26 April 2007

So today was my third day of teaching. Since the strike has continued today, again I got two two-hour classes with each age group. I think today I discovered that the conversations that I was trying to do withthe littlest kids were basically too abstract because I was having areally hard time keeping their attention. There was also a smallcrowd outside the door to the class since the other kids arent in class while I'm teaching. Finally Anne came and yelled at the kids at the door (which I had tried unsuccessfully to do) and helped keep thecontrol of the classroom. The second class again went really muchbetter. We did a lot of numbers which they enjoy doing, but have a hard time with the teens. Apparently to a native Wolof speaker,Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen all basically sound the same. So I try press the pronounciation. We also did a worksheet that I had made athome that had a dialogue on it. This was a pretty good challenge forthem and took longer than I expected... for 10 to 14 year olds, their writing is not very good. We didn't finish the worksheet, soI'll probably continue with it on Monday.