01 October 2013

01 October 2013

Today, I go up, got dressed, had a breakfast of Kasha and coffee, and walked to School #5 for the first class observation. It was a “demo” put on by my TCF, which meant that she taught a regular English class’ regular lesson. The unit was Town and Country Environment, and today’s lesson was on Ukraine. The class went over what they’d learned last week, learned new words, practiced their new words, and applied their new words. Observing this class was fascinating. It also made me feel much more prepared to spend the next two years teaching.

After our observation, we had out tech session, which was on 4MAT lesson planning. Ukraine has a law that all teachers must have proof that they have a lesson plan – if asked by an administrator, they have to show the lesson plan. Also, Ukraine has a national curriculum, which no derivation allowed. This means that every lesson has to be carefully planned in advance.

The 4MAT plan makes this a bit easier. It has a stated objective, tools and resources used to meet that objective, and the main steps set out. Those steps are Motivation (warm-up), Presentation, Practice, Application, and Summing-up (wrap-up/home work assignment). To me, a giant nerd, those 5 steps make me think of an original series Star Trek episode: the teaser to remind you that you’re watching Star Trek, the problem for the episode, the characters facing the problem, the characters solving the problem, and the finale (usually a joke at Spock’s expense). This also makes me more confident, as lesson planning was always one of those mythical things that only the great could do well. There are many steps to successfully writing a lesson plan, but they all revolve around the objective for the lesson – what the students should be able to do at the end of the lesson. Be it balance a chemical equation, explain the use of light vs. dark imagery in The Count of Monte Cristo, or talk about their family in a new language, there is something that they should be able to do. The lesson plan itself should be very specific – how you plan to present the new topic, how you plan to let the students practice it both controlled and individually, and how you plan to wrap up the lesson. We also have to always have a reserve lesson, in case we finish our main activities too fast.

After our Tech session, we walked back to V.’s where we had a break before 2 hours of Russian. We learned some new vocab for items in the kitchen, and repeated them. We then practiced our tongue-twisters, before moving on to what we like to do in our spare time. We wrote out an “internet profile” of what we can say in Russian, to remind ourselves of how far we’ve gotten in this short time.

We then went over the sentences we wrote for homework. Apparently, we need to write our sentences in English, as someone else then translates (and conjugates) them on the fly the next day. We took turns saying hobby sentences and translating them. We are trying to work up to asking questions set in the past tense, like “with whom were you running in the park yesterday morning?” which, of course, a friend would have to translate the next day! Some one asking a similar question led to us going over the past tense for all Russian verbs. ALL. Tout. All verbs conjugate to the past the same way, according to the number and gender of the pronoun they are referring to. It makes finding a stem and then the infinitive easier than in French, and substantially easier than in English. There is no helping verb, as far as I can tell, so all verbs truly conjugate the same way!

After our crash course on past tense (we learn more later), we went on to habitual actions – what do you usually do in the morning/during the day/at night in Obukhiv? There are 3 tenses in Russian, only 3, so habitual action is present tense. We asked and answered these questions as a group. We were told to ask our host families these questions as part of our homework, as a survey, to practice our listening, speaking, and writing in Russian. We then broke for lunch.

After lunch, we went right back into food. Today, we learns lots of fruits, sweets, and milk products. We practiced these new words with the accusative case, which means that only the feminine words change. This would be used if I were to say that I like to eat Kasha for breakfast, as Kasha is feminine, and I’m using the accusative case (I like ___what___ for breakfast). We practiced a new question to help us with this case – what do you like to eat/drink for breakfast/lunch/dinner? We had to answer in the accusative, with the nouns changed to reflect it. We practiced this as a group, in rotating pairs. After that, we got our homework (lots of reading), and had a quick break before a short Safety and Security meeting.

Once a week, we have to have a briefing, to make sure that we, as PCTs and PCVs, know what the PC wants us to know about safety and security. There are ways that we can make ourselves safer – integration is key – and things that we need to be aware of that we might not have any idea about. Such as the law that says that all people in Ukraine have to carry their documents on them, so that if stopped by the police, they have their identification. We then went over common fines, and made sure that we know that we do not have diplomatic immunity, and, as such, all wrong doings fall under the jurisdiction and laws of Ukraine. We learned some key numbers that we need to have in our phone, who we need to call if something happens (and in what order – the head of PC safety and security is our first call, before the local police), and what we need to carry with us each time we leave our apartment/house.

That was the end of our lesson for today, so I walked back to my host-mom’s apartment, and started on my homework. We had an early dinner (soup, part of an open-faced sandwich, a cold salad, and coffee), and I was able to ask her the questions. It’s cold in the apartment (heat won’t come on for at least another week), so host-Mom turned the oven on and left it open to heat the apartment. It worked – any room with an open door was warmer. My door gets closed all the time, so my room was still a bit chilly. While I was working on my homework, the brother of my host-mother’s late husband came over, to hang out with the family (his sister-in-law, nephew, and grand-niece). Host-Mom’s son brought salted fish, which I wasn’t able to have (PC regs), so host-Mom and uncle were joking about that. The uncle brought a bottle of Ukranian beer, which he asked if I could have any of, as host-Mom had just told him that I couldn’t eat fish or mushrooms. He asked me “nyet reebah?” (“no fish”) as though he hadn’t heard of that reg before, and then “peeva?” (beer). I said a little (“shoot-shoot”), so he poured me a small glass of a pilsner. The “bottle” of beer was more than a litre, and that seems the standard size for beer bottles. Also, Ukrainian beer has a reputation for being very strong (high ABV). Basically, don’t try to drink the whole bottle by yourself if you don’t want to be completely drunk. I finished my reading homework, and did some of the vocab exercises in the Russian manual, before checking my email, and hanging out on line.