Orientation is Complete!

I just checked my blog and was sad to see that the last post I wrote did not end up loading correctly to make it on the site! I'll do my best to catch you up to speed about what's been going on.

This past week I taught four different English classes at the Lupanga Secondary School in Morogoro, Tanzania. I taught Forms 3 and 4, which are equivalent to 9th and 10th graders in the U.S. I taught two classes that were Form 3 and two classes that were Form 4. Each class I taught was 40 minutes long and I did a different lessons for each. On Tuesday I taught a Form 4 class about transportation vocabulary, I read them a story about transportation, and I had them write short paragraphs about the kind of transportation they use every day. On Wednesday I taught a Form 3 class about vocabulary having to do with jobs and I had my students practice speaking by interviewing one another about what jobs they would like to have in their futures.  Today (Thursday) I taught two classes with a break in between. For my two classes today I wrote a story about decision making - it was a sort of fable where a girl finds a couple thousand dollars and must decide whether she wants to use the money to go to a University and improve her education or use the money to pay off her mom's medical bills (since she's sick in the story). I had a ton of fun writing it! I gave everyone in my Form 4 class a sentence from the story to read aloud and then I asked comprehension questions about the story afterward. I then taught them a grammar lesson on the conditional tense ("I would...") and asked them to fill in the blank "If I were the character in the story, then I would choose to...with the money." It was a successful class :). My last class of the day went extremely well. I read my story aloud to the students in the Form 3 class and had them answer questions about it as well. I taught them about pro's and con's and about decisions and consequences. I split the group into two teams and one team had to argue the pro's for the main character using the money for the University and the other team had to argue against the same outcome with the con's. After they brainstormed together I had them debate and then had three students judge which side won the debate. It was a fun class. :) I've really enjoyed teaching so far! The classes were about 30-40 students each and although sometimes it was rough commanding all of their attention, I managed quite well and was able to produce some really successful lessons!

I'm so excited to finally get to Dakawa soon! We are supposed to move there tomorrow, but there's a chance that we might still be in Morogoro for a while while they finish up fixing up our house! We should start teaching on Monday, but we'll see how that goes with the housing situation! I'll keep you updated!

I'm out of internet time at this cafe, but I'll write more soon! :)

Much love!