We first went into Siddhartha College on Friday the 8^th. It’s a large school, with about 2000 students from grades 1 to 11 crammed into a small area…

The first thing you notice is just how busy the place is, most of the classes are of 30-40 kids and the breaks are at different times so there’s always a buzz of children running around the buildings and making use of the one volleyball court.

The teachers were welcoming and we observed a grade 6 lesson. We were impressed with the standard of English, and most of the kids were friendly and enthusiastic.

Laura and I taught together for the week, initially it was pretty daunting for me, as I hadn’t done any formal teaching like this before. Laura was more confident and had some great ideas so we managed to prepare a good lesson.

On the first day of teaching, we realised that our biggest problem was differentiation. We had only observed one class so we weren’t aware of just how big the gap in ability was within the year. Our two lower ability classes were squeezed into one room that wasn’t really big enough for 80 kids, after the first day we began to plan different activities for these groups, as many of the students spoke very little English.

The lessons progressed well, we managed to cover a lot of topics and we got most of the children involved with speaking, which was our main aim and not an easy task in classes of that size.

It was quite intense, but very rewarding, to teach at Siddhartha. It was nothing like anything I’ve done before and some of the kids were difficult, but others were simply fantastic and a pleasure to teach. The teachers were dedicated and helpful and I think it really helped our students to have some teaching with a different focus, to be exposed to native speakers, and to be encouraged to speak as much as possible.