Superman Makes For Super English

Metaha,

This week’s class began with both adults and children raising their voices in song. This is always a refreshing start to a class. It brings out smiles and laughter and also expels energy the children buildup sitting in school all day. Naturally, it was difficult to truly capture the enthusiasm in photos but we will do our best to capture it with words and eventually we will capture it via digital camera. Then you can experience what we are lucky to experience every Friday.

This week and next week we are focused on English understanding and there is no better way to expose second language learners to English than through Hollywood. We are watching “Superman" and engaging the learners in language activities geared to increase conversational English, reading, writing and vocabulary. There are frequent checks for understanding and discussion of the plot. We are fortunate to have the captions on so the children can hear and read what is happening. And the Volunteers are not the only teachers. It was amazing to watch older children assist the younger ones. Future Red Cross Volunteers perhaps? The learners conversed in small groups to help each other put the pieces of the movie together. A vocabulary activity we implemented was asking the children to remember one word they did not understand or know the meaning of. As the terms surfaced, we went through the definitions to assist with understanding. Once we can supply the children with journals, we will be able to add more of a written component for the lessons. In this way, we touch on the four essential pieces necessary for second language learners: reading, writing, listening and speaking.


This Friday we will finish the movie and continue to practice English. We are excited to watch the children discover the classic story of “Superman". We wish you a safe and productive week.

Until next time…Uhara Nawa

Never to old to learn something new...

Moro,

The last three weeks have been as hectic as usual. Namibia celebrated its Independence recently and the kids have been busy with school. The holiday and busy school schedule meant our Friday program had to be adjusted. However, last Friday, sixteen children arrived eager to review their evaluations they filled out weeks before. This activity helped them in many ways by having them hear English from the volunteers and helping understand what mistakes they had made. The volunteers helped increase understanding and asked the children more questions to expand the learning process. The volunteers have begun to brainstorm more accurate ways to assist the children through this process. One in particular was to have the children translate the English answers into their home language and vise versa. It appears young or old, we are all benefiting from this program.

Gabriel Armandu our Otjiherero to Otjiwambo translator.

Our Otjiwambo to English translator

After the impromptu language lesson, we gathered for a game of Adam and Eve. The main purpose of the game was to continue to build relationships between the kids and adults and to simply have some fun.

The children playing Adam and Eve.

As a side note, the evaluations indicated the kids are interested in learning about computers, math, English, bike riding and basic health. The observations from the volunteers have indicated that we must focus on English skills at first to facilitate the instruction of the other needs. As a result, our current focus is English speaking and writing. Finally, we will not meet this Friday due to the long Easter weekend. I wish you all a Happy Easter.

Uhara Nawa