Checking of Notebooks/Copies- A Problem for Teachers

As a child, I always saw my teacher as a celebrity who wears good clothes, nice shoes, carry a good handbag, who can sing very well as she teaches us how to sing the nursery rhymes , gives us work to do and checks them. Checking was the best part of being a teacher, I thought so. I just loved the idea of being able to mark a tick with a red pen.

But only after I became a teacher myself did I realize , checking copies is no game for kids and in fact the most difficult task for a teacher. Being in this profession, you get to do a lot of checking whether as a teacher or Head. As a Head the main problem with teachers as per my observation is very late checking of notebooks. For me it's a blunder not just by a teacher but from the school too. As a teacher , I had no one to guide me on how to solve this problem but now, I would like to take this opportunity to share what I learnt and discovered to be the best technique in keeping track of your checking.

How to be on time in  checking students' work

After giving the students their work, keep moving around the class and watch out for the student who finishes her/his work first and check it immediately. Continue this till the last copy but don't worry if you are left with few copies to be checked after the period is over because it's normal. You must be wondering how you will be able to check the copies so quickly as it would need a thorough concentration. So there's also a solution to that. When you are on round, don't move blankly but instead keep an eye on what the student's are writing and catch their mistakes and make them correct it there and then. In that way you will only just need to put a "tick" on it.

Another important point is, do not waste your time in chatting while in the staff room and make checking of copies a priority. Once done, you can chat as much as you can. ;)

Voila!! Problem solved.

The above is what I think is the biggest problem but I'll be coming back with other problem that teachers face while working.

Do let me know if you have any problem that you face in the classroom and are seeking for solution.

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Preparation For Class 1 Admission Tests (A Private Teacher)

As I promised to all parents , this post is about the lady who can prepare children for Class 1 admission tests for different schools such as BVS, Mama Parsi, Convent Schools, Beaconhouse etc etc.

First of all a little bit of background. Mrs. Ayesha Naveed was my colleague when I was with White House Grammar school.  Very hardworking and dedicated to her work. Was never hesitant to ask questions and kept learning more and more. Until now she's been in touch with me with queries related to teaching and I highly appreciate that as it makes me feel good seeing dedicated and serious teachers around.

She is no longer with  White house Grammar School and nowadays have started taking students at home to prepare them for admissions in "big" schools. Upon knowing this ,I decided to let parents know about this and check for yourself if you feel comfortable with this set up.

Mrs. Ayesha has a proper syllabus with her that she follows to prepare kids for the tests. Besides this, she uses books from U.S as a teaching aid. She takes up maximum of 5 students at a time for preparation so she can give them quality time and good attention.

I may not be able to do justice to her performance as a private tutor here in my post but I suggest you contact or visit her for your own satisfaction.

I would like to advise parents to relax and take it easy while searching for schools for your child as you may end up choosing the wrong school because of that. I understand the pressure you are in as I went through that but always have patience.

Don't end up like this in search of school :D

For those interested in contacting her may contact me on my page.

Hope I helped. :)

PLEASE NOTE THAT INFORMATION GIVEN IN MY POSTS REGARDING SCHOOLS OR INDIVIDUALS IS SOLELY MY PERSONAL OPINION AND BASED ON MY OBSERVATION AND RESEARCH. I DO NOT TAKE OR ACCEPT ANY KIND OF PAYMENT FOR ANY OF MY POST IN MY BLOGS.

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My Daughter's First Day Of School :)

For those who experienced sending their child for the first time to school, will definitely understand how I feel.

After hunting for schools/Nurseries to put my daughter in, after coming to Dubai, finally I found one that suits us and her of course while waiting for the September admissions for FS1.

Today was her first day in school. And I felt like it was mine, I was so nervous and hardly could sleep the previous night. Walking here and there ironing her uniform, preparing her bag with an extra dress to take to school, kept her lunch box ready, kept socks and shoes  in front just to be sure nothing would make her late for school the next morning. With all things ready, I went to bed having cold feet.

I hate waking up early in the morning but today, her first day of school, I woke up at 7:00a.m though the schools bus was not to come till 8:35 a.m.

