by Ms. Lala
It’s been a year I’ve taught English for Children (EC). From my experience, teaching EC is not that easy as EC pronounced for I have to deal with children range from second grade to sixth grade of elementary school. Most of them come from different school with absolutely far cry characteristics. Grouping them is a difficult thing to do when it comes to give them instructions not to mention apply what they have to do in groups. Well, I found it a bit different when I teach EC for CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).
Lempongsari elementary school is the school which was selected to be the target of CSR. 10 students were picked out of tens of students who followed placement test. They are from fifth and sixth grade in their school. Therefore, they go to EC5. When I accidentally interviewed them if they got any achievement, surprisingly, they said that all of them ranked 1st to 5th best in the class. No wonder, it’s not that hard to introduce some vocabulary to them, especially they have got English lesson since they were in the 4th grade. The less difficult part is in grouping them. Mostly grouping boys and girls gives a teacher a hard time. In this CSR class, everyone is willing to work with anyone. Some complaints come occasionally but they are willing to move here and there, work in different groups each time, and perform a drama.
Teaching techniques used in this CSR class is not poles apart from the other EC classes. It turned out to be a problem to me when it’s time to discuss little book. Most of the time, my friends and I make use of this page to relax a bit by asking the students to make a book. We provide cartoon and the students would use it to make a cover of the little book. However, since their book is copied one, it won’t be attractive at all to put cover on it. I got an idea to ask them to dram each character from the story. The topic is about A Wonderful Present. Each student was given a task to draw a character. Say the King, the Princess, The palace, the three brothers, the presents, the market, etc. another thing that made surprised was they are good in drawing. It seems that almost all of them don’t have any problems in drawing. Snce the drawing took so much time that they needed to continue the activity on the next day. Then, on the next day of discussing the little book, I made a short simple narration. After they finished their drawing, each of them practiced reading the script. They were very enthusiastic to practice each line they got. Then, a short modest puppet show was carried out based on the episodes of pictures.
Overall, teaching CSR students is not a far cry from teaching regular students. The difference is only on their enthusiasm, their willingness in working in groups and in drawing. The similarities are the characters of kids who cannot sit still, shout here and there, never stop asking, etc. Kids!
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