First Full Day of School...

Sign in was at 7:30. Normally I would have ESL 1 at 8-8:30 but that doesn't start for a couple of weeks. ESL 1 is extra help for students doing below 60% in certain courses, usually due to not being very good at English. At 8:30-9:00 I had devotions with my homeroom. I am using a series of books called Firm Foundations and starting at the beginning of the gospels. I am going to break up each lesson into five days. The topic for this week is "God Foretold the Birth of John and Jesus." Today we picked a class theme. I came up with three choices and had the class vote on them. The choices were "Let Your Light Shine", "The Lord is Our Shepherd", or "Trust in the Lord" (from proverbs 3:5). Trust in the Lord got 11 out of 15 votes so that is our theme this year. We then did a fill in the blank review sheet based on the previous lesson which basically talked about Israel sinning and ignoring the prophets and the reason why a deliver was neeeded. We then read through a skit, where I was Uncle Don and one of the students was Travis and another was Jessica. I also assigned Luke 1:37 (For with God nothing will be impossible) as a memory verse due Friday. After flag I had grade 8 math from 9:15 to 10:45. We first worked on math riddles in groups and went over the answers, went through the course outline, and then we did the first lesson which is on ratios. From 11-12 I had grade 9 math. We did the same riddle sheet and then went through the course outline. I had about 5 minutes left in class so we played truth or lie. An interesting thing here is that the bells all ring about 6 minutes early then they are supposed to. Oh well,mai pen rai. Had lunch in the cafeteria (rice, some sort of cabbagy thing, some sort of pork curry dish i think, some lettuce and cold potatoes, tried a bit of guava). Went back to my class before lunch was over to prepare for grade 7 class but then a thai teacher came in thinking she was going to teach a Thai class there but I had math 7 there so she ended up using the room next door. But it left me somewhat disorganized for math 7. We went over the 4 problem solving steps and choosing a method of computation. They take forever to write stuff down and it seems like they won't write anything down unless you tell them to. Math 7 was 1:30-2:30 then I had an hour prep but the first 15 minutes was spent trying to figure out what to do with the grade 7s cause they were all sitting in the hallway being loud. I guess they had Thai language class but didn't know where to go and I didn't know where they had to go either. So I ended up making them come back in my class to work on math but then I found out that they were supposed to go to the Thai library. My last class (2:30-3:30) was with grade 6. Since I don't have a textbook yet I did review from last year's grade 5 book. For each question I would throw a tennis ball to someone and they would help me answer the question. Grade 6 is supposed to be 6A and 6B but they don't have enough teachers so it is one class (25 students). But there is a teacher from the Philipines that helps with the class.