Week 4 - Teaching & Long Weekend (Ashwini and Felicia)

Monday, 27th May 2019

Today, we had English lessons with the 5th and 6th Graders. For the 5th Graders, we taught them about having a pet dog. Children learnt about some do's and dont's of training a dog, feeding it etc. However, the lesson did not go as planned. Our students had difficulty understanding the lesson and we did not manage to go through all that we had planned. Nonetheless, it was a good learning experience for us.

As for the 6th Graders, we continued on the topic of  'The man who climbed the Matterhorn' in week 2. With the understanding of the backstory, the class was tasked to reorder the sequence of events and retell the story.

After school, we made a trip to the botanical garden. It was peaceful and quiet and we really enjoyed looking at all the beautiful flowers! A pity we couldn't go into the dome :(

 Christmas mistletoe!

A really pretty flower with a heart-shaped petal.

The botanic garden was pretty small, so we finished walking the whole area within 1.5hrs. We would also recommend you to visit the old botanic garden too as it might possibly be bigger with more things to see. 

Since we still had some time to spare, we walked to Platzspitz park after we got off from the main station. We also saw the Swiss national museum but did not have a chance to go in since it was already closed. There were many people chilling by the riverside and having a picnic with their friends. 

Tuesday, 28th May 2019

We had a religion lesson with the 5th and 6th Grader whereby we shared with them about Buddhism and Hinduism. Our students discovered so much more when they learnt firsthand from us instead of the textbook. We also taught them some basic Chinese and Tamil language for greeting or to name people and objects. It was a very fun lesson and we were glad that they could remember what we taught them. Some of them even started saying “你好”，“再见”， "Vanakkam" and "Poittu varen" when they saw us. 

With the 3rd Graders, we had a skit lesson on "Apple seeds".  Our students had a lot of fun acting out the skit and we were impressed by the effort they put in despite the short amount of time given. 

After school, we headed to Teddy's Souvenir shop to buy some souvenirs since it was already our second last week there. We were a little disappointed that we did not manage to buy much stuff since the things were quite expensive. Tip: The best deal would still be getting chocolates from their local supermarket like Coop and Migros! :)

Wednesday, 29th May 2019

Today, we administered an English test for the 5th and 6th Graders. The test was actually prepared by us after looking at past year test papers. Initially, when our CT asked us to set the test paper, we were a little worried considering that we are not familiar with their test format and we are not too sure of their standard either. Nonetheless, we were glad that our CT had so much faith in us. She showed us some samples and explained how we could go about setting the test paper. For instance, the test paper could focus on at least 2 main skills - listening, speaking, reading or writing. Since we were not too confident to conduct an oral test, we decided to test on students' listening, reading and writing skills. For the 5th Grader, we created our own listening passage and questions on totem animals which was what we have already taught them in Week 2. Likewise, for the 6th Grader, we created a writing task based on what we have already taught about 'The man who climbed the Matterhorn'. Students were asked to write a letter to their grandmother to tell her about what they know of the first man who climbed the Matterhorn. This was similar to the class activity on Monday, 27 May whereby students had to retell the story in their own words. As we were afraid that the students would not be able to understand the instructions that we had written in English, we had to ask our CT to help us craft a German translation for the instructions too. 

On the day of the class test, both Ashwini and I read out the listening passage for the students. Thereafter, students would complete the other test papers. At the end of the class test, we collected the papers and marked them. We were very thankful to be able to experience the whole process of administering a class test, from setting the papers to marking them. 

Students had to put up a divider between them during the class test so that they cannot see each other's work.

Besides administering the class test, we also had a lesson with the 4th Grader. For the first part of the lesson, we taught them about the parts of a cacao tree and the different types of trees. Students also learnt about the different objects that could be produced from a certain type of tree (e.g. Rubber is from the rubber tree). In the next part of the lesson, we did a short recap on prepositions such as "on", "under", "behind", "beside", "in between" and "in". Prior to this lesson, we were worried that we would not be able to sustain the students' attention considering they could get very rowdy when we first sat in to observe the lesson. Moreover, the lesson that we were teaching was 1 hour 45 minutes long. However, the lesson turned out very successful because of the visual and sensorial experiences that we had planned for the students. We bought in real life objects such as pine cones and cork for students to see and feel. Students were very participative and attentive throughout our lesson. Surprisingly, they could also understand and speak English very well during the lesson. This was not what we expected since they are only in 4th Grade and even our 5th and 6th Graders could not converse in English as proficient as them. Nonetheless, we attributed this to their English teacher, Ursi whom we felt was very nurturing and patient with the students. Ursi has studied and lived in Australia for 7 years. She is one of the most senior teachers in the school (close to 36 years of teaching experience😮)  with a very good command of English. We have also observed how she would correct the pronunciation of her students during English lessons. She is definitely a role model for us and we strive to be like her one day. 

This is our 4th Grade class with Sarah, the assistant teacher (left) and Ursi, the English teacher (right).

