Teaching folder extract

This information was recorded by a former volunteer and gives an indication of some common schooling issues and the kind of difficulties the children face. There are also some ideas for improving these skills. This information forms just a part of the working manual continually being developed and improved to help guide volunteer teachers.

Laura: in short I would describe Laura as the teachers pet. She works very hard, always wants to help, and reports anything bad that’s going on. In school, Laura almost always does her homework. She improved quite a bit at math while I was there. If she takes her time, she gets all the multiplication problems correct and is doing pretty well at division. She is in 7th grade, but her maths skills are really more at 5th, 6th grade level. Her writing skills are also below 7th grade level. She does OK at writing (penmanship) but she has no sense of punctuation or how to structure a paragraph or story. She really struggled with the creative writing exercises.

Things that everyone can work on:

• Memorize multiplication tables: I used flash cards with them and played a game called around the world and they seemed to have fun playing it and it helped them learn.

• Sentence structure: most of them don’t use punctuation. I think they just need more practice writing. One thing I would have them do if I were here longer would be to write something quasi-creative each day, so they could work on both writing structure and being creative. One idea would be to start them off each day with an opening phrase, such as, “if I were a super hero, my special power would be ………… because………” and then make them write 3-4 sentences about the topic.

• Applying ideas to real world: this is especially important in math. I tried to make up my own word problems using situations they might really run into for example: Geovanny has $0.80. He’s going to buy a “chupete” for $0.10 and a cola for $0.35. He also needs to pay $0.05 for the bus to Tabacundo. With the money he has left, how many “chicles” can he buy if each one costs $0.07?

• English: they don’t know much about anything

Other ideas:

• Homework help. If I were here for longer I’d offer to stay after school 1 or 2 times a week for an hour to help kids with homework. I think a lot of them would appreciate that and the kids who need a lot of help could get good one-to-one attention.

• I would have liked to do more art or theatre with the kids

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