Good day at Unistar

Today was a great day with the KG 1 kids at Unistar. I felt like I had better control of the class and that I was actually getting through to them.

The kids here have an incredible ability with memorization. They have no trouble reciting the alphabet, numbers, or countless nursery rhymes and songs. When given the title (“Jack and Jill”, “Little Miss Muffet”, “Itsy Bitsy Spider” etc), the whole class will recite the rest of the rhyme/song in unison. They know the words to some really obscure nursery rhymes. And all of this is in their second language! However, they don’t seem to understand what they have memorized. If you try to get them to identify numbers or letters out of sequence, they can’t do it.

At some point in the morning, I usually hand out their notebooks so they can do some writing or colouring. This always results in chaos as they fight over crayons or pencils, cry because someone ripped their book, and crowd around me so I can mark their work (they LOVE having their work marked). So, today I decided to skip the whole ordeal and we had educational, themed pictionary for most of the day. We covered common animals, things in the sky, body parts, clothing, sources of light, and sources of water. As I drew on the chalkboard, the kids would call out the English word for the object and then I had them spell it by calling out the letters as I wrote them – they were actually recognizing them out of the A to Z sequence! It was lots of fun and the kids seemed to really enjoy it. I really enjoyed it.

Even though I have switched to a teaching placement, I am still doing the once-a-week medical outreach program. Yesterday afternoon we went to a village just outside of Cape Coast. It was really interesting to visit this totally self-sufficient community. We were introduced to the chief of the village who was a very welcoming man. We spoke with him for a while and learned that he is the eighteenth chief of this 450-year-old village. There are about 700 people living in the community and they have their own school and church. He said he was grateful for our visit because sanitation is a problem for them and he is always glad to accept any help or education that will improve the health of his people. We met some of the village members in the school building and treated their small wounds. The experience was really interesting and I wish I had more time to spend the more rural areas of Ghana.