#TeachersMatter Moment: Year 3 English Class, Lyceum No. 17, Chernivtsi

This week I decided to turn our lesson on "Animals and Their Sounds" into a real adventure. Instead of simply reading words from the textbook, I brought a little bag of animal cards into the classroom — each child had to pull one out without showing it to the others.

The task was simple: act out the animal without words, while the rest of the class had to guess it in English and make the sound it makes — "moo", "quack", "roar". The classroom turned into a jungle in seconds: some children crawled like snakes, others roared fiercely like tigers, and one girl acted out a chicken so enthusiastically that even I couldn't keep from laughing.

What struck me most was one boy — usually very quiet, who almost never puts his hand up. He drew the monkey card, and got so caught up in it that he bounced around the classroom mimicking the sounds, then suddenly, without being asked, shouted out "monkey says... ooh-ooh-ah-ah!" The whole class burst into applause, and he blushed with delight — after that, for the first time in ages, he started putting his hand up during lessons on his own.

At the end of the lesson, we made up a short rhyme together using the new animal words — the children are now singing it even during break time. Honestly, moments like these are exactly why I love my job.