I realise that I have an urge to blog whenever my day is not turning out well. Not that I would want to break this habit - recognising negative feelings is important for adaptation or so I read - but I will like to present a resourceful and upbeat Sensei at times as well. After all, I’m the Great Teacher KL. (You may be familiar with this old Japanese drama titled GTO.)
Anyway, I’m sipping my second and final cup of coffee during lunch time, savouring my respite before an afternoon Zoom Webinar. I have yet to finish the most important task on my to-do list today: set the mid-year paper.
That’s because I took 15 mins out to prepare for my lesson with my students with dyslexia. Last week, I taught them the meaning of the -ful and -ly suffixes. It was time for them to apply their knowledge, so I came out with four questions to get them to deduce the meanings of unfamiliar words based on their understanding of these two suffixes.
Predictably, they made several mistakes. But it was okay because I anticipated that they wouldn’t be able to get it. Which was why I prepared this lesson in that particular manner. Time to consolidate our understanding of -ful and -ly suffixes! (It can go as rudimentary as “Guys, remember to spell -ful with only one ‘l’!”)
I then had about 15 minutes left, so I got all of them to come out to the front and spell certain words:
- play, playful, playfully
- mind, mindful, mindfully
- soul, soulful, soulfully
- heart, heartful, heartfully
- health, healthful, healthfully
- success, successful, successfully
I know that we usually use “heartfelt” instead, but that’s not the point. The objective was to get them to spell ‘-ful’ and ‘-ly’ in quick succession.
I also had a life lesson in store. When you live life playfully and healthfully and engage with things mindfully, soulfully and heartfully, you are slaying it successfully!
The best thing that happened was that the best speller in the class wrote ‘successfully’ on the whiteboard before I had even announced ‘success’. Was I so predictable?! But predictability is good because this means that I’m consistent and some students accurately anticipate what I want to reinforce.
I’m a busy teacher and sometimes feel like crap that I cannot devote all my time and energy to my students. But I do my teaching as joyfully and heartfully as I can. 🥰