It is always great to visit different schools here to see how they are the same or different from the other schools in Kenya and the United States. Today I got the opportunity to teach a few lessons at Robondo Primary School. I was excited to be working with elementary students today, since I have spent most of my time here in Kenya working in a secondary school. Another added bonus was that it was only a short fifteen-minute walk compared to the forty minutes to Mema.
I showed up just in time to see all the students outside at an assembly. Every Friday students listen to the preacher give a sermon.
So many students!
I was asked to stand up and give a few words of encouragement...
Talk about being put on the spot!
I was able to teach English to Class 7 and Class 8. To practice verbs and nouns I taught the students how to play Pictionary and charades. We learned that a noun was a person, place, thing or idea and that there are common nouns and proper nouns, as well as concrete and abstract nouns. After understanding the definition of what a noun is, it was time for a little fun. The class was divided into two teams (who were reluctant to select team names so we ended up calling them team one and team two). Each team selected an artist and I explained the rules to the class. I told the artists what noun to draw and they quickly got to work drawing as their teams guessed the noun they were drawing. The first round was very quiet but after that the students really got into it. We ended the game with a tie.
Our two fantastic drawers for team one and team two!
Laughter erupted as Otieno tried to draw a star!
He asked if I could give them a different noun.
It turns out he is a fantastic drawer of trees.
Next we learned about verbs. We discussed how verbs are action words. To reinforce this concept we played charades. I explained to students that they had to act out different movements or activities as the rest of the class tried to guess what verb it was. We only had two students come up and act out running and walking. This is a big step for these students because they hardly ever get up out of their seats and they never act silly in class. I was very impressed! Students really got into the next game as they practiced their verbs. I had the students pair up and one student had to be the mime and the other student had to be the mirror. The mirrors job was to “mirror” the action of the mime. Students were looking confused and it turns out they didn’t know what a mime was. I tried to compare it to a clown but they didn’t know what that was either. After explaining and acting a few things out myself (with lots of laughing and giggling from the students), and having two students demonstrate, I had students spread out in the room and begin acting out verbs silently—except for all the giggling and laughing going on.
I am explaining to two girls how to play the game, The Mirror and the Mime.
The girls did an excellent job teaching the rest of the class.
I am not sure what verb this mime is pretending to act out and I think his mirror is also unsure...
It's always so rewarding to see so many smiles as students are learning!
In class 8, we worked on poetry as well as grammar. After introducing myself to the class, I explained that I wanted to get to know each one of them. To do this, we made bio-poems. I put the outline of the bio-poem on the board and gave students paper and colored pencils to fill in the spaces and add some decoration around their poem. After they filled out the bio-poem and then we went through and identified all the nouns, pro-nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
One thing that I am learning working with students in Kenya is that it is very important to give clear directions for anything, even if it seems simple. It is also very important to model what you want students to do. It took a bit, but before long students were busy filling in their own bio-poem.
Students worked to fill out their bio-poems.
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