Co Emma

Co Emma, basically translates into Ms. Emma, what students call their teachers. Today I was Co Emma because I got to teach my little first graders. All 44 of them. Oh my gosh, it was so hard. This

I wish there was a picture of me with the yardstick in my hand.

experience will definitely be a contributing factor to my research paper. It is so easy for a student to get lost in the sea of faces. I have a disadvantage since there is the huge language barrier and I don't know many (okay really any)  of the students names, but even if these children did speak English fluently, or I guess if I spoke Vietnamese fluently (haha funny), and I knew all their names I still don't think I could motivate, control, and teach 44 first grade students. There are just too many kids. If someone was misbehaving I couldn't just stop the class and tell them to focus on me. I had to decide what really was going to be distracting for other students and what I just had to let slide. So the four students whispering in the corner, well they got to whisper all class. But the student that was slamming down his desk lid over and over again– he got a rap on his desk from my yardstick. Yeah I sort of felt like a drill sergeant. I completely understand why Co Dung has the yardstick readily available at all times of the day so she can slam it down to keep students in line. It is a necessity.

Okay I am just going to be honest. These two are my favorite students.

Today the lesson was on the letter B. There were four words, Beth, boy, bag, and bird. The students really struggled with Beth. The thhh sound is difficult for all Vietnamese because th makes a t sound in Vietnamese. So for English beginners thing is ting, bath is bat, Beth is bet. It was really fun to teach the students, but like I said it was frustrating. After about ten minutes a number of students lost interest and I didn't have anyway to regain their attention. I would point at them and say "em, em"

My little kiddies.

(child, child) and ask them a question but usually they would just stare at me like a deer caught in the headlights. Some of the students were way too enthusiastic and didn't give a chance for the other students to contribute, whereas with others it was clear that they just weren't even trying to act like they were paying attention. I used the teaching method of my high school foreign language teachers and assigned each word with a gesture so students could be moving around a little. I would say, "What is this?" and point at a picture and then either an individual student or the class as a whole would answer me with, "It's a..." We repeated each word so many times. I would have them ask me, ask their desk partners, or even ask the whole class. Even so, after about an hour and a half I know that some of them still had no idea how to say bag. And it is very possible that they thought the word for girl was Beth. I can imagine that it would be really easy for the students to confuse this since they were learning boy so it would make sense to learn girl the same day. Additionally, the visual for Beth was a girl; right, super easy for the students to confuse Beth for girl and I wasn't sure how to clarify. I don't really know why this particular English book is teaching names.

This student is not that tall, he is standing on the stage. This boy
is the classroom monitor– more on that in a future post.

What was super entertaining was prior to teaching the new B words, I reviewed their old words. The week before they had been taught U words... umbrella, umpire, upside down and... Uncle Jim! It was actually the funniest thing for me to point at the picture and say, "What is this?' and in response hear, "It's a Uncle Jim!"  I didn't bother confusing them by saying, "Who is this?" and it is way above their compression level to tell them they can drop the "a." Instead I just listened to them yell, "It's a Uncle Jim." It was so hilarious. I probably made them repeat it a few times too many but it was just so entertaining. Uncle Jim, I obviously was thinking of you and wish you and Linda could have been there to laugh with me.