Ahmed and I taught last Sunday. When we first arrived at the camp, we were quite nervous. We didn't know what to expect or how serious the students were about learning English. Our class was comprised of mostly security guards who were smartly dressed in suits. We started the class by taking the attendance. Then, we used the booklet as a guide and we started doing some of the activities. A lot of the students were very shy to start with so we assumed that it was because they really didn't know how to speak English but when we randomly chose some of them to participate, they proved us wrong. Furthermore, I felt that they were most comfortable when they started talking about their countries and families. From that point, we decided to use the activities in the booklet as a basis but customized them until we believed that the students were excited enough to participate. For example, instead of asking them what other words do you know in English, we got them to talk about their favorite animals. In my opinion, this was the best part of the class as their answers were very entertaining and unexpected. During the second half of the class, we conducted the pre-test. We found that the main problem was that the students didn't really understand what the question was asking them to do. However, when we explained to them a bit further, most of them seemed to have answered the questions fairly well. Towards, the end of the class, we played a game of hangman.
Personally speaking, I really enjoyed the class and I think the group of students we had was very cooperative and eager to learn. The only problem we're facing right now is that most of class is at an intermediate level and only a few are at a basic level so we have to come up with a solution in order for every single student to get the maximum benefit out of the course.
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