Workbooks for little learners

School year 2009-2010 is the first trial year for my school to include teaching English for Anuban 1 (toddlers ages 3-4). The administration pulled me out from the Grade level to teach pre-schoolers (a special request from our manager). I know that it would be challenging. Though I taught preschool in the Philippines, I am not yet so confident if I could handle this class. The only assurance they gave me is that classroom management is not a problem to me coz the Anuban advisers will be there to help me. My only concern is to teach English once a week per class and prepare a worksheet for them. You should know how hard is it to prepare worksheets for little learners who just encountered English for the first time. I pass a draft worksheet every other week, number the worksheet painstakingly and checked them. The same thing I did for Anuban 2 (I’m handling Anuban 1 and 2 , by the way) I’m glad that on the second semester, the administration decided to book bind the worksheets –a workbook finally! Now, I’m more relaxed coz it doesn’t take time anymore to number each worksheets everyday over and over again. By the way, we use numbers to identify the students’ coz I couldn’t read Thai script and it’s the advisers who will help me in distributing the workbooks coz it’s impossible to memorize each students number in 25 classes! I’ll pass the pencils while the teacher is distributing and stamping dates. Now that’s teamwork!

Problem arise when the teacher is absent coz the substitute doesn’t know the name of the students and the student numbers so I’ll either choose to have a game or oral recitation. For Anuban 2, I could let them do the exercises if they know their student number. I’ll just spread it on the floor and they’ll have to find their number (just get the idea from one of the advisers . . .pretty smart huh…) This second semester, there’s one class in anuban 2 that the adviser maximize the assistance of students- one will distribute the pencils, one for erasers and 2 or more students for the workbooks (they’ve memorized the numbers of their classmates already).