Where is ...?

Hello!

Last week I held my 15th week long class with my English students.  We had a lot of fun learning how to give directions.  I even made up a song for them to a Turkana song tune so they could learn how to get from our school to a small grocery in town.  They enjoyed seeing how English words would fit into their Turkana song.  I made a Lodwar ABC Places booklet for them to use.  This booklet had pictures of various buildings in town.  They used these to help them decide where they wanted to go.

The students spent some time in our big classroom where I had a map of town drawn on the floor in chalk. One student gave directions while another followed them to the correct place in town.  This worked really well until one of them told his directee to take two steps and he would be there.  Since the map wasn't drawn to scale that would have been difficult for the person to do in real life :).

To help them even more, I suggested they write what they would say to someone in Turkana if they were asked to give them directions to a specific place.  We then talked about how the phrases and details they use in Turkana could be said in English.  At the end of the week, they were able to give directions to two places in town and to follow directions given to them by someone else.

This week we also talked about the simple past tense.  I made an imaginary letter from Moses to his father in law, Jethro, telling him how he got to Mt. Sinai.  The words of God were in present tense, while Moses' descriptions were in past tense.  This gave them a sense of the difference in the two tenses.  I had a couple of worksheets for them to practice using past tense and introduced them to the list of irregular verbs.  I told them they have to memorize them all and that there would be a test for the first half next month.  So, there were groans all around.  I am hoping they really spend some time on these as they are essential for using English correctly.

So, that is what happened last week.  I will post some pictures from the class for you to enjoy.  Have a blessed week this week!