Well another week gone by and it was Monday morning once again, as we started off the week with assembly. I am starting to like this routine and I think I could totally get used to it. I think it’s a really nice way to kick off the week. It’s a time for the school to come together reflect and spread positive motivation for the week to come. This week the speaker talked about happiness. We must find happiness in everything that we do, even when we are not happy. We must try and find the positive in the negative. And ya know, just try and be happy..its makes everything better!
Today was a big day, as I mentioned earlier. It was an evaluation day where advisors came to the school to assess the curriculum and success of the students thus far, so, I taught for a large portion of the day while the teachers met with the advisors. I winged it pretty much the whole day because I wasn’t really expecting to be teaching, but for the most part I think it went pretty well. Its tiring work man im not even kidding!! But when you give the students positive attention and show that you care, it’s evident that they try harder. I taught about photosynthesis (thank you SME) and verbs and verb tense, which sounds easy but when English is the learner’s second language…its not so easy and I was even getting myself tripped up a little. I gave the students 4 verbs to conjugate and I said that they had to write 3 sentences with each word; one in past tense, one in present tense and one in future tense. Then this is where things got a little tricky. You see the students were writing sentences that were in the past tense, “the boy was playing soccer” however, they didn’t conjugate the verb correctly, because ‘playing’ is in continuous tense, but ‘was paying’ makes it past tense…ya see how this can then get tricky (and don’t forget this was the Afrikaans class). Needles to say, explaining auxiliary verbs is NOT easy, and I suck at grammar and spelling, if you haven’t already noticed sooo I struggled with this one lol. But I explained the best I could and Im pretty sure they got it, kind of! So go me, and ill work on it for next time! anyways, Marena said that the evaluations went pretty well yet the math scores were still lower then they wanted them to be. Brooklands Primary is one of the better and higher scorning, non ex-model C schools in the Cape Town area. An ex-model C school is a former white school during the apartheid. These school are still however located in affluent areas and thus largely populated with by children coming from the wealthier spectrum. The schools have nicer facilities and more resources and to keep it this way, their schools fees are quite high, therefore making is a difficult circle to break among student demographic. So, we, at Brooklands Primary pride on the success of our students given the resources and facilities that we have. Focusing back on the curriculum, students in primary school focus on I think its 9 different subjects! To me, this is ineffective and a waste of time. I am not 100% sure of the subjects however, some of them include the normal; math, language (English and Afrikaans), natural sciences, history and geography, which is then split into some kind of pre economics and accounting or business prep, life orientation (not sure what that is) and some more. In America we focus on 4 main subjects, math literacy, science and social studies. Students don’t even being business prep or anything like that until high school electives and even at the collegiate level. And then, we devote most of our focus on math and literacy, and as curriculum advance there is an even bugger push towards writing and reading in literacy and how this helps with all other subject areas. I agree with this. If a student is a proficient reader and writer then can better comprehend the material they read, internalize and conceptualize it, avoiding the task of memorization, which only lasts until the test is over anyways. when students write out their thoughts and responses it gives them a chance to explain their thinking and allows teacher to better address misconceptions and so on. then teachers can also give more effective feedback to the learners and give them opportunities to revise. Again this helps internalize information and while less time may be spend of science and social studies students still seem to perform well. I think this curriculum style would be extremely beneficial to the South African school districts. Many of my grade 6 students still struggle with spelling, sentence structure, verb subject agreement, and difficulty in reading fluently and thus advocate less effort to comprehension. In turn, they are not learning what they are reading or copying off the board it is just systematic and basically useless. However, after this evaluation, the curriculum advisors did decide to combine a few subjects together into the ‘arts and culture’ category. I think this is good, freeing up some time for more important subject areas, such a s literacy and math and basic science. This change will happen in 2013!
Well after a long day of teaching, I had fun! I think this might have been when I actually realized how fun it can be! I really felt like I was doing something with the older kids. While teaching the kids how to read and write in kindergarten is the most basic and important foundation to education, it was really cool to move away from that and into deeper content – I felt like I was actually teaching! It was cool, I really do like working in older grades, its nice to have an actual conversation with your student, they help you learn a lot too, it’s like working together to figure out the answer.
So to conclude the busy day, Marena, Charles, Randall and I went out sight seeing and to Spur Monday night burger special. I have become quite the regular there, I don’t even need a menu…or a dessert menu lol. First stop was camps bay, we watched the sun sat over the ocean…I AM getting used to this…im going to miss the mountains and sunsets the most – no question. We then drove up signal hill, one of the first places we went as a group (I told you about it once before), but this time we went at night to look at the city lights!! Jjooeee es lekker bra. English: its was suuuper nice! The lights were amazing, you could see again where the ocean started when it dropped off black and then a speck of light as a boat off in the distance. Im sure you’re getting used to this by now lol I know I am…then it was off to spur for din din, the line wasn’t too long that was nice – and a chicken burger it was! Yummm.
By the time that was all done…yup, you guessed it was pooped and went right to bed. If you haven’t been able to tell already, I’ve gotten into a pattern here. Wake up early, go to school, do stuff after, eat, get tired and go to bed. Haha so as you can se there really has been no time for updates so that is why two weeks later on the plane home im finally getting it done lol.
Tuesday August 2nd
So I have been noticing that my blogs keep getting longer and longer, and probably more boring and boring for all of you because you might not care to read my text book about teacher education. So, I apologize and from now I will try to keep it short and simple unless its something realllllly interesting that I think all of you might like! (if your still reading)
So Tuesday we went over my photosynthesis lesson….hardly any remembered what I taugh…wommppp wommpppp that’s shitty. But, hey you win some you loose some. It probably has to do with the reading and writing comprehension I talked about earlier. So their punishment was to stay in during interval and copy a paragraph out of their life science books…how this was effective – I don’t know but, hopefully it taught them a lesson. at least they were writing, but they were coping…it could maybe have been more effective if they had to look up the photosynthesis paragraph and instead of copying it, put it in their own words. This would help with their reading and writing AND photosynthesis comprehension. Then after school Marean and I went to a math workshop, this was kinda interesting so Ill brief it quickly for you. It was about measurement and the importance of drilling measurement in grades 3 and 4 and then really applying it and manipulating in grades 5 and 6. The workshop leader showed us a lot of hands on and interactive activities you can do with the students to help them grasp the concept of measurement. These were cool things, kinda like science experiments, but with math. Students would have to actually measure things and work with objects to estimate, and then find an accurate measurement. This helps students to conceptualize size and understand its meaning. We also talked a lot about ways to still do such activities even if your school had minimal resources. We learned about activities you can make on your own with out buying a kit and stuff! It was really cool, but im a math nerd soo I though it was fun. He also showed us math puzzles and mind trick that’s are good ways to get the students minds working! Well that’s about as exciting as it got for the day. And of course when we finally got home, I was tired as could be. Learning and teaching..wooo rough day. But on the bright side we actually got home early enough today to make dinner instead of going out to dinner! Marena made a delicious curry and then…….we went to Spur again for dessert
Came home aaand ….you guessed it, passed out for a Wednesday repeat!
Well that’s about all the time I have for now, computer is going to die…the rest of the week will just have to come later…like usual
Landing in the states in approx 2-2.5 hours!! Yayy!! Im excited to be home (almost!) but good thing the adventure stories are still coming!
Byee for now!!
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