This week Becky, Charlotte, Nic and I have been teaching English at Sri Sumangala government school.  Having four people teaching here has meant that we could split into two teams and teach twice the number of students each day.  Becky and Charlotte opted for teaching the higher grades, but as a Primary Education student I was naturally more excited to work with the younger children.Between us Nic and I taught grades 3, 4 and 5 with each grade consisting of four classes.  The large class sizes of 40 plus children made it difficult to do much spoken English, especially as they are not yet fluent enough or old enough to complete independent conversational exercises.  Therefore, we focused more on teaching new English songs, especially as Sri Lankan children have a love of music and dance.  Alice the Camel proved to be the most popular with all of the children and wiggling your bottom at the end of each verse brought gales of laughter from everyone.  We also played some word games such as hangman and charades and were surprised to find that the children had a firm grasp of the spelling of some complex English words such as ‘elephant’ and ‘rainbow’. 
The school is very different from schools in the UK and much more basic.  The class sizes are larger and they have little in the way of resources.  It appears that there are not enough teachers to cover all of the classes either and it was not unusual to find children left on their own in their classes.  This is what is known as a free period and it is surprising at how well behaved the children are without an adult presence in the room.  It’s clear that all of the children love having us come into their school to teach them.  Wherever we walk between classes, we get ‘mobbed’ by crowds of children desperate to have us sign their exercise books or give them our email addresses.