Teaching English As A Second Language (ESL)

Aaron and Erica have been away at a conference for most of this week so Don and I have been teaching their ESL Classes. We make a great team!!
There are 3 classes each morning of approximately 1 hour each starting at 9 a.m. and ending at 12:15 (there are a couple of short breaks in there!!) Some of the women (young girls from 17 to women around 30) arrive for the 9 am class and stay for the next class too so there is about 26 in those two classes with some overlapping. Ten more girls arrive for the last class. We teach mostly the same content for all 3 classes, however, the 9 a.m. class has the least knowledge of English. We are beginning each class with songs that Joy used in kindergarten: Good Morning Song, Days of the Week, and I'm a Walking, Walking Walking. Each class loves to sing and is enjoying these simple songs. The all time hit is The Hokey Pokey! In fact, we have been asked to teach it to the whole school at the closing ceremonies. Another favourite is 'Deep and Wide'. Singing is a wonderful way to teach English. We have also been playing simple matching games with alphabet letters and with letter sounds (i.e., how many words can they think of that begin with 's'.
We introduced role playing today by having them carry on short conversations in pairs in front of the class.
Zaahra has been a wonderful help to us during these classes.
After our two home visits, which we will be describing in the next blogs, we have been helping the teachers with their marking and supervising exams.