I got hired this week to substitute teach for two-and-a-half weeks. I'm thankful it's only a part-time subbing job--two classes a day--but it still seems to add a lot of work. I'm teaching 10th grade English class, periods 4 and 7, and I'm supposed to be teaching them to write essays in the SAT style. Considering they didn't have essays on the SAT when I took it, this is a bit challenging.
It's been all right so far. Some of the kids are rambunctious and talk back. Others are quiet and complacent. It's a good mix--about 25 students in all, including two siblings of my classmates. Now that's interesting.
My greatest hurdle so far has been trying to get across to the students the importance of vocabulary words. They memorise ten words a week for a quiz each Friday, but they don't remember them or their meanings. What's the point of learning them? I admit: I was bad at learning vocab words, too. Considering my parentage and my English degree, I have quite a limited vocabulary. I know I need to improve it... And maybe teaching is giving me the extra push I need. But how can I express the importance of words to my students? In less than three weeks?
Well, anyway, I could sure use prayer!
Perhaps more important than the words themselves are the roots, the histories, the etymologies, the related words.
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A good book I was introdued to in 6th grade: Word power made easy. (Norman Lewis).