We also went to St. Gallen after school. St. Gallen is a city south of Lake Constance, in northeastern Switzerland. We wanted to visit the Abbey library of Saint Gall, a library with a rich collection of ancient books as well as the twin-towered cathedral. The library is the oldest library in Switzerland and also one of the earliest and most important monastic libraries in the world. Unfortunately, we only managed to sneak a few pictures in the library since photo taking was prohibited. 

The town of St. Gallen. Really love the design of the buildings here. 

The cathedral. It was really beautiful inside and I was impressed by the intricate paintings on the ceilings. 

At the Abbey Library. The entrance fee was 9 CHF for students. 

There was even a mummy in the library. 😲

Thursday, 30th May 2019

Today is Ascension day, the 40th day of Easter and on this day, people commemorate the ascension of Jesus into heaven 39 days after the resurrection on Easter Sunday. Hence, there was a long holiday from Thursday to Sunday. With the long weekend, we decided to do some travelling out of Switzerland and we planned to visit Como, Italy today!

We were lucky to still be able to buy the International train ticket to Como through the SBB office the day before. Prior to that, we wanted to buy the ticket through the Flixbus app but there were not many tickets selection left. Thankfully, we made the (last-minute) decision to stop by the SBB office at Saint Gallen and try our luck to purchase the ticket. Lesson learnt: Never be last minute in buying your train ticket! Haha

Since we could not use our data out of Switzerland, we did a thorough research on all the places we wanted to see just one day before our trip and downloaded an offline map. It was a mad rush with all the last-minute planning but thankful for the offline map that really saved us from all the navigation! 😝

 At Lake Como

At Tempio Voltiano (also what we like to call 'voltage' museum) - a museum that is dedicated to Alessandro Volta, a prolific scientist and the inventor of the electrical battery

Cathedral of Como

The Archeological Museum of Como

Mega cool mummy!

Friday, 31st May 2019

Got up early in the morning to travel to Colmar, France today! We took a Flixbus and the journey was about 3-4 hrs. Colmar was really crowded with tourists and locals when we arrived. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the sights at Petite Venise district, also known as Little Venice. The beautiful half-timbered houses and colourful walls on the Poissonnerie quayside and the small flower-covered bridges spanning the Lauch river added to the charm of the place. We walked around the old town of Colmar and visited the Cathedral and museum. Coincidentally, our host was also in Colmar. They had left for Colmar on the day when we left for Como and they cycled all the way there! We were in awe at how they had the stamina to cycle for such long hours and distance :o We had a short meet up with them in a restaurant to have some flambe pizza before we bid farewell as they stayed on in Colmar while we headed home by train. 

Pretty Little Venice 

The old town of Colmar

St Martin's Church, Colmar

Toy Museum - Musee du Jouet

All the toys really brought back our childhood memories! :') 

They had a wide collection of Barbie dolls that were released in different years.

We had so much fun in Colmar! Unfortunately, since it was only a day trip, we did not have much time to explore in detail. We would certainly love to be back here again someday! :)

Saturday, 1st June 2019

After all that travelling, we decided to stay home today so that we could prepare for our lesson observation by our mentor, Carola, as well as all the other lessons that our CT had asked us to teach in the final week. Despite it being a stay-home day, we had an interesting encounter with the cows :D. After doing work for some time, we decided to take a break by going out of our house. We saw that the cows kept trying to go to the empty water tub and we knew that they were thirsty. Luckily, our host has a hose. We took the hose, filled up the tub with water and fed the cows! Our neighbour-farmer saw it and even thanked us for that! That's the perk of staying in a farm! :)

Sunday, 2nd June 2019

Our neighbour/colleague, Vreni, had initially agreed to bring us to her daughter's house in the mountains. However, since the weather was not too good, she could not drive us up to the mountain. She then agreed to invite us over for brunch before going for a cycle around Greifensee Lake. We will always remember how she took the effort to borrow bicycles from her neighbour for us. We tried several bikes but they were too high for our short Asian legs. Even so, she did not give up on the idea of cycling and eventually, she helped us borrow a bike from one of our 6th Grade student who was staying nearby. We are thankful to have her as our colleague and neighbour and for giving us the opportunity to cycle in Switzerland! It was such an adventure cycling for 4 hours and going up steep slopes and rocky paths! Although we were very slow, she waited for us and kept looking back to make sure that we are doing well. She even taught us how to change the gear on our bicycle for the different path conditions so that lesser effort is required. She is definitely one of the most kind-hearted and welcoming people we have met during our stay there!

A scrumptious spread prepared by Vreni (and we helped out too!) Definitely the best brunch we've ever had since we were in Zurich! 😘

We are off to cycle! YAY! (at this moment, we were pretty nervous since we are amateur cyclists)

 Ashwini with our 3rd Grade student, Ben's bike. 😁

With my 6th Grade student, Sienna's bike 😆

First stop!

Ice-cream treat from Vreni! Perfect for the hot weather 😜

Taking a break by the lake

Our tired, but satisfied faces after the end of cycling!

The highlight of week 4 was definitely all the travelling experiences! Time flies, can't believe that we are only left with a week in Zurich! We will definitely miss all these moments 😢