First Day Of School

I only had two periods of English on the first day of school. I was assigned to teach four classes and my total teaching hours are 20. For the first time in 17 years, I was given a class of Form Four.

The first group of students that I dealt with was a Form One class.  The students were so quiet that I could literally hear my own breathing when I introduced myself and briefed them on the do's and don'ts in my lessons. Shy and passive as they were, their faces were full of expectation and I told myself I should give it my all in teaching them. Over the years, I had had more than my fair share of first day blunders and I was determined to change that. 'Stop playing everything by ear,' I thought to myself, 'And plan systematically from now on.'

During the teaching-learning session, I had the students introduce themselves. I elicited Wh-questions and responses from the students and write out a cloze dialogue as a model to teach them speaking. The students took a long time copying the dialogue and by the time they finished, I couldn't have any group present their dialogue. How remiss of me. I should have printed  out the dialogue so that the students could easily role play it by filling in the blanks.

It took me a long time to come up with a suitable writing activity for my Form Four students. I told them to write an introspective composition on what they had decided to do in 2015. I downloaded an article from the Internet as a reading stimulus but alas it was too difficult for them. I ended up writing a simplified version on the whiteboard and they could understand better. In the course of writing I made some slips  and the students laughed at me. 'You wouldn't have known the sentences were wrong if I hadn't rubbed them,' I said, suppressing my anger. 'Making errors is part of learning and don't tell me you're perfect.' 

After getting the students read my impromptu writing, I asked them to write a composition on what they had decided to do in 2015. Only a smattering of them did the writing and the rest kept looking into space, not writing anything. I ended up asking them to hand in their work on Thursday.

At the end of the day, I found my lessons devoid of life. What should I do to enliven them? I can consider teaching via games but I have no confidence in maintaining the order of my classes.