Volunteering to support English tutoring sessions – mutually joyous occasions! We first met the IDEAL family when we volunteered with others from Hope of the City for their Annual Walkathon at the Peak. We found them to be a delightful group and we were keen to offer our time to support them.
A regular feature of IDEAL’s weekend programme is English Tutoring. The sessions typically take place on Saturday afternoons with the support of volunteers.
So what do you get when you mix a group of 15 or so motivated and curious members with a few enthusiastic Hope of the City volunteers who want to help teach English? Lots of fun and laughter along with plenty of learning for everyone! We are English-speaking but we are not teachers or tutors, so during our first visit we took a creative and rather informal approach to engaging the ‘students’ to learn some English basics:
How do you do? (with a firm handshake);
What is your favourite fruit? (with various varieties available to share and eat!)
And then – a popular choice – well-known English songs that everyone seemed to know. We left it to the members to decide on the animals on Old Macdonald’s Farm: he had a pig, a dog, a rabbit, a mouse and a tiger - some imagination huh? And of course we provided the necessary accompanying animations and noises!
For the second visit we joined Fido from Executive Communications, who is a teacher and he gave some well-needed structure to the session. All in all, every contact with IDEAL is a fun and joyous occasion where we all come away having learned and shared something special. If you are interested in volunteering for a future session, contact volunteer@hopeofthecity.com.
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