Now , came the time when I had to take her down 5 minutes before the arrival of school bus to pick her up. But I didn't feel like taking her,though I wanted to,but I felt like she was going to cry and not get into the bus if I was there standing waving goodbye. So I sent my mother in law instead and just watched her from our balcony. There went my little girl, suddenly all grown up to be going to school.

All the while , the only thought I had in mind was , she might be crying now and at any moment I'll receive a call from the school telling me she is crying her throat out. But didn't happen and instead I called and was informed that she was having fun. After hanging up, I decided to go and pick her myself one hour earlier as by now she might be crying a lot. But got so busy with house chores that I didn't notice the time. it was already 11:45. 15 minutes and it will be her off, so I  just called to ask for the expected arrival of school bus to drop her. After informing me, the receptionist herself informed me, that my daughter did well today, didn't cry at all, had fun and enjoyed. Oh what a relief!! Alhamdulillah!

Feeling as if I passed the board exams, happily I went downstairs to wait for my lovely girl. There she arrived, and wasn't at all happy to see me. It means , she didn't want to leave school. :) I know it's every parent's dream to not to have their kids crying in school.

Here is a piece of  advice which i think was useful in this whole scenario of not crying. I always did a role play with her, where she was a student and me, her teacher. She use to wake up in the morning, have breakfast, get dressed up, and we start our role- playing. I used to give her worksheets, coloring books  and many activities to be done.

From time to time, I keep telling her about schools, teachers and the other kids at school that will be her friends, in this way she is mentally prepared then for what she is going to have when she starts school. I talked a lot about school that recently she was the one asking me when would I be sending her .

Just a bit of experience I wanted to share to all of you.

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Worksheets

All new parents wonder what to teach their kids at home. Whether  to teach or not, is a big question. The answer to this question in my opinion is, yes! Parents should keep on teaching their child at home and not depend totally on schools.

When your child is still a baby, start reading books to him, start telling him the names of things around him. Though the baby may seem not to understand, but somehow, they catch those words and eventually start to understand. There is no fixed time as to when to start teaching your child. While still young , give them awareness about everything that you see.

I would like to share with all of you what activities I did with my daughter as now, I see a tremendous result of that. I will take it step by step. In this post, I will be showing you the worksheets I made myself which you can easily make too for your child. Soon I'll be giving you the link of a printable worksheet as right now I still haven't figured out how to do that. For those who are interested can give their email id on my facebook or over here on the comment portion and I'll send the worksheets to you so you can download or print directly. I will delete your email id's after doing so. If not suitable, you can either just copy and make a similar sheet as I did, it's very easy you will see.

I gave my daughter the first worksheet of her life at the age of 1.5. What I gave was simply a crayon and a blank paper. I just let her scribble on it. Make sure to make your child sit in a proper place so eventually he/she would know that this is his/her study place.

The above worksheet isn't the actual one and I just tried to make one with the help of MS Paint , just to give you an idea on how it would look.

After several scribbling work, start giving large objects for coloring. like balloon, leaf, circle, triangle. Make the object bigger for easy coloring. Don't give pictures such as scenery or fruits basket with fruits as it would just confuse them.  The worksheet here is of a balloon. I asked my daughter to color it red. While coloring I kept telling her short sentences about balloon, like , balloon flies up in the sky, balloon has different colors too, we see many balloons in a birthday party etc etc. In this way you can improve your child's conversation. Follow the same procedure when giving other objects too.

After several coloring and when you see your child is able to grip the pencil properly,then is the right time to give something for tracing. I have introduced phonics to my daughter from the age 1.5  and gave her tracing work at the age of 2 as she was a fast learner. Make this work interesting by encouraging your child to say "c"(kha) is round and round and stop! The word "stop" made my daughter smile every time she said it until now :) keep playing with words , you may never know which one will make your child happy and make learning fun and exciting. Give the same sound repeatedly with different objects. One "c" is candle ,so the second worksheet will have "cup", third will have "cake" and so on.

Example of number worksheet

1"one" ball

While tracing the number, encourage the child to say "one". After tracing, ask "How many balls are there?" Let's count. "one" One ball.

The other worksheet is a circle. Ask the child what shape is this? "Circle" Let's color the circle green/yellow/red .... What I did was after coloring the circle, I asked my daughter to make small circles and color them.

Needs a bit of time and hard work, but anyone can do this. It's fun and at the same time you get chance to bond with your little one.

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