Teaching Day #3

We were out the door bright and early again and arrived at the Cisie School a few minutes before 8 AM. I teach my class in the biblioteka (library). Today I started with the 4th graders. They were sitting outside the door. Apparently there is a Polish tradition, if not a rule, that children cannot be in places without an adult. As soon as I opened the door they followed me in.

We started with a Bingo game that has the names of the 50 states of the United States. I did this mostly to expose students to more about "English" words are pronounced -- "English" in quotes because the names of our states come from several other languages in addition to English. This was good because I could work on island when we got to Rhode Island -- it is not is-land. And again I saw the pattern of wanted to pronounce new as nev. Yet they did quite good with Massachusetts and Connecticut -- not easy words.

Then one of the boys spotted one of their favorite Polish games on the library shelf.  It has a name something like Kikki Rykki. I let them play this game for about 10 minutes. It has nothing to do with teaching English, except I did try to ask questions about the colors of the hats on the chickens. After I watched for a bit I began to understand the strategy for the game.

The Kikki Rykki Game

 At the start of a Global Volunteers service team, the members establish team goals. One of ours is to learn more about Polish culture and language. I figure that's what I did for those 10 minutes -- I worked on one of our team goals.

I started my class of 5th graders with a discussion of temperatures in Minnesota. This subject came up yesterday and I wasn't prepared to discuss the cold weather temperatures in the Celsius system.

Then I gave them a worksheet on which they had to insert the correct article -- a, an, or the -- into sentences. This was a follow up exercise after the Sight Word Bingo game the day before when an appeared on the Bingo card.

Then I also did the U.S. States Bingo Game with them. With both groups, we would pause when someone won a game and find the four or five states in their winning row on a U.S. map.

Then back to Reymontowka for a rest.

At 2:40 we leave for the Kotun Community Center. Today I had 8 six-year olds arrive. I wanted to work on colors and shapes. They did quite well with the flash cards. Then I gave them sheets to color.

 For the middle school class I had six girls. Today we played Scrabble.

This was a bit of a challenge for them, but they seemed to enjoy it. I try to do something that will help them enhance their language, but at the same time make it pleasurable, for after all they have already attended a busy day at school.