because they were new concepts to them. I made them do some practice and they still didn’t understand so I’ll make sure to review those next lesson with them. This pretty much took us the whole time so we read a biography about Mary Seacole to end the session today :)

2/22/24

Hey everyone! Today I held a lesson on complex and simple sentences. I believe that learning the difference could really help them advance their sentences in the future. This lesson really helped them write more complex sentences which I hope they’ll use in the future. I might hold a review session about complex and simple sentences to make sure that they use complex sentences when I’m not there. For the last 10 minutes of the lesson, I let them watch a video about complex words for them to use to make their sentences more complex.

5/17/24

I let my students learn about personification so they could include that skill into their writing. They found this concept very interesting which I didn’t expect but I’m happy they did! They also didn’t take them so long to understand so it was a good day today! :) We then reviewed similes and metaphors which we did months ago. They still remembered the difference between them which is really good because it means that they remember everything I taught them so far!