Today I finished up a science reading unit about the three types of rocks. I asked a question that used the term "classification" and my students were stumped. No one knew the answer for "classification" of rocks. Once I explained it was just another word for "a type of rock" everyone was happy and went about answering on their papers. I never leave the house now without a Swahili to English/English to Swahili Dictionary. It has become my new Bible of a sorts for me!
David is teaching his graduate courses at St. John's on Monday-Wednesdays. He now has 21 students. It took until the 5th class for all of them to show up. Monday, he showed up to class and there were no desks or tables in the classroom. He got rather upset and called the Assistant Vice-Chancellor who got the workers within five minutes to bring the desks back to the classroom and a table. He has told his class about the effects of the "chalk and talk-memorize" method in teaching young adults English. They can read the words in a passage fine but may have no idea what they have just read. Just as with any student of a foreign language, understanding the vocabulary is a must in learning to read and converse with others.
In this blog I am including many pictures about people and activities that happened to us over the last week or so. Several of our pictures include a young couple we know whose child we are sponsoring in secondary school in Arusha. They have twin girls around three years of age. Very cute girls and very well mannered. We invited our friend Eugenia/Swahili teacher to meet us at the pizza place with the cement golf. Another set of pictures are showing some of the St. Mark's members carrying the new benches that David bought and sitting on the benches at church on Sunday. There also a few again from my reading class and the volcano demonstrations along with some of the nursery children playing with silly putty that Mitaka Packett ( a young visitor from Australia) and I brought to their school.
