How to Get to Mr. Price

The last few days we have been working on prepositions in order to get the kids to know how to ask for and give directions. We made a nice map of an imaginary town and photocopied it and gave it to them and asked each kid to give directions to get to a different spot. (I guess to be fair I should stop using the word "kid" to refer to my students. We have random mamas from the neighborhood that wander in and out of the class now.) The thing was that people do not use maps here and there are no street names. Giving directions involve things like "go to the Memorial market and then take a left and then go for a while and you will see a big tree and across from that is Mama Helen's house". These could be directions that would take one 20 minutes or 2 hours to walk. They do things in vague terms of time and distance and don't have concrete logical steps to their directions. So basically we rocked their worlds by giving them maps and had to teach them how to use them. But the lessons went over well and they learned some good prepositions, although I am not quite sure they will ever use their phrases in real life.

Today we gave them each a paper with the first letter of their names written on it in big block form. We wanted them to draw their favorite things inside and we were going to have them describe them in English, for example a soccer ball or their brother or pineapple or whatever they like. This didn't go over as planned. All the girls drew flowers and all the boys drew Mt. Kiliminjaro. Most had never drawn with colored pencils before and it was the first time that they were dead silent, concentrating so hard on the task at hand. A couple got it and drew their houses or shirts and a few even drew Katie and I. Tomorrow we do explainations and I hope it goes well.