Penang Day 13

The whole school at morning gathering. The colours are their sports uniform, for the different houses. Penang is a very colourful place, I really enjoy seeing it.

Began the day by playing batu seremban again, then reading a book. We are less novel now, having been here for a week, so there aren’t as many children interested in listening to the reading. I watched Erin teach her Maths class, and spoke with the teacher about aspects of Australian teaching, and how we teach mathematics. It is always valuable to be able to talk about teaching, especially with those who are practiced. Below is a report that the teachers must fill out at the end of every lesson. They are in a book, which must be handed in to a head teacher for checking, each Friday. At first glance, I thought it was an awful lot of paperwork, and wouldn’t work in our system. I do think it would be somewhat problematic to implement, as we do not get periods off in the day to fill it out, and in Kindergarten, for example, each lesson is only 20 minutes long! However, I like the idea, so maybe using my technology it would be possible to at least do a voice recording of the elements after the main lessons each day.

More paperwork!

That was followed by my PE lesson. Luckily it wasn’t as hot as yesterday, however we were still out in the full sun, running around. I taught the students two traditional Indigenous games. There was no easy way to differentiate them into teams by sight, so as much as I didn’t like it, we split them into boys and girls (they were very happy!). The first game we played was munhanganing, a version of bull rush. The boys got the girls out very quickly. We then swapped, and the game lasted much longer. The girls did very well, and quickly worked out a strategy, which was interesting to watch develop. As much as I would have liked to have let it continue to the end, it was too hot, so I called a stop, and sent them off for a drink and a rest. The second game was tarnambai, where one student bowls a ball along the ground, and another races to pick it up and return it. It wasn’t so bad, as you can rest while you are bowling, but I think the girls were pooped. We set up a competition between 2 teams of boys, where there was one clear winner; then 2 teams of girls. The girls finished their race surprisingly quickly, and we believe that not everybody ran, so theirs was declared a tie. They were mightily disappointed, however, when I handed prizes out to the winning boys team.

I think they're having fun, don't you?

After PE, I was invited to the Principal’s office, where I was fed a dish of glutinous rice, with a durian/coconut sauce, made by the Principal herself! I also purchased a long, cool iced tea after all of that running around.

Doesn't look much chop, but it was tasty. Sweet and chewy and coconutty (I made that up)

After the break, I taught my 3A English class. Most of the class wasn’t there; they were preparing for another event. I again struggled to stop the children writing what was on the board word for word. I had the sentences below, with the idea that they substitute their own words. Unfortunately, most of them copied them down with blank lines. It took a lot of encouragement to get them to write what they ate for dinner, as every person’s was different. The same struggle then appeared with the ingredients for their individual dinners. By the time they were to identify which food groups their ingredients belonged to, we were almost there – most of them were able to substitute their own answers. We then managed to play a game where they were given random foods, and had to find others that shared the same food group. They enjoyed that, and there was learning as they had to identify what the English words for certain foods meant.

And then… it happened. I had been asked to cover a first grade class for Bahasa Malaysian! Considering I know numbers, colours, and the odd random word in Malaysian, that was never going to work. As these children are approximately 6 years old, their English was also very limited. I walked in to the class to find another teacher walking out after just chastising them. Not a good start! There were more than 30 in the class. I can’t tell you the exact number, because for the entire lesson, it was like counting ants from a kicked anthill. Our lecturer had said if you were unable to teach a particular subject, simply change it and teach to your strengths, so I began by showing them some Australian animals, and we did some actions for each, walking around the classroom. They were full of energy, so I thought this might be a good start. It wasn’t too bad, but they were very noisy! Following that, I read one of the picture books I bought with me. The girls sat and listened, but the boys moved to one side with some abacuses/abaci. They were relatively quiet (relatively!), so I decided not to press the issue. Once the story finished, I decided to send them back to their desks and get some playing card mathematics started. This was completely unsuccessful – trying to get all of them to sit at their desks at one time was like trying to hold a handful of jelly. I’d just get one lot settled, when another would be up and around. In the end I resorted to doing number matching adding to 10 on the board. Again, this gained most of their attention, but there was still some chaos, which ended in one little boy crying. At that point I raised my voice and insisted they all return to their desks.

Throughout all of this, I had almost every student from the class approach me and ask to go to the toilet. As this had been mentioned as an issue at assembly the other day, I let the first one go, then said no to each request after that. I ended up pulling in another older student, and getting her to explain in Malay that I would be saying no! This was only a single period (oh my, thank goodness), so I said they could wait and ask their next teacher.

The period finally ended, and their teacher came in. She began by showing me her blood pressure results – 160/100! Her doctor has told her that she must control her stress. She invited her doctor to spend a day with that class, and then revisit that advice! At least I know it wasn’t just me, but wow, that was a huge challenge, and one I think I met very poorly! Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kindergarten Cop: “They're six-year-olds. How much trouble can they be?”

No pictures from that class, so here is a handsome fellow I saw around the school. I do not know what type of bird it is.

Had our usual meeting after school, the we headed to Komtar for some last minute shopping. I managed to find some self-inking stamps for teachers. So cheap! We had dinner at World Park Square, a large food court just down from Komtar. My dinner was lovely, but I wanted to share dessert with you. This is called ice kachung, and is available pretty much everywhere here. Yes, this IS icecream, corn and kidney beans, along with some other unidentified ingredients. It is a bit strange at first (they don’t even use the sweetened corn!), but once it all melts together, it’s fine. We decided it is the “pantry” dessert – you reach into the pantry, and mix whatever you can find with icecream!

Ice Kachung