School

3rd Grade

The classrooms here are barren.  When I arrived, besides the last remnants of chipped paint dolefully remaining since its last coating 60 years ago when the school was founded and the white board nailed on top of the old black board, nothing covered the brick walls of my classrooms. 

                A few months back I started coming to terms with the fact that this posting was temporary and that eventually, whether or not I wanted to, I was going to be forced to leave. The countdown is at three weeks now…

 Although I have helped facilitate some improvement in both my students’ and co-teachers’ English, I wanted something that will last longer. I began looking for ways to create a positive impact in my students long after my visa had expired. I immediately wanted to combat the bareness of their rooms while providing them exposure to English outside of 40 minutes I see them each day.

To do this, I stated making posters of topics which we had covered. ‘I – am, She – is, They – are etc.’ ‘days of the week, months of the year. For 4^th grade, who somehow struggled more with distinguishing between months and days than 3^rd, I created a chart of 60 seconds = 1 minute, 60 minutes = 1 hour all the way up to 12 months = 1 year. 

As a class, we design these posters together, which helps us review those pesky prepositions (a must for all levels) with me asking things like “what goes below Tuesday?” along with the conditional  “what could we put beside ‘play?’”. Preposition work is then emphasized as we as a class chose where to paste the newly made poster.

After designing the poster, I or my co-teacher, Kalpana, outline the posters in pencil in order to get the dimensions correct. Then we pass the posters around the class making sure that every student is able to trace some of the letters in marker. This not only has the students practice their cooperation, but also has them create ownership over the final product which leads to them taking extreme care over the poster and has thus far kept vandalism to a minimum (although in order for 3^rd grade to reach even the bottom of one of the posters they would have to pull some acrobatics feats that would impress even Cirque Du Soleil).  I nearly had to break up a beating after a 2^nd grader had scrawled his name on the bottom of 4^th’s Day of the Week Chart.

Using this same process, minus the pencil tracing, I also created the alphabet with 3^rd grade on half sheets of paper. Many of them still struggle with the letters and this was good practice. At first they had to draft the letters in pencil before we gave them the marker for the final product.  As a class, we had them create three sets, one for their class and the other two for 1^st and 2^nd.  Before we pasted these above the white boards, we used them for a few weeks outside.  The first time I lined up 3^rd grade outside with these cards, 1^st and 2^nd got so jealous (and their teachers curious) that I ended up having nearly enough kids for all three alphabets to be made.

Some of the activities I conducted with the cards (with poorly worded names):

-          Alphabet Construction: Distribute cards randomly, and have the students reconstruct the order. Practices not only the alphabet but also practices team work.

-          Step Forward: After alphabet construction, I will say a word like ‘cat’ and the students who have those letters will step forward, then create the word. For bigger words which repeat letters like ‘tomorrow’  I simply have the student step forward.

These posters have helped provide some character to an otherwise plain room. They have allowed students to have access to materials that have not been available in the classroom.  Plus I think we had some fun doing it.

Kalpana

Class Three

Here is another project I conducted with class 3. Connecting the dotted alphabet to create an elephant. They then proceeded to color them in a manner that would have made the Merry Pranksters proud.

Class Four

Don't let their innocent looks and quirky fashion sense fool you. These three girls are the biggest trouble makers of the school, you let your guard down for  5 seconds, and one of them will have stolen your pens and tied your laces together and the other two will be treating you as a jungle gym.

In other news, to combat my inevitable depression from leaving Gorkha, I booked my flight to Solu-Khumbu last week. Three weeks trekking in the shadow of the world’s tallest mountain, here I come!