Jampot for Jess: English Week

A few weeks ago was English week at Sujatha Vidyalaya. Utsha and I prepared our students the week before by going to classes during their library period and having students put on skits and presentations to practice speaking English publicly. One of the skits that I had my students do was:

Assign one or two girls in the group the role of the foreigner. This/these characters have never been to Sri Lanka before and are looking to you for answers about Sri Lankan culture, practices, history, etc… The rest of the girls in the group are responsible for sharing this information with the foreigners, and thus the rest of the class.

Then I assigned each group a specific aspect of Sri Lanka, such as: Matara, Sujatha Vidyalaya, historical sites, places to visit, food, and religions.

The students amazed me with their portrayals of Sri Lankan life as well as their witty commentary. Although many of my students are still extremely shy and giggle more than they speak, most of the students had fun with the project. Students playing the foreigners took on different accents from foreigners they have seen and delivered their lines with a comic flare. The girls’ creativity was a lot of fun to witness and I learned a lot from the information they presented. Students have so much pride and knowledge about their school, city, and country. I know I wouldn’t have been able to present so many historical facts about my own school/city/country.

I think that this activity helped prepare the students for English week because it went very smoothly. Girls participated in dictionary races, photo caption contests, oral reports, and dictation competitions. The week concluded with phenomenal performances by the older students acting out and singing English songs.