Soccer ball

"The worm is ON Allan's head!"

In English today I began teaching the students position words.  To teach the words I brought out the little blue, light-up, squishy worm that I have, and we placed him in different spots throughout the classroom-behind my bag, under the desk, in the cabinet, and so on.  The students absolutely love the worm and think he is hilarious, so this inevitably made learning fun.  Not only was it fun, but it was a great way to get the students using the position words in conversation, which is most important for their English development.  We also played the slapping game, where the students race to slap the word that I say-which has become one of their favorite ways to practice reading their English vocabulary.  After that I had the students do an exercise where I gave each student 6 stickers and asked them to draw pictures and place the stickers in various locations.  The stickers were another thing that got them excited to learn.  All of these things together made the lesson very successful and fun.

"The worm is under the chair"

Here's an example of Doricka's work with her sticker exercise

In math today we reviewed the days of the week (as that was supposed to be our next math unit, but was something we already learned in English).  We reviewed by playing the spelling game Sparkle, which the students enjoy, and by singing our days of the week song.  Then I introduced area to my students.  Because my students are only in P1, the area lesson I was supposed to teach just went over what covers more space.  I showed the students some examples, and then I asked them to find some examples of an object that covers a bigger part than another object.  As I have said before, I like to give my students a lot of visuals and concrete examples, as the examples bridge the gap between their English and Lukunzo.  Both the days of the week review and the area lesson were a breeze for the students, which was nice.

Because I brought my worm out for the English lesson, the students were all fired up about playing the game we had played a few weeks ago with it.  We played a game like hot potato, where we passed the worm around quickly until the light stopped and that person was out and then continued until there was one student remaining.  So I promised my students we would play one game of it during games time.  We shut all the windows and the door in the classroom to really let the worm light-up, and we had a blast! 

Today one of my students brought a soccer ball to school for me that he made using fibers.  I had seen the boys playing with a ball like this and started asking one of my students, Kato, about them.  He told me he could make me one if I gave him some fabric and a plastic bag.  We had had this conversation awhile back, but he wasn’t going to forget it.  Every week he asked me if I still wanted a ball made.  So yesterday I brought these things to him (I had to buy the scraps of fabric from a fabric store since I didn’t have any and I finally remembered to do so), and he came with my ball today.  He was in the process of finishing it when I arrived at school today, wrapping some of the natural fibers around the outside.  I am excited to bring it home to Nick and see if he can play soccer with a Ugandan ball! 

Alfred and Kato (twins) with the ball. Kato is the one who made it, and Alfred was the one who kept reminding me about it.

After school today we showed Jamie around town a bit, taking her to the supermarkets in town (where we buy more of our westernized goods), and the markets.