Thursday, March 19, 2015

Mother Tongue Service Project: First Week of a New Start

Last week, our other Tongue Service Group started our first session with the primary kids after school activity (planned and initiated activities). We planned to introduce ourselves, our languages, and countries to the kids, and learn ore about the kids' backgrounds as well. We also wanted to find out what languages the kids wanted to learn.
Unfortunately, no one wanted to take up Sinhala at the moment , however we agreed that maybe some days we could do a lesson where everyone did a Sinhala lesson, since Sinhalese is the mother tongue of our host country. For this time (after school on Thursday), we thought we would stick around and take part in some lessons (last week we partook in German lessons), and hopefully learn something about other cultures and languages, in hope to further the spread of language and culture (engaged in issues of global importance).
We also wanted to continue our lessons with Pre-School and Grade 3 from last year, as Kevin (my colleague) and I felt like the class and us, as a unit, have made quite a bit of progress, thus it would be a shame to let that go to wastes. We already I have been able to create a basis foundation with these classes, both educationally and mentally, and thus it is optimal to continue to teach them since we could progress much quicker (working collaboratively with others).
However, we are always willing to teach any other kids that want to on Thursdays after school, as we are always willing to spread the language and culture of our host country throughout our community, and give back to our community (engaged in issues of global importance). Also, we have already gained a better understanding on how working kids goes (from our previous experience with the other classes), and thus feel like we have a better understanding on areas for improvement and development with our lessons (such as we need to incorporate more games and activities to engage the kids to learn better and make it more fun for them). Thus, we feel like we can do a better job than when we first started, as we have developed new skills from our previous experiences.
Hopefully, this new start will provide for good, fresh start to the new semester!

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