TE2: Day 3

When I arrived at school this morning, the first thing I noticed was that Lost for Word, the book that Mrs R had been reading to the class, was on my desk. I wondered what it was doing there, but I did not touch it because I thought Mrs R had put it there for some reason. Turned out, Mrs R had meant for me to read it before class started. She's wanted me to take the Teacher Reading period. She thought it'd be helpful if I had a read beforehand.

So after morning tea, Mrs R set the class and helped the children get settled down. Then she informed the children that Ms Johan will be reading to them. They can listen, or they can choose to finish off some work while listening.

Right-o. This is it. More than 2 dozen pairs of eyes set on me. This was going to be my first act as a teacher-presence - the children were more than curious. They were giving me quite an intense scrutiny. Truth be told, I had read the chapter I was going to read like Mrs R said, but I did not give it too much thought. Mrs R had modelled it yesterday, and it looked very easy, like it just flowed. Now as I was taking my seat at the front of the class, all those theories came rushing into my head. Get the learners' attention... Activate their prior learning... In the space of probably one second, I finally completed my subconscious analysis of what Mrs R was actually doing when she was reading. I recalled that yesterday before she started, Mrs R had asked the students if they could remember what happened in the preceding chapter. So I decided to do the same thing.

Now, with Mrs R, because the children were used to her, they listened while they worked. But because I was a novelty, some of them were practically unblinking as the looked at me. So some of them answered my prompts, and they helped me establish the story up to that point. Then I started reading. And read and read. When Mrs R had done it, she had paused at strategic moments and invited the students to predict what would happen, so I thought I'd give that a try. But what a disaster that turned out to be. I had no idea how to lead students to the answer that I sought, and so none of their predictions turned out to be very accurate. And so I read on.

Then we came across a character that the author was describing. It was obvious that the author did not favour this character. He was "pale" and it was as if "he was hiding in a corner", to cite just a couple of examples. I remember that the children were doing a unit on narrative writing, and among their foci were setting and, wait for it, characterisation. I thought this was an excellent opportunity to hammer in how important these little aspects are to a narrative. So I tried to coax them into making the link between how he is described, to how the other characters reacted to him based on the descriptions, to how that makes the reader feel. It was even more disastrous that my last attempt. The character was portrayed as being pathetic and wimpy; the children said Aysha (the main character) is probably afraid of him - by virtue of him being her teacher. By the end of the chapter, when I asked the children what would they have done had they been in Aysha's shoes, all I got were cricket tunes. Mrs R took pity on me and continued my train of questioning - but obviously she was way more successful at leading the children to the right answers.

Before I left, she told that I was pretty good for a first try, and I could see it in her eyes that there was genuine pleasure. She said it was good that I asked questions and made them think about the story so far, that I did something to catch their attention. The truth was, well, it was totally her. I was doing it exactly as I saw her doing it, only, you know, in my less-than-perfect way. But nontheless, that genuine pleasure on a teacher's face - that was priceless. She might not fully realise it, but she made my day.