I started the class with a boring one. We were learning sight words and reading sentences on that day. The only fun thing they did that day was to sing the phonics song. My old kids knew the song already, but for the 6th and 7th standard kids, that was new and they equally enjoyed it. But I didn't even make the reading a game which I usually do when they are reading the words from my laptop. If I continued like that the attendance would have become nil in no time. Then I asked the kids what they wanted to do on the next Saturday class. They told me to bring and teach more songs.
So the next Saturday I took print outs of the lyrics (they learnt the word lyrics and so many other words from the song that day) for them to read and taught them the official theme song of World Cup 2010. They went wild and sang the song again and again with the music playing at the background. I might have got bored after some time, but not them. After some time I switched to teaching them making sentences. I gave them a sentence and a question word and they made questions and answers. This time it was fun and they were all jumping up and down with their hands up in the air to give me the questions and the answers. I also revised the basic auxiliary verbs and their usage. It was almost like they were learning without realising that. We finished the day by singing the song again a few times. At the end of the day they demanded that I bring the lyrics of the Waka Waka song of Shakira, again from the World Cup.
I brought them the song next Saturday and they had fun with that. Not so much as the previous song as this is a little too fast and they couldn't keep pace most of the time. But they always caught up by swallowing a lot of words with some funny effects. Again we played sentence blocks and by now the kids knew how to make the questions and answers, though the structure of the sentences left much to be desired. By now I knew that the best way to get the kids back next Saturday would be to ask them what they wanted to do.
So, here I am trying to find movies which they can watch. Tomorrow is Kung Fu Panda day. I haven't seen the movie, but I hope the kids like it. The kids also spread the news that they are having fun on Saturdays and I see a steady increase in attendance. I hope to see many more kids tomorrow and I know they are going to demand more movies. Any movie suggestions are welcome (1.5hrs long, as I need the rest of time to teach). I might have to make a huge collection to last all the Saturdays to come.
