3rd Grade Project

I spent this past week with the 3rd grade students. I went back and forth between the two sections learning and helping to teach Math, English, Social Studies, and Communications.

I was left on my own more than once, being forced to make up a lesson on my own. My favorite example of this is when the English teacher chose to sit in her office rather than coming to her afternoon class. I already knew what she was teaching because I had sat in on her morning class, so I decided to go ahead with the lesson. The students were learning prepositions, specifically on, under, in, in front of, and behind. I also knew that the previous class didn’t learn very much from their morning lecture because I had the privilege of grading their exercises, so I decided to mix it up a bit for the afternoon class.

I started the class by standing on my desk, and asked the students, “Where is the teacher?” They were a little freaked out by it, but they were all laughing as they told me, "The teacher is ON the desk!" After that I crawled under the desk, and then stood both in front of and behind it. To check their understanding, I had a student come up and asked him to stand in the various locations. As a final challenge, I asked him to position himself IN the desk….at which point he literally tried to stuff himself in the desk drawer, causing another spell of uncontrollable laughter.

In any case, I knew the 3rd grade Key School class was learning about Africa this past week, so I wanted to do a project between the two classes. I suggested that we start with a simple pen pal exchange, asking pointed questions that would allow students in both countries to compare common cultural themes (food, family, weather, etc.) I then started pulling in elements that the students were learning in other classes. By the end of the week, the students had all drawn the Tanzanian flag and explained its significance (something they had just learned in their social studies class), and addressed the envelopes for sending the letters to Key School (something they are learning about in their communications class).

I’ll be putting the letters in the mail this week and then eagerly waiting for the Key School letters to arrive, hopefully sometime before I head home. I’m already starting to think about new projects to do as I move to other grade levels, and would love to hear your input. So far I have thought of doing a song exchange where the students write out the Tanzanian national anthem and other patriotic songs in Kiswahili. After that they will try and translate them into English and exchange them with similar projects completed by Key School students. I then hope to set up a Skype conference where both classes sing the songs they have selected to each other. I’m not sure where everyone’s interest lies exactly, but I’m very open to new ideas!