Such a busy two days of teaching it’s been! We’ve now finished two full days in the classroom and I already love my standard 4 class! Yesterday we mainly focused on introducing ourselves to the class and telling them about where we’re from. We had a blow-up globe we passed around that had the route from Virginia to Malawi drawn on it so they could see how far we’ve come. After introducing ourselves we had the kids tell us a little about them. We worked on some basic sentences yesterday and today had the children write them on construction paper as an introduction including their name, what they like, where they live, how many siblings they have, and how old they are. We then had each student come to the front of the room and read their intro aloud to the class. All 76 of them! The class was a little restless by the end, but I’m glad they were able to each get a turn speaking in front of the class, plus it allowed them to practice reading English. Some of the students, particularly the boys were so excited to come up and share. A lot of the boys sit in the back of the room and when they saw the girls going first and getting stickers (we gave them stickers after they read) the boys would move close to the front so they could go next. It was cute to see how excited they were!
We’ve also been teaching them some new songs since singing and dancing is such a big part of the culture here. Yesterday we taught a “Days of the Week” song and I was really surprised at how quickly they picked it up. We practiced it again this morning and I think by the end of the week they will all have it down perfectly. The students have also sang and danced to some of their Chichewa songs. Whenever one starts it the next thing you know they are all singing and moving to the beat.
At the end of the day today Macdonald tried to teach Lindsay and I some Chichewa words. We tried our best with the pronunciations, but I’m sure we were way off because the kids would start to laugh. I’m sure we sounded pretty funny to them. He even had the kids stand up and try to teach us some of the words. They ended up teaching us how to introduce ourselves in Chichewa from how to say our name, where we live, what we like, how many siblings we have, and how old we are. It was cool to have them teach us in Chichewa what we taught them in English. It was reassuring to know that not only they understood us, but also liked what we were teaching. Before we left a few of the kids gave Lindsay and I some fruits they had brought from home for us. It was so sweet!
Such a good first two days, definitely looking forward to a full week!
Ashley FitzGerald
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