One of the main reasons I came here was to do volunteer work at school.A bit of info about the school is written in post # 3.
John Wesley School has about 130 children in 5 class groups. 2 of the teachers, besides Loreen, were here last time I was here!!
Cathy is working in Kindergarten and I've been in Grade 3. My class has 23 "learners". As with classes at home - the range is fairly wide: mid - late grade 1 up to about grade 4. Most of the children are in the middle somewhere.
The bell rings at 7:30 am! (We leave the house at 6:30) (Anyone who knows me well is probably laughing - mornings are not my favourite time of day - I'm not usually even up at 6:30!)(Make that...ever up...)
We go through until 9:45 when we have a break until 10:15. During that time the kids eat and play. The teachers have their only break. We then continue with classtime until 1:00. The younger students get out earlier. On Fridays the students get dismissed an hour earlier and the teachers have a staff meeting.
There is no such thing as planning time! There is a resource teacher/librarian.
 |
| The Names of the Students in my Class |
Life in grade 3 is lots of fun. I've been working with 2 reading groups - a remedial student (grade 1 level) and a group of 3 very bright, very keen, very enthusiastic boys. The entire school is English Second Language learners. By grade 3 they have quite strong skills - but there are still a lot of gaps. Teaching vocabulary and grammar structures is very important. Some English sounds are not distinguishable in Zulu (their mother tongue) or don't even exist. Yet literacy block is very similar to home (before the latest round of changes such as making connections.......) We have word work, reading, writing etc. The school is very blessed to have a decent number of readers and leveled books. (Even some Magic Key stories!)
Math is called Maths - which is hard to get used to saying. The material that I've seen so far is similar to what we do at home. The main exception is that there is not the intensity and pressure of "tell how you know" - at least not yet - it's just the end of the first month of the new school year.
In Social Studies my class is learning about different cultures.Right now we are doing info about China. The next unit is on Canada (it really is) and I"ll be doing it. The text book is interesting in the approach they take. There is a letter from a child writing about life. He is writing about his grandparents who live in the Tundra. The boy's mother is Inuit and father is French from France. The grandparents live in a settlement in the north eastern part of Canada. He describes the environment, (winter darkness, animals with thick, white fur, summer vegetation, bumblebees and hairy butterflies (to keep them warm), animals that travel south in the winter and those that hibernate. Then he talks about his great-grandparents ....hunters with dog sled, live in igloos, ice fishing, using all parts of the animal... complete with pictures. He does say today things are different for his grandparents ....snowmobiles and supermarkets. He concludes by saying that he wants to write all the stories his family tells him so no one will forget them. There is no mention of the rest of the country!!!I suppose that is parallel to the view that many have of Africa. First of all, there is not always the acknowledgement (from N. America) that Africa is a continent with much diversity - not a country (eh Rai?) . And then there is a focus on the rural with little mention of the urban, unless it is connected to difficult situations.
 |
| How the classroom stays clean..... |
Feel free to leave comments or send me a note.....
