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I had slept fairly well considering and started the next day thinking it was time to 'man up'. I was woken by the sound of the jungle as the sun rose at 6am. I love the early morning chorus of the jungle and it cheered me up after the dark scary night. I made my way round to the project for breakfast. One if the others was cooking pancakes which was a nice surprise. After breakfast each morning we had a short meeting to decide the tasks of the day and who would be completing each task. I volunteered to weed the grounds and cut back the overgrown wilderness. I enjoyed this and was shown the vegetable garden where there were lots of nice things growing. I then collected leaves and put them in baskets to encourage bugs for the chickens to eat. After lunch I had a really good look around the school area to get an idea of the resources available and to see if there was any structure or curriculum. The building was a really nice space and it seemed a shame if the lessons weren't up to much. I found that there was a teachers book for each class but they hadn't been filled in for a month??? That night I took my first class. I taught level two and decided to teach fruit. The day before I had observed someone teaching sea creatures which was a nice thing to teach but as they live in a landlocked country they may never see the sea and I wanted to keep to the classes relevant to their life especially as they were only at a low level. I asked them if they knew the names of the fruit and got them all to say them and write them down. Their writing was much better than their verbal skills and it soon became apparent that they memorised the spelling of words and they didn't really know the sound of the letters. I went back to basics and asked them to write down as many words as they could that began with the letter 'p'. I went through each word and got them to recognise the sound of 'p'. I also explained about the sound of 'ph'. I then went through each letter of the alphabet and asked them to practise the sounds. I explained that once they knew the sound of the letters it would make everything else seem much easier. I really enjoyed teaching the class. The students were aged 12 to 20 and were so eager to learn, they had so many questions and tried so hard. After class we had dinner at 8pm and then everyone went to bed early ready to be up at 6am each day. It seemed odd to me as I am used to going to bed later but getting up at 6.30am anyway. I headed back to the delightful hut and slept the best I could.
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