Our Spoken English Classroom!

Greetings from Gujarat!

Lakshmi and I have been in Kadod for about four weeks now, teaching spoken English to students in the 9th and 11th standards. While teaching English in a Gujarati-medium school has been challenging, it has also been very rewarding. We have found that the students do not have much of an opportunity to speak English in school or in their homes; this being the case, our goal is to make the students want to practice speaking English not only in the classroom but with their friends. We intersperse activities, such as "Two Truths and a Lie" and Pictionary with reading comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary lessons so that students get a chance to interact with each other and learn the English fundamentals as well. Our students are all very enthusiastic and we already see them making more of an effort to improve their spoken English skills.

Below are some photos of us teaching in our classroom. Enjoy!

-Charishma

The students in the 11th science section seem to have a solid grasp of the English language. We had them read "The Buffalo and the Field Mouse," a Native-American folktale, out loud.

After every few paragraphs of the story, I asked them questions to test their reading comprehension...and they always passed with flying colors! Pooja, one of our students, has just asked a question.

After the students were finished reading the story, Lakshmi wrote some questions on the board to assess the students' overall comprehension of the story.

Nilam, Arpita, and Kajal hard at work to answer the questions about "The Buffalo and the Field Mouse."

Divyesh has just found the answer to one of the questions!

Lakshmi helping one of the 9th standard boys on a test of the general and continuous present tenses.

Lakshmi just finished explaining the importance of establishing the fundamentals of the English language to our 9th standard girls and is about to start going over their first exam on the general and continuous present tenses.

Vishvajit (left) and Bhavesh (center) stop to pose for a picture before dashing off to the mess for a dinner of dal, subzi, and rotis.