9/14

We arrived at school this morning only to be told that we would be getting yet another new driver starting tomorrow.  Apparently our old driver, Morris, was cheating them out of money.  So, onto the next.  Hopefully Samson is our third and final driver while we are here. 

Anyways, today I wanted to assess my students to see if they had learned what I was teaching them this week.  I first did my math assessment with the students.  I had the students complete an exercise that I designed in their exercise books and then when they were ready for me to check that I also asked the students some oral questions.  Almost every single student was in a good place.  I think a large part of their comprehension came towards the end of the week when I worked to make the graphing activities culturally relevant as well as more visual.  The final thing I had the students graph this week was how much maize certain students had.  Maize is basically like corn, but it looks and tastes a little different.  Anyway, I had five children go into the room at school where all the maize is kept and had them bring some maize back to the classroom and then the students could visually see what they were graphing.  This worked very well, so I will continue to try and make my lessons culturally relevant with visual components.  I think the visual component is key in teaching these English Language Learners (ELLs).  On this note, Katie and I have been talking a lot about how great this experience will be for us when we come back and teach in the States where we are likely to have ELL students.  We are learning different strategies to use and methods of teaching that best suite the needs of these students.  Katie and I were even talking about how this program would be a great way to earn an ELL/ESL certificate…what do you think Maggie?!

We got a call in the afternoon from Enoch, who wanted us to come back to town and meet with him so we could discuss arrangements for our new driver as well as for our safari tomorrow.  So we packed everything up and then went to get in our car and it was gone!  We called our old driver, Morris (who was supposed to still drive us home today), and he said “I’m coming, I’m coming!”  Well, he never came.  So an hour or so later, our new driver pulled up in the school car (the one we were supposed to be using while here but have not been because it has been broken) to take us home.  By now we are used to frequent changes and are learning to become more and more flexible and understanding.