Training week 5

We met our students outside Kingston Museum this morning. The group splits into two, with the more advanced students going on a local history tour of Kingston, while the beginner level students stayed to explore the Museum.

I joined the group on the tour of Kingston, happy to be out and about in the glorious spring sunshine. It was led very knowledgeably by our tutor / tour guide who took us on a whistle-stop tour of Kingston Market, All Saints Church, Kingston Bridge, the new waterfront development at Charter Quay, Clattering Bridge and past Caesar Picton’s House to the Coronation Stone outside the Guildhall. It was genuinely very interesting, our students were fully engaged and asking lots of questions and I learned a lot myself, despite having lived close by for nearly 20 years!

In our afternoon session, we continued our work on developing coherent lesson plans to teach grammar. We recapped on some of the techniques that had been introduced throughout the course and pulled them altogether to form a solid structure on which we would be able to base our future lessons. Today felt like a milestone, as so many strains of what we had been taught started to bind themselves together and somehow appear to be more digestable. This is a relief, as we are now exactly half way through the LEAH course.

I went with the lower level group on a tour of Kingston Museum. It was a fantastic experience for all, it was thoroughly enjoyed by both volunteers and students. We were told about the history of Kingston, by looking at objects from pre historic times. Everyone learned something new, and students asked many questions to enhance their knowledge too. It was good opportunity to get to know the students better and how to help teach them English. Knowing what they found interesting also allowed us to understand how to structure our next lesson which was based on their tour of the museum.