Today a few people were off sick so some of the classes were mixed together. Initially  we thought that this would provide a challenge but most the children were still just as much engaged with the classes as they were on the first few days.

The year ones had so much energy even though it was a very hot day. We sung lots of songs such as 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' and 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. We did lots of different verses for the songs but their enthusiasm never faltered. As the days have gone on the language barrier has become less of a problem. The children were all eager to learn new things. They all worked especially hard, the year eights in particular when they were drawing animals.

In the afternoon I worked at the Crafts workshop. As the children don't wear uniforms in the afternoon it is a lot more relaxed. They loved using all of the arts and crafts materials like playdough. Seeing their reactions to just basic art materials was very humbling because back in England we take things like coloured pens and pencils for granted.

Ellie: First I taught the 7th grade which was an all boys class that I had previously taught the day before. I realised that as they became more comfortable and used to our company, they were more cooperative within the lessons. We taught them Geography but because they were being distracted easily we didn't follow the agreed lesson structure and we had to improvise but it still went well. Next my group taught the grade 8 all girls class which I always find an easy lesson. They all listened well and responded well to praise and reward stickers which encouraged them to carry on working. We got them to translate the English country names into Sinhalese which they seemed to enjoy as they liked to show off their English skills. After break, due to a timetable change, I was teaching grade 2 and 3 with another group. It was a struggle to keep the boys in the group entertained for the whole lesson even with 6 teachers in the class. We had to improvise again because both groups had different lesson plans. This resulted in us splitting the group in half as well as the teachers to recap previously learnt things. However the boys of the group were running out the class and disrupting other lessons going on near the classroom they were in. For the last period, we taught grade 4. This is always a good lesson because the class is small and all the children are cooperative with the lesson plan. They enjoy drawing animals and then pretending to be them. they also responded well to reward stickers.