17 October 2013

17 October 2013: my second ever class

Today, I was able to sleep in a bit, as my first class wasn’t until later. I got up, got dressed, had a breakfast of Kasha, before walking down to School #5 to teach. Once again, I swapped out shoes in the lobby, and then walked up to class. There, I taught a lesson on train travel. The writer thought that you should take the train, for many reasons. The text used the following words: strain, traffic jam, stare, motorway, (to be) concerned, convenience, (to be) worth it, and to cope (with), which I had try to explain. Two of them were easy – fare (they’d all taken the Marshrutka to Kyiv, and the bus around Obukhiv) and motorway (Marshrutka to Kyiv). Traffic jam was relatively simple – I used strawberry jam as an example. Some of them I had to use Kyiv examples (to be convenient), and some were very complicated. I then had them create a similar text, only in pairs, and on another topic. On group, the group with buses, explained why you shouldn’t take the bus. Which was very creative, both in their reasons (which included, “plus, they smell”), and in that I didn’t tell them which side to pick. I asked them to write a creative paragraph using their new words, and another, assigned, topic. Oh, my TCF observed my class. I hope I did well.

After class, my counterpart gave me some good advice on how to do better at what I am doing, and gave me what I would need to cover on Tuesday. I’m teaching her double lesson, which is a review lesson. Luckily for me, the review unit is a running unit. In the textbook, every few units, is a comic stripped section of a classic English novel. The novel in this book is Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles. My counterpart has the audio/visual components to the unit, but I still have to fill up 90 minutes of class.

After that, we went to watch Miss Ukraine, which was being held in the auditorium. It was a contest between 5 middle forms, who had to give a speech about their region (each one was representing a different region), dance a traditional dance, and sing a song. There was at least one other section, but we had to leave, as we had about 4 hours of Russian waiting for us.

I walked to the store after that, to buy some more things for lunch, and the rest of the cluster discussed what we were going to do the next day. I got back, had lunch, made coffee, and then we had 4 hours of Russian.

In class, we discussed things that we needed to know, which include that you are supposed never to go to another house empty handed, and that we needed to get something to bring with us to Petrovski, as well as for our rotational LCF. We needed to buy lunch to bring it to Petrovski, as R’s house is far from the main part of Petrovski, and we wouldn’t have time to go and get anything. Then, we went over important words to know in Russian, as they dealt with marks, daybooks, gradebooks, breaks, classes, and manuals.  

Then, we were given the phrases that would be used in our LPIs, and had to practice them on each other. We were also given some “tips” to help us on our mock-LPIs. No English, don’t try to say words that you can’t quite remember, and be prepared to talk about anything you mention. So, if like me, you majored in a foreign language (you are supposed to mention your major when you are asked to tell about yourself), you will be asked if you went to the country where that language is spoken, and what you did there. The obvious answer is that I studied (true), but that wasn’t enough of an answer. I was supposed to say that I went to (specific) museums, hung out with friends, and them some. I didn’t learn Russian for “museum” until Wednesday. Or how to say what I did after university, but before PC. I’m going to fell lucky if I don’t start speaking French during my mock-LPI (and the real one, yes), much less stick to Russian.

After that, we went over how to be invited to a party, as well as how to turn down/accept the invitation. We created a schedule, and then asked everyone if they could come to our party. We had to write down who was coming, and why those who were not were not. After that, we learned how to conjugate and use “to be able to,” which is just as irregular in Russian as it is in French. We then went over our home task from the night before (the one I’d forgotten after my 12 hour day, yay, more homework for me!), and then got the nights assigned.

After that, we went to the store to see if our stipend had been deposited, and to buy lunch/snacks/something to bring to R’s. After that, V walked with me to my host family’s flat, asking me lots of questions about what I am or am not doing. She fussed at me for not having cooked yet (I haven’t been able to). When we got back to the flat, she talked with my host-mom and sister. I got started on my home-task, as I had a lot of it, and I couldn’t really understand what was being said. I do know that V and my host-mom agreed that I could learn to cook on Sunday.

After V left, we all had dinner, and I finished my home task. After that, I was able to hang out online a bit, before going to sleep.