Day 2: Goals set. Goals met?

Today's class was a lot more difficult that yesterday's, but I took away much more today, on both the practical and abstract levels.

As I was thinking over the guide questions that ma'am Juachon gave us in class a while ago, I realize that my goals for today's class weren't really clear-cut, but they were very much present. Like I said in yesterday's entry, I found myself going back to coloring and cutting and drawing and lots of crafty things, after two years of mountains of reading and papers. It was a refreshing change for me because I do enjoy doing these things, and knowing that Janice enjoyed coloring and enjoyed the materials I had prepared yesterday, I wanted to do that again. First and foremost, given the limited time between receiving the LP and the class itself, I wanted to come to class with complete materials, and with a mastery of the LP. I achieved that, but I think the more important part of my goal was to make new materials she would enjoy as much as the ones yesterday.

I think, to a certain extent, I myself succeeded with the activity I prepared. Seeing as Janice responded well to the cube I made for yesterday's lesson, I used it again today as the main game for the lesson on "i". Instead of yesterday's game where she had to identify what letter multiple pictures started with, today's cube focused on pictures depicting words starting with the letter "i". First I read the six words to Janice, then I removed the words from the cube and told her to toss the cube. Based on the face it landed on, I then told her to identify the correct word and stick it on the picture. This was the cube (part of it, at least):

However, Kelly and I were teaching Janice and Kelly's game, which entailed using tangrams to form fish and birds, was too complicated for Janice and we noticed that she became frustrated because of the difficulty. I think it was also partially my fault because had I realized earlier that tangrams were far too advanced for Janice, I should have told Kelly and we could have thought of a different game.

Janice's goals were more clear-cut -- first, to be able to grasp the sound and reading of "i", and second, to have fun while doing that. I think, to a certain extent we were able to start on achieving those goals during today's class, but we weren't able to really see them through to completion. Janice knows how to write "i", she knows, to a certain extent, how to read it, and to pronounce it as well, and we worked on a word she had difficulty pronouncing, "misa", which she eventually managed to read on her own, but what slowed down our momentum was really the tangram. After we played the tangram her mood drastically changed out of frustration and Kelly and I did try to get her to be more responsive again, and to a certain extent she opened up a bit more, but we couldn't make her extremely enthusiastic again, nor could we go back to the lesson.

However, what that situation taught me was really how to improvise, to always be prepared, and also to really take notice of everything that happens during class time -- what Janice likes, what she doesn't, how she responds to the activities. They will come in handy, and today's class was testament to just how much I have to really pay attention to everything that happens in class, amidst the chaos and stress. I remembered how much she enjoyed the memory game yesterday, and so instead of letter her lose concentration or not do anything that had to do with a lesson, I thought of playing it again today. At least it had to do with the lessons, even if it was yesterday's and not today's. She cheered up, yes, but before we knew it she had to go home already. At least she was hesitant about leaving, to the point where her older sister was already standing beside her, waiting.

Knowing all of this, my preparations for this Thursday will take into consideration more creative games -- we can't be playing memory games or coloring in pictures forever. I need to think of creative, but active games that we can play, and games which heavily incorporate the lesson. I put in a lot of effort for the materials I used yesterday and today, and I want to exert the same amount of effort, if not more, on the ones for Thursday. Of course there's always a risk that Janice may not like my experiments with creative activities, so I think what I'll do is I'll always have ready one game that she really liked in the past, like the memory game which we used yesterday in today, in case my experiments do fail. Unlike today though, I'll probably tweak it in order to add the lesson for the day, in addition to the version that was first used.

 Also, seeing what my classmates did and hearing ma'am Juachon's suggestions, I also want to focus on the story more. I've been using the story, but more as a way of introducing the letter and I didn't really integrate it into the entire lesson. I think it would be better if I tell the story first, and have the lesson take off from the vocabulary and context of it. But of course, it has to be creative, and knowing Janice a bit more, it has to entail some kind of coloring or drawing. :D