Update from Dr Dawber, Thursday 23/06/16

Yesterday (wednesday) morning it was still pouring down, and the thunder and lightning were still crackling everywhere. I started off by observing a year 8Y (bottom division L4) Chemistry class with the second chemistry teacher, Jerry Lou. She was going over the paper from their internal exam last week. It was interesting to see the slower pace necessary with this group because of their more limited grasp of English. Something for me to note, as I knew I would be teaching the same class this morning. A lot more time needs to be spent emphasizing vocabulary with these students, especially when it comes to specialist scientific terms. The next lesson I was due to observe was a the year 11s with Kofi Akorner, Chemistry teacher and current Head of Science, In fact that lesson had been rearranged so I had a good opportunity to chat to Kofi and find out more about his experiences of teaching here. He loves it, but there are some major frustrations, such as not being able to use gas or Bunsens, which is really limiting for chemistry in particular.

In the afternoon I got another 20 length swim in and spent the rest of the time working on lesson plans and trying out demos for my lesson this morning and my big 'experiment' lessons for next week.

This morning (Thursday) there was still some thunder and lightning and it was still raining, but only on and off. I gather storms as heavy as this one has been are rare here! I started bright and early again at 8am with 8Y, the class I observed yesterday. I covered an introduction to magnetism and they had fun discovering which materials are magnetic, finding what like poles and unlike poles do to each other and plotting the shape of magnetic fields around a magnet with compasses and iron filings. They loved putting hair spray on the filings to 'fix' the picture so they could put it up on the wall! I took it really slowly, especially when they had to write one or two things down - they find copying words in English quite hard still - but they responded very well.

After that I observed Kofi teaching 8X a Chemistry lesson about the different types of rocks. Intriguing to see the contrast with 8Y. Some of the students still find it hard to express themselves in English, but they are generally much more on the ball and much more responsive. Very interestingly, there are no girls in the  Y division, they are all in X! The girls here seem to work much harder than the boys do, so tend to make more progress, especially in English, and the best students in all classes are usually the girls!

At lunchtime I met up with Sara Brazendale, who has just arrived from Shanghai. Lovely to see her and catch up. She is having her tour of the school and lots of meetings, but she also brought me important resources for my lessons (i.e. jelly babies and maltesers!) We are going out tonight for dinner at the Sheraton in Changzhou with all the senior team, so that should be really good.