…so as I get comfortable sitting on my living room couch in Cleveland, Ohio, recovering from mad jetlag and uploading pictures, I figured I could also update a little more, before this gets old.
(Continuation of week three of teaching)
Wednesday August 3rd:
On Wednesday Jen (another girl from the trip who is also at Brooklands Primary) and I switched classrooms. She is in Grade R (kindergarten), which is what I am used to so I thought it would be good to see how things run here in a kindergarten room. Today they were dong an assessment. It was to look at pictures on a page, cut them out and order them sequentially. The pictures told a story of getting ready in the morning; brushing teeth, washing face, eating breakfast, getting dressed… it was interesting to see how the students arranged this because not everyone’s morning routine is the same. For instance, I brush my teeth before I eat breakfast, however, I know people who like to eat breakfast first and then brush their teeth, before the leave the hose. So, if you were asking my opinion, I don’t think this was a good story to use as an assessment, because it would be difficult to tell the student they were ‘wrong’ and the story was not in the ‘correct’ order, if that was in fact the order of events of their typical morning. To practice learning how to sequence events, yet this would be a fantastic story because it would allow the student to think back and recollect ideas from their day and correctly order them. However, as an assessment of critical thinking, it is difficult to evaluate accurately, unless there is not ‘correct’ answer and the teacher just wants the student to be able to explain the story properly. This was not the case though, in this instance, there was a right and wrong answer. Anyways, I encouraged the students to do their best and to help along the way I had them explain to me how they were ordering the events to make sure they at least understood what they were doing. If there was a mistake, speaking it out loud then usually helped them recognize their mistake and they could then correct it.
We spent half of the day working on this assessment and then in groups I took the kids on the playground. This gave me some time to talk to them and get to know them a little. They were very cute, I had a good day! But I did miss my grade 6 classes. In grade R they only go half a day, so after I was able to go back to my room, I worked on making some worksheets and then the day was over.
That night we went out in Stellenbosch with Randall’s family friend Nathan. Apparently their Wednesday nights are like our Thursday nights J. We went to his friend Walisha’s flat (like an apartment) and hung out there for a while, then we headed out to this club called Catwalk and it was PACKED!! There were strobe lights going loud music playing people dancing. And apparently it was a ‘slow’ night. I guess it was pretty comparable to the states but not Michigan State, it was a lot more ‘clubby’ and they don’t go out till wayyyy later and the bars are open till like 3 am! …Needless to day, we didn’t get much sleep and the following day at school was going to be a rough one.
Then came Thursday morning August 4th. Wooo weee was I tired!! I spent most of the day cutting out and making activities for the kids. It actually took almost the whole day! The kids were about to have some great activities to do for the following week. Thursday was our last day of school for the week, as we prepared for our ‘final’ weekend trip together..4 nights in George! This was the big weekend we had all been looking forward to… THE BEST WEEKEND EVER!!
Thursday night after school we all met up to play some cricket. Cricket is just another one of the most confusing sports here. Its kinda like baseball though in the sense that you try and hit a ball with a stick, but other then that is not the same at all. Soooo we didn’t really learn how to play..but we tried and had a good time! A few injuries and some weird scoring later…we had a winner? Haha no one really got it at all we just focused on not missing the ball. However, this coming weekend we are doing the bungle jumping and I needed anything to keep my mind off of it…I had been freaking all week!!
Ok that’s all I got for now im going to go finish my papers and then ill finish blogging the last week of South Africa. Thanks for hangin in there with me!
Much love,
Erin
p.s. jet lag I hate you…I have been up since 5am waaa
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