May 27th, 2018

May 27th 2018


Today we held sessions with both the Kalyehli and Seva Bharti Orphanages. Sundays are good days for both orphanages as it is the only day which they have off from school.


During our 1.5 hours at the Kalyehli Orphanage we studied English, played a few more games, and also played a bit of music. For the English portion, we split the children into two groups (6-11 and 12-16). As the ages of the boys range from 6-16, we did not think teaching all of them the same level of English would be suitable. Ideally they should be split by class, however as there is only two of us, we did our best within the two groups. Competency levels vary significantly, especially among the younger group. The older group focused on classroom vocabulary, of which they were already quite proficient. Using flash cards, the words of various classroom items were first re-enforced, then later they were used in a game of Bingo. The Bingo proved quite successful as they enjoyed a bit of competition and receiving a small prize. After Bingo, the kids were then asked to introduce the person sitting next to them, and also tell the group what that person likes to eat. This was a good way to get them to engage in a bit of conversation, as well as force them to structure sentences using correct grammar. It was a mixed bag; conversation could definitely be a focus going forward. The younger children worked on colors, the days of the weeks and the months of the year. Today was valuable for us to assess how skilled with English each of the individuals are. Among the younger ones, a couple of them are bordering on being conversational, while others are struggling with the alphabet. We will re-assess the group structures going forward. Once again music was a hit, and the games got everyone laughing and were a good way to engage with the kids


Our first official session with the Seva Bharti Orphanage was successful, and we believe the project will have success here. The group is smaller than Kaylehli, 13 in total and also slightly older aged 10-17. With only two of us running the session, 13 children are much easier to handle.  We decided to take photos with each wearing a name tag as we did with the others.

  This orphanage seems to be a bit more structured and rigid, but the management here is dedicated and caring. The boys are extremely well behaved, yet they were a bit hesitant to fully engage with us. We started the session with a few games which lightened up the mood, and in no time we were all laughing and joking together. We held a similar English session with these children as we had with the older group at Kaylehli. These children are also quite competent, particularly with vocabulary, and the plan is to make their English classes a bit more challenging. All in all, the session went well, we finished out with us playing a quick song. They were excited to sing along, however these children seemed less enthusiastic about music than the others.

Michael