Term One is Coming to an End?!?

I cannot believe that we are already in our 10th week of school! I've been teaching in Malawi for 10 weeks!

Unbelievable!

The 13th and 14th weeks of school are generally reserved for final exams, so really we've only got a a few more periods left to go. I thought it may be interesting to fill you in on some of the things we've been working on this term.

Things may have started out slow, but as my students and I became more familiar with each other it seems that all in all we've accomplished quite a bit!

PHYSICAL SCIENCE FORM ONE: My most challenging course. It's not the material that's the problem, but as I've mentioned before the language barrier between me and these very new students has been quite the obstacle for all of us over the past ten weeks. I'm happy to say that my students are now understanding me much better than they were before. I make sure to teach them the material as slowly and simply as possible and am starting to see the results in their assignments. We've gotten through a few units in this course mostly dealing with the process of formulating scientific investigations including lots of work with hypotheses, variables, taking measurements with various instruments and performing simple calculations and conversions using scientific notation. It was all very new material to my students, but I do think they're getting it. We'll be ending the term by continuing with a unit on forces.

BIOLOGY FORM TWO: My Form Twos, there are sooooo many of them! And they all want extra assignments all the time! Extra assignments? I know, I couldn't believe it either. We've gotten through quite a bit of material this term as it's been extremely necessary to catch up on things they failed to cover in Form One. Form 2s and 4s will be writing their exams at the end of the year, so its essential that I cover everything on their course syllabi. We began the year talking about nutrition and deficiency diseases which I personally found to be a very interesting topic to teach, especially as it hits so close to home for nearly all of my students. We continued with digestion and although I'm still answering questions in the library about the process of absorption in the small intestine, we're now working on ecosystems and the environment. Last week we all pretended to be ecologists and went out surveying the environment surrounding Gwangwa. In groups, my students took count of different animals and plants and made note of other observations about their environment. We'll be using this information over the next week to finish up this unit and discuss environmental problems and potential solutions.

ENGLISH FORM THREE: I'm not a trained teacher, especially when it comes to English, but I love teaching English to my Form 3s. They're way behind and often quiet in class, but they're so willing to work to improve their skills. I've spent a lot of time working on simple grammatical concepts, reading comprehension and essay writing. Last week, upon finishing a short story and comprehension questions, my students wrote their own short stories to read in front of the class. Some of my students are so creative! Each story was a joy to read! I'm slowly but surely beginning to see their writing progress.

BIOLOGY FORM THREE: We haven't covered too much in this course, but I'm happy to say that the time we've spent has been worth it as many of my students are really getting the material. Mostly we've learned about food making in green plants, photosynthesis, translocation, transpiration, etc. We've found some time to use the lab as well in order for me to demonstrate simple experiments dealing with photosynthesis as well as osmosis and diffusion. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to use my lab and its resources with my students, it's been difficult as materials are sometimes scarce and my students have never been exposed to a lab before.

LIFE SKILLS FORMS ONE-FOUR: I really enjoy my Life Skills courses. In the past weeks I've discussed a wide range of topics with each of my classes including the importance of self-esteem, positive and negative values, interpersonal relationships, teenage pregnancies, sex, abortion and many others. Basically I'm teaching my kids how to problem solve, how to think about their own lives and the choices they can make. Last week in Forms Three and Four we had some great debates on teenage pregnancy and abortion. It's so interesting for me to hear my students discuss these kind of issues with one another.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE FORM FOUR: Can't say I've covered much at all in this course as I just picked it up last week. The Form Fours have never had physical science before but it's such an important subject that my site mate, Mike and I have decided to work together to cover all of the Form 3 and Form 4 material with them this year. I'll be teaching the chemistry portion of the course as he works with them on the physics. It's a lot of physical science, very often throughout the week but my students are eager and excited to learn the material.