Edison Reflection on Lesson 1

The lesson did not begin very well, as we were not used to dealing with kids of such a young age and hence we could not reach out to them. Most of them were afraid of responding verbally except two or three students. We also tried to tell them our names but as our names all contained three syllables, they were unable to remember and pronounce our names. However, after I managed to stress Benjamin's name, they could remember it well. I then tried the same on me and Timothy. However, when we played the icebreaker, the only name they knew was Benjamin and hence the game was not really a success.

Another problem was that we did not know their names and this greatly weakened our ability to reach out to them and get them to respond. Furthermore, we were unsure of the characteristics of each child. This was very evident when Timothy attempted to ask one of the girls a question and she simply stared at him, and the teacher at the side mentioned that she would cry if we had insisted.

The story was going quite smoothly as I started, with Timothy drawing out the images on the whiteboard provided. I believe this part did not go too badly as although I was not able to get most of them to respond verbally, they did respond with a raise of hands when I tried to interact by asking simple questions. However, it did not go very well as Benjamin overly quickly transitioned into the ending, making the children confused.

Also, when we attempted to explain what was recycling, we did not succeed as we were unable to simplifiy our language enough for them to understand. Afterwards, the teacher attempted to help us and kind of succeeded, but I believe it did not really leave an impression on them as we had to repeat several times previously before they could undestand.

Overall, I believe that this lesson was not very successful. Thinking about what we could have done better, maybe we should have also re-translated the story into a simpler form so that we did not have to do on-the-spot translation which was a little tough. We should also have attempted to learn their names before hand as this would enable us to reach out to them more.