I went into today excited to see the kids, after being away
all weekend. I knew I still had a
lot to do with the one-on-one but after a weekend away I figured my mind would
be clear. Upon arriving, I saw
that Emmanuel was not there, and therefore I had to teach instead. Luckily, on Friday, I had come up with
some exercises I wanted to try with the kids. We started out by working on verbs, adjectives, countable
nouns, and uncountable nouns. I
had never heard of the countable/uncountable concept until last week, but it’s
something that they are taught so I went with it. I made two lists on the board:
Verb Green
Adjective Coffee
Verb Green
Adjective Coffee
Countable Noun Run
Uncountable Noun Goat
The purpose was to match the list on the right, to the one
on the left. They would draw a
line from green to adjective, from run to verb, etc. Some children understood completely, while others were
simply guessing. I continued to do
similar exercises, then changed them a bit, simply writing at list of 8 words,
two verbs, two adjectives, two countable nouns, and two uncountable nouns. Next to the word verb, they were two
fill the two blanks with the correct words from the list of 8. I had one student out of 12 get 100%,
while the majority had 3/8. I was
beginning to get frustrated, because we go over what a verb is almost every
day. After a few of those
exercises and hearing children tell me that “goat” is a verb, I had Shadrack
come to the front. I asked him
which word on the board was a verb and he pointed to brown. I said “please show me how you ‘brown’
since a verb is an action word.”
After repeating myself with words such as goat, blue, grass and water in
place of “brown” they realized those words the told me were verbs couldn’t
actually be acted out, therefore they weren’t verbs after all. I then wrote the following list on the
board: smile, cry, brown, laugh, yell, grass, goat. I said “there are 4 verbs, Sarah, tell me one.” She would point at the board and then I
asked her to come up and she pointed to brown. I asked her to say the word out loud, and she couldn’t. It took me an hour and a half to
realize the problem wasn’t that they didn’t understand the concept, it was that
they can’t read. Well – half of
the class can’t read. My class is
divided into P1, and P2, yet they learn the same things each day. Those in P2 are like our 2nd
grade back home. That side of the
room can read fairly well, but the P1’s can’t. During break I stood staring off, asking myself, how the
hell can I teach things such as parts of a sentence if they can’t even read
them?? When I arrived, I figured
the only way we could go was up.
We would work with the teachers, help them teach better, and get all the
kids on the same page. I never
thought that I would be backtracking so far that I’m at a loss for where to
start. The time I was there after
break was spent reading, or trying to.
I gave the P2’s books that were at the KG 1 and 2 level (kindergarten)
and I gave the P1’s nursery school level books. From there, I asked them to read. For the most part, the P2’s could read the whole books (only
15 pages or so). And FOR THE MOST
PART, they are not having trouble.
I say it that way because out of the 6 P2’s, only 2 or 3 fully
understand it. The other 3 were
getting 3 or 4 out of 8 on our exercises.
I worked primarily with the P1’s, as best I could considering I was by
myself in the room, again. I tried
to get the kids to sound out the letters in the words, but when we got to the
word “cake” and I asked them to sound it out, they were making the “s” sound
for the letter “c.” They don’t
know phonics, and I’m really at a loss as to how to go back to the basics and
build them up again, in 2 weeks.
What I have trouble understanding though, is how the kids get from A to
B. How did my P2’s get to be able
to read if they never learned the phonics. I’m trying to stay positive for the week ahead, but I’m
unsure how to go about this one.
Today was the first full day of sun without a drop of rain
in at least 5 days. Before we left
school today, Elizabeth had mentioned that they would practice sewing
today. But when we got to the
orphanage and saw that no rain was coming, we asked her if we could take them
to the field instead, and sew tomorrow.
She told us it was fine, and the kids were so excited to get out and
play. The older boys played
soccer, and some of the younger kids played on a little wooden slide and old
metal poles from a swing set.
Espi, a tiny one, maybe 4 years old, was off looking to catch bugs. He caught a moth the other day, and
today he was after grasshoppers.
You could just tell the kids were so happy to be out instead of cooped
up avoiding the rain. When we
walked back to the orphanage before Godwin picked us up, I told Elizabeth I
wanted to learn to wrap a baby on my back. It amazes me how the women walk around with a piece of
fabric that holds their child on.
As Espi held on, Elizabeth, with the help of Moda, taught me how to wrap
the fabric. I must say, it’s a
pretty good method, with some tucking and twisting, it’s rather secure. Obviously meant for smaller children,
Jess and I both felt a little uneasy seeing as the kids on our backs were
walking, and talking, and probably 30 pounds. But the concept was there, and it was a fun experience.
Love your blog, Rachel:)
ReplyDelete