First class ...

I found out on Friday afternoon that I would be teaching my first class on Saturday morning. Yep, plenty of time to get a lesson together! I was to teach four classes in the Pet Store situational room, and the students were all part of a one-day field trip to DGEV. I didn't know their ages, behavioral problems, or language level ... we sort of fly blindly into these things.
I prepared a lesson plan for the 70-minute class with about 2 hours worth of activities - always good to overplan these things! The students for the first period were 40 minutes late, which was nice ... a good short class. They were excited to play with the animals, and seemed to enjoy the scavenger hunt. After that, a DGEV staffer approached me and told me that my second class was canceled. Off the hook until after lunch!
The first class after lunch was still pretty good. 70 minutes is a long time (and usually, the classes are 90 minutes!!) but I filled it up. My last class of the day was the nightmare class. It was filled with LITTLE kids - Not the 9-11-year-olds from other classes, but probably closer to 5-6 years old. Twenty-one of them! There were a couple older students there, too, but they were sort of trouble makers. I ended up kicking one of them out of the class. Although I had overplanned my lesson, it was still contingent upon the kids at least being able to write English letters ... these kids couldn't! I had to wing it, and then I finally gave up and just let them play with the animals.
Here, some shots of the pet store. The walls make it sort of a strange room to be in, but it's nice and green. They tried to match some of the fake plants in the store with the plants in the photo on the wall, which is a cool effect, but after the last class, most of the fake plants were strewn across the floor.
Pet Store seems to be one of the more popular situationals - at least there are toys to play with! And it was one of the classes I had observed, so I had some idea of how it could be planned. It could have been worse. All in all it was an OK first day!