Thursday, May 6, 2010

Remembering Names

Now that I've finally learnt all the names of the kids in our class, I've almost finished prac... I'm hopeless with names - if I don't write them down, or use them several times in a sentence as soon as I've heard them, I usually forget them. So I was thinking that could be a painful part of teaching for me - it's so helpful to be able to use their names.

Earlier this week I had a few instances where I used the wrong name - one kid definitely looks like a Sam, but he's not, and there are two who look very similar except that one's a bit smaller than the other. Another I'd been calling James, but realised that's not his name at all. But they all had a bit of fun when I called them the wrong name and we had a good laugh.

I remember a video I saw at some business related workshop years ago where they suggested thinking up something that relates to the person's name to help you remember it - like a bell for Bella. I've found that I've forgotten the name before I've had a chance to think up something that relates to it. I'm trying to think what helped me the last two weeks, I think it was just practice and spending lots of time with them.

No comments: