Bingo!

A crazy, exciting week this week, as we have been joined by many visitors. Our university supervisor, Maggie Hawkins, joined us for a day at school with her son and his friend, and on Thursday we were joined by five teachers and principals from Canada who will be at school all next week, focusing mainly on professional development programs for the Ugandan teachers. It was so wonderful to see three different nations coming together for the sole purpose of educating children, and we are all looking forward to being together for the next week and a half.

I have been teaching the Primary One class this week, and while their English speaking and reading levels are very low, their energy levels certainly are not! This is the youngest class at the Primary level (the school is levels Primary 1-5 plus a Nursery) and most of the children are six or seven years old, but we have a few who are nine and ten. I asked them during a Math lesson this week to guess my age, and I got everywhere from 10 to 78. So, number work was high on my priority list…starting with the number 23…and how FAR AWAY it is from 78…

For the most part, though, the children have been able to understand me (or at least make it look like they know what I’m saying!). My teaching has included a lot of charades, exaggerated expressions, and repeating the same thing multiple times in many different ways (i.e. "Who knows the answer to this question?"…pause…"Can anyone solve this problem?"…pause…"Which one of you knows what would be correct here?"…pause…"Can someone come and fix this?" etc). I don't think I've ever had to be more clear and simple when speaking and giving directions in my entire life. For these children, the fewer and simpler the words, the better. Long explanations lead to blank stares and lost children; short, direct requests bring results and participation because they are able to understand.

These kiddos are just beginning to learn English, and this week we did a lot of letter recognition, letter sounds, sight words, and consonant blends. They loved playing "Sight Word BINGO" (they had never played BINGO before!) and have been mesmerized by the "Sight Words" poster we hung in their classroom. On top of that, the kids are also still learning to read, write, and speak their native language of Lukonzo, so they definitely have my sympathy of learning two languages at the same time! It has been especially helpful to have a Ugandan teacher in the classroom whenever possible so he or she can translate my directions if I'm not making sense, or help me to understand language confusions among the students. For example, in Lukonzo, "th" makes the "T" sound, so when I asked a student to spell the color "white" he responded "W-H-I-T-H." The teacher was able to help the student make the distinction between the two dialects, whereas that was something I definitely would have missed.

Making our BINGO cards

Joab carefully filling in his squares

The highlight of this week was definitely the "Reading Buddies" program that Evan, Jackie and I started with some of the students. Evan is teaching the oldest level this week (Primary Five) and Jackie and I have been with the younger ones (Primary One and Nursery). We have constantly been wishing for some type of one-on-one reading time with the younger kids, but it has been nearly impossible because there are so many of them and so few of us. Pairing the younger kids together or in small groups has been difficult because they are at similar reading levels and become stuck in the same spots. So, finally, this week it hit us – Reading buddies. 45 minutes in the afternoon, pair each Primary Five student with a Primary One, coach them a little bit beforehand, and see how it goes.

It could not have gone more beautifully. Evan prepped the Primary Five students on how to read to the little ones, how to ask them questions about the story, have them read a few words, be patient with them, etc., and I prepped the Primary One kids, reminding them of the words we practiced all week and encouraging them to show their Reading Buddy how smart they were. "Yes!" one little girl exclaimed, "I know the word purple!" "And I know 'pink!'" another shouted. "And blue!" yelled another, "Pink!" someone said again (FYI the Primary Ones know all our color words!!!)

 Reading Buddies

Reading buddies outside.

Crowded around the book

We told the children they could sit outside, and it was amazing to see them all sprawled out on the grass, under trees, on benches, sharing and enjoying books together. The older students were wonderful mentors; it almost brought tears to my eyes to see each and every one of them really take their teaching responsibility seriously, and gently read to and coach the younger children through the books. All of the children benefited so much from this experience, and we hope to continue Reading Buddies a few more times throughout the next couple weeks that we are here.

Finally, the kids had a blast learning the Y.M.C.A dance this week (I brought a little speaker system with my ipod and turned it on for dancing one afternoon…hey, it's letter recognition, right?). Anyway, it's been hilarious to see children off by themselves during Break or lunchtime, just singing the little tune, "it's fun to stay at the…yyyyy emmmm cee aaaayyy" and moving their hands to make the letters. They also learned quite a few disco dance moves, which may or may not be the best thing I've taught them all summer.

And finally, a random picture from the week but I couldn't resist...the kids were ecstatic when they were paging through this book and found "Teacher Whitney" right there on the page!  As much as I tried to tell them that no, the girl in the book wasn't me, they didn't believe it.  I guess the pale skin and light hair is just too much of a convincing argument.  I can live with it :)