Jambo!

Today is day 3 in Kipevu Primary school and we visited around the classrooms and got to talk to a lot of the students and the teachers. We visited Class 8,7,6 in that order and after that we went to the choir practice.

It is so interesting how they teach their classes! Most of the time in SH we learn with a very comfortable dynamic between the teacher and the student. A lot of times we are free to speak when we want. However, even for the oldest students (Grade 8s) they are very strict and rigid between students and teachers.

In our grade 8 class that we visited, we sat in on our english class. It was incredible! the students were reading about the Olympic Games and reading passages in English. Their english level is a lot better than I originally expected. The only thing that makes it different is the way that they teach their students. Over here in Kenya its a lot of repeat after me, say yes or no if you understand and a lot of the time its not one on one. I have yet to see real interaction between student and teacher beyond 'you do this and that'. The students dont really ask questions and they accept all information that the teacher tells them. There is not real sense of questioning their teachers whether things are wrong or right.

The best part of teaching this Class 8 was when we started teaching rather than listening. The interaction was mind blowing because the students were all willing to learn the things we wanted to teach. So we taught the students how to sing Oh Canada.

Both Fion and I helped them out by first singing a few phrases and then getting the students to fill in the blanks of how many words there were in the phrase. After guessing the words they would sing the phrase with us! it was so much fun because when we finished quite a large chunk, we sang the song together so many times (they liked it so much!).

This was the best part of the day <3

Geneva