Extra Lessons

Extra Lessons is exactly that for what I signed up, when I came here. Because Dzikwa Trust is actually pretty amazing not only for the kids, but also for the students on attachment and the volunteers, since Dzikwa finds for everyone plenty of work usually of that kind, which suits their level of knowledge and their interests. So for example, Simon, the volunteer from Finland who is mainly into environmental topics, especially bird watching, now is part of the Agro-Forestry program and is mainly busy cutting down up to 500 eucalyptus trees or helping with planting the seedlings. The students on attachment for social work are focusing on interviewing the children on their home situation, creating supportive workshops and leading the Sisterhood Club.

Well, Satu and me have taken over the Extra Lessons in English and Maths for Secondary and Primary as well as the Healthcards and some little jobs we can do. This post will be about the Extra Lessons that we have been conducting. I am going to start with Maths as I have done more lessons of that kind in the beginning.

My first try was to improve their skills in multiplication, division and addition in their head, because they are really skilled, when it comes to do any general calculations on paper: Even difficult long-division is usually manageable for them on paper, however even a Sixth Grader has problems to add 37+3 or multiply 9x8. Even if you look at the Secondary Students, I have actually encountered problems with subtracting 360-120, while we were doing some questions on angles.

So in the beginning we were doing some multiplication tables on the board and I was trying to teach them some little tricks, such as 9x8=80-8. That method worked ok, but I felt that I had difficulties to include the slower learning kids or the shy ones, who are hiding behind their more loud and attention-seeking seat neighbours. Try to wait for the last person while you see people fidgeting with their hands and flipping their fingers in front of your face, while you hear "me, me, me". Well, guess what - they are not the only ones who can flip fingers and say "me, me, me" ;)

Otherwise in Maths we have been doing some symmetrical pictures with ice cream sticks or puzzles with the Grade 1 and 2 kids to improve their spatial understanding. Reading the clock will also still be a task that will require a lot of our time. And the absolutely best choice still is to play with dices, where one can do all kinds of calculation games according to age or even play their beloved  Bingo. The only problem with this is that they all surround you and the dices very closely and smaller kids in the back can't see. So at the moment I am trying to teach them to stay seated...

Two other rather successful methods have been leaving the kids to talk in Shona and discuss with each other the solution and to let the kids themselves become teachers and ask questions or throw dices. Something that makes these kids very easy to handle is that they are principally well-behaved in class and easy to reward - chocolate sticks, letting them take over class and especially high-fives evoke great competition. ;P

I neither should forget the two forces of inter-class communication: Telling the answers to your class mates without being asked or discrediting others on their wrong behaviour. At the moment, I am working on explaining them that both are not nice things to do and will neither help their classmates nor change their behaviour. So yes, I am teaching more than only content, especially with the boys and girls in Sixth Grade, who are in a competitive age.

English is the other subject I have been teaching and to be honest I am still developing good ways to teach it, so any advice would be very welcome. ;) 
The first lesson was spent on identifying and spelling little items I had gathered, then someone hid them in a bag and the others had to guess, which items had been taken away. I was very impressed with the good memory these children have (Except I am not sure if I caught all the ones turning around. :D ) Otherwise we have enjoyed reading books and then explaining the content or difficult words in the books to each other. Finally, another good exercise is to create phrases with similar sounding words and then let them act the phrases to work on the comprehension of the words. In addition, as this is called English Communication Class we have been doing some dialogues with the goal to get to know each other.

Very amusing and cute is the fact that the children are immensely disappointed, when they don't get homework. And even though I have created with Nyaradzai's help a timetable for the Extra Lessons usually the kids are begging me to be part of a class they are not assigned to.

The last two days Satu and me joined forces and decided to improve their geographical knowledge as even adults have a problem in locating the USA or have forgotten the existence of Europe. That's why we actually drew a more or less accurate map of the world with chalk onto the parking spot and created some cards with the most important countries and their capitals in the world, such as England, Germany and of course Finland!!! We also had a general quiz, for example on the oceans, continents, the four points of compass and the Antarctica. It was fun for everyone to run around on the map and pass on their own knowledge to the other class members. Let's just hope that all the Zimbabweans who want to live in Finland and Korea now know, where to find these countries :D

Here I am standing on Finland and France.