Journal # 28: Ryota, Bohol and the Leopards
August 11 2011
Since Ryota was the only student at the Beavers class, I was invited by T. Lala to join her class and observe it for the meantime.
It was not my first time to meet the Leopards. I’ve been with them after class, playing with them and teaching them all sorts of hand games such as “pizza-pizza-pizza-hut”, “saw-saw suka” and “cross-mary-shake” during their free time. Since the kids are already 4.4-5.4 years when they entered the grade, there definitely is a great difference between the Beavers. Below are a few of the things I have observed with the Leopards that makes them different from that of the Beavers.
THE LEOPARDS ARE ABLE TO:
- Talk in full sentences - in one of the observations I had, they had an activity where they needed to describe using full sentences the things they see in the picture.
- Play with other kids and share their toys
- Socialize with other adults inside the classroom
In the Video above, the class is having an activity where the students are asked to locate which vowel should be used to complete the word given. The kids in the video are Felicia (far right), Kae (middle) and Marco.
Journal # 25: Pepi eating Manila food! August 8 2011
Journal # 28: Ryota, Bohol and the Leopards
August 11 2011
Today we went to Bohol and it was the Blue Whales turn to take us and share with us the things that they’ve learned about Bohol.
Teacher Monica, devised on using a song (B-I-N-G-O and replaced it with B-O-H-O-L) with the kids tell a few things about the many islands of Bohol!
Journal # 28: RYOTA, Bohol and the Leopards
August 11 2011
Today was “Bohol” day and and it was the Blue Whales turn to strut their Bohol delicacies inside the DICE room for everyone in YCM to see! We; the teachers, were asked to dress up as tourists or as safari tour guides for the day.
Aside from the week-long TATAK PINOY culminating activity, something else was new in the room! The school had glass dividers installed in the classroom to give solution to the problem of students in the other class peeking at what the other class is doing. The glass dividers was later on decorated like an aquarium. Although it was the students first time to see the glass dividers when they entered the classroom, the simply took a glance on it and continued on putting their bags in the cubbyhole and played with the toys available. It was as if they were used to it instantly.
Below is a photo of the newly installed glass dividers.
ONE STUDENT< TWO TEACHERS
Shuji was absent today. Following the Cebu day that we had, Mrs. Hasokawa decided on having Shuji stay at home because Shuji has not been feeling well still. Ryota today was left with me and T. Ge. Mrs. Shigeno was also present inside the classroom and was happy that his kid was focused by two teachers. (unfortunately we, the teachers, were not feeling the same thing for Ryota)
Ryota, just like last Tuesday was sad in an overall perspective. He was looking for other children; most especially Shuji, who he can be with him in class. Because he was alone, he was most of the time unmotivated to follow the routine set for him. The activities set for him were many and shortened to suit Ryota’s short attention span.
To tell the truth, Ryota is a mix of emotions when his mom is around staying at the classroom. Because we can’t directly say to the parent to stay out side to wait, we had a hard time making Ryota do activities. What happens is that whenever he didn’t want to do one thing he would try to go to Mrs. Shigeno and cry until he gets what he wants. Mrs. Shigeno most of the time smiles at Ryota and Ryota looks like what he understood from his mom is that she was happy to do that “action” or “behavior”. Ryota hit me int he face a while ago and he even looked happy that he did that to me. Mrs. Shigeno smiled. Ryota smiled and laughed. T. Zen and T. Ge even went to make Ryota realize that what he did was inappropriate because he had hurt me.
I don’t really know what or how to deal with this kind of situation inside the classroom where the parent tries to stay inside the classroom. We tried giving Mrs. Shigeno hints that “Ryota is behaving well even when she’s not around” but what can I say… I really have no clue on how to deal with this.
BREAKING NEWS: RYOTA IS LEAVING and going back to Japan at the end of August. (I really don’t know if I’ll yey to this or not. Nonetheless, I’m saddened to say goodbye one of the first students I played with in YCM during my practicum stay)
