9/8
Today was my second day at the wonderful pre-school that now makes up my days Mon.-Fri. We always start with songs (in 3 languages: Kinyarwanda, English, and French) out in the courtyard all with accompanying moves. Then I started with English class in the "Baby class." The students are between 3-4 and there are just under 20 of them. They all have to wear their uniforms which are little jumpers and plaid shirts (a.k.a. really adorable). I had no idea what they had 'studied' previously and no book to teach from. They are used to just seeing things written on a board and then repeating whatever the teacher says. They have memorized the alphabet and an alphabet chart "A is for apple, B is for ball, etc." However, I was gathering that they didn't really understand what that all meant. They learned a different version of the alphabet song in which they repeat L-Q so when they have to recite the alphabet without singing it they get caught in a loop at those letters...again contributing to my belief that they were blindly repeating.
I was still figuring it all out on my feet so with the littlest ones I just tried to get them to answer "What letter does cat start with?" To get that conveyed, I used my broken kinyarwanda and a lot of repetition myself. However, by the end some of them were actually getting the idea and I taught them a song. We'll be doing some review Thursday.
With the two sets of older kids I started with the classic song "We're Following the Leader" leading them around the room and doing different things with my hands, arms and feet. This lead me to the idea of teaching, "go, slow, stop, left, right, forward and backward" while they ran around the room. They seemed amused and by the end they actually understood what they meant even if they won't remember tomorrow. Again, repetition is key BUT I was encouraged by them answering my questions by the end of the lesson. The first step is adopting how I can teach to how they're used to learning while throwing in some new methods that might just help.
The moral of the story is that I learned a lot from them and really really enjoyed myself and can't wait to continue. I also noticed that after they lined up for bathroom time...none of them washed their hands. I think I'm gonna build kid-sized gerrycan hand washing stations outside with the nuns and then do a lesson on hand washing, with a song of course. They love to learn in song, that much I now know.
1 comment:
It might be fun to play the game simon says (with Rachel instead of Simon) as well or maybe even the Hokey Pokey to get some movement and body part names in there. I'll keep brainstorming! Sounds like you are doing an amazing job, and take plenty of pictures. I would love to see these cuties :-) Miss you and keep the updates coming. It's like receiving a fantastic letter every time you post a new one.
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