We will revise colours with them using a game and they will learn names of fruits,days of the week ,numbers and months and the phrase "I want .."
Us hanging out at the beach before lessons at 4pm.
The final lesson
We divided the kids into two teams and got them to stand in 2 lines.There was a pile of markers of various colours at the end of the room.One kid from each team will run to the pile and grab the marker of the right colour after I scream the name of a colour in English.
The boys were extremely distracted this time round and couldn't keep still.It was only until we played the fruit game when they calmed down .
Each kid will be blindfolded with kitchen paper.We will put a slice of fruit into their mouth and they have to tell us the name of the fruit in english.They really enjoyed the game.This was also the first time we were giving out sweets .These were fruit candies and the kids will only receive it if they can name the colour of the fruit and the name of the fruit on the fruit candy that they wanted
I had a soft spot for 2 boys , whom i saw as the most promising of the 10.Vitalik and Yegor.And for the enthusiasm they showed in learning , i decided to reward them .
When I was a child , my mom will reward me if i did well for my examinations or tests.I would get these star stickers ,accumulate them and oncei get more than a certain number , my mom will buy me a present!Although kids brought up in this generation are different from the kids brought up in my generation, I am still pretty sure that they will be happy being rewarded for something.
Knowing that Vitalik loves reading , and got excited when he thought i had an english book in my bag, i bought him a book of english stories with russian translation .The book came with an audio cd where he can listen to the narrations in both english and russian.It was 200roubles(10sgd) from the bookstore but if 200roubles can inspire an orphan to study hard , win a scholarship and pursue higher education in university , then my 200roubles is totally worth it.At the front of the book , i wrote him a letter in both english and russian ,hoping to inspire him to continue learning.Marina, a good friend of mine from Moscow had helped to correct my grammatical mistakes the night before.
Yegor on the other hand is a fan of soccer and is not interested in books.I went down to the Zenit football store ( his favourite football team ) and bought him a bar of Zenit chocolate and a pen.If he doesn't read , at least , he can have fun writing with a cool pen.the best part , it came with a Zenit plastic bag.His presents are going to make most of the boys in the orphanage very jealous.But he deserved to receive it anyway.
The letter that i wrote for Yegor
Дорогой Егор,
Я знаю ,что теье нварвится футбол и поэтому я дарю теье эту зенитовскую ручку.Пусть этот подарок будет побуждать тебя заниматся хорошо в школе.Когда жизнь трудная,борись упорно и преодолеешь затруднения и проблемы.Ты большой малчик и у тебя большие мечты.Будь приежным мужчиной и достигнешь свою мечту.
Ты можешь это сделать!
:)
Kyril after requesting to receive my umbrella as a gift , went bouncing around happy.
It took so little to make them happy and that was what made teaching orphans so satisfying.To know that what you teach them actually makes a difference.It may be just a few english words , laughter and company but that was what made the 7 weeks in Saint Petersburg totally worthwhile.Not only that , Yegor and Vitalik were constantly correcting my russian pronunciation and repeating it many times with me so that i got it right.I was their english language teacher and they were my russian language teachers.
As the boys bidded us farewell, i wished that i had the money and time to come back to guide the interested few on english language through the school term.Perhaps in the future , I will come back again but it will be for the longer term :)
