TacoCat’s Travels #41 (Vietnam 1.0): Our first time Volunteaching! 💁

Hey Steemit!

So if you missed the previous post, I'm recounting my first trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in May 2016 when we tried voluntouring! We signed up to be volunteers for this programmed called Words on Wheels, where we had to organise classroom activities and coach the children in reading and learning English.

Source: sif.org.sg

19 May 2016. Thursday.

Today is the first day of teaching! Our group had a total of 11 volunteers, and we split into 2 teams. We had 2 teaching days and 2 classes to teach each day (for a total of 4 classes this trip), where each team would take charge of 1 class.

To be honest, I didn't know what to expect. I've done some brief tutoring in secondary/high school but that was many years ago, and it was one-on-one tutoring, not even a whole class. But we had done our preparations, and now it was time to get to it.

But first, breakfast!

We had to wake up pretty early because we were leaving for the school around 0730. The hotel breakfast was alright, pretty average; nothing too spectacular. The omelette station was good though. We're a big fan of eggs, as you can tell.

Anyway, after a quick breakfast, the 2 teams headed into our respective vans.

I don't think it was a very long drive, and tbh I don't remember the name of the school we went to, but I recall thinking we were quite a ways from the city because it looked straight up like a rural village school.

I don't have a picture of the actual school building, but it looked similar to this, in terms of size; just a small 1 storey building surrounded by other low-rise buildings and grass. The school compound itself was pretty small too; there wasn't a playground or a proper road leading inside, it was literally just beside the road.

Source: xuice.org

When we arrived, I saw children playing just outside the building, and I was scared we might knock them because there wasn't much space to drive in. Fortunately, we managed to go in and park alright. We took some time to setup, since we had videos that we needed for the classes and we had to ensure the visual and audio was okay.

So after setting up, we started the class with some introductions and we taught them some English greetings with a song and video. We had a translator to translate what we were saying, so the kids could understand.

After that, we did the hokey-pokey, and we also taught them the head and shoulders song.

I think the kids were pretty engaged since we got them to do the dance along with us and the video. They seemed to be enjoying it, which was really good.

After all the singing and dancing, we broke the class into 4 groups, with each of us taking a group, and we taught them the words for different body parts, aka vocabulary lesson time!

We explained that they'll need to learn the words for the next activity we had planned, so while one of us set up the flipcharts, the rest of us taught the kids.

I think some of them might have lost interest during this part, but all I'm thankful for was they didn't make noise and some of them at least paid attention to me. 😅

So after we ran through all the vocabulary twice, it was time for the main activity! I was most excited for this one since I drew the flipcharts that we'd be using.

Basically there are 4 charts on the board with lines pointing to different parts of the body. Each group would have a collection of labels with the names of body parts. One of us would say the name of a body part, and each group would have to send a person to go up to the chart and paste the correct label at the right spot. The fastest group who does it correctly gets a point, and the group at the end with the most points wins!

I'd say this activity was probably the most chaotic, since there were kids running up and down, and everyone would scream and make a lot of noise every time a body part was mentioned by the "host". But it was all in good fun, and they were applying what they learnt so that's great!

After that we closed the morning lesson with a goodbye song! I was really nervous at first since I hadn't taught a class of kids before. I have briefly tutored a girl back in secondary/high school, but that was years ago and it was one-on-one tutoring, so it was really different teaching a whole class. It was pretty fun though! Thankfully, the kids were really well-behaved, and I think they managed to learn something by the end of the lesson, which was my main goal.

After the morning lesson, we met up with the other team and had a lunch break in the school.

I'm not sure if the food was cooked by the school, or if it was catered from somewhere, but it was pretty good albeit boney (from the fish).

After the break, it was time for us to teach the afternoon class! The second time was smoother since we already had a run-through. We took turns to host even though I was quite reluctant.

So we ran through the same song and dance, teaching at the same time. I think the afternoon class might've been a little rowdier but they were still pretty well-behaved, even through the vocabulary lesson.

The flipchart game was the one that got everyone excited of course. I'm so glad we came up with that activity! And that all the kids really enjoyed it! They looked (and sounded) like they were having a lot of fun.

After our afternoon class, we were done for the day! We packed up and rode the van back to our hotel. By the time we arrived back at the hotel it was around 5:30pm, so we had the whole evening to tour around Ho Chi Minh, which I'll cover in the next post so stay tuned!

Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #40 (Vietnam 1.0): Xin chào việt nam!