I taught my first TEFL class this week! 8th Form (grade), by myself for 45 minutes on the climate of Great Britain. Introduced some new words like “rainfall,” “sunshine,” “climate,” “wind,” “humid,” “mild,” “average.” I also tried to teach the pupils about comparatives and superlatives. Parts of the lesson worked – they loved the “word swatter” game – and parts were addressed to complete silence. Overall, it wasn’t too shabby for a first lesson but there is much room for improvement.
In Ukrainian language we’ve moved from the food unit to time and weather. Learning ordinal numerals; how to ask for/tell time; days of the week and months of the year; names for weather phenomena. Friday was a beautiful sunny (сонце) and warm (тепло) day! Also interesting is that in Ukrainian the months are named after things that happen in those months:
January (січень) loosely means “heavy snow”
February (лютий) means “angry month”
March (березень) is the bird month
April (квітень) is the month when flowers come out
May (травень) is when grass is green
June (червень) is when cherries blossom
in July (липень) the linden trees bloom
August (серпень) is harvest month
heather comes out in September (вересень)
October (жовтень) is the “yellow month”
November (листопад) is “falling leaves month”
December (гпудень) is “frozen ground month”
Language class is a fun mix of review from the previous day and new material practiced through games, dialogues, and repetition. As usual, more “daily life in Ukraine” pictures below.
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| My Cluster! L to R: Tammela, Kate, Andy, Janira, Andrew |
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| Kate and I unconsciously dressed in opposite color schemes for our first day of teaching! |
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| Beautiful fall day in Chernihiv. |
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| My host family's garden and chickens! |
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| Grapes in the late afternoon. Host dog, Dina, bottom left. |
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| Typical village sighting. |
It looks gorgeous! And I love their way of naming the months- that's so interesting. Hope you are having a happy Yellow Month!
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