Learning about Ramadan from the Whampoa Kids

Chicken Ham, Lettuce and Cheese sandwich comin' up

Learning about Ramadan from the Whampoa Kids

So, the sandwich/ party project last month was a great success. The older kids made the sandwiches in orderly chaos, and the younger kids kid made little crowns, and Cheryl did the games.

Last weekend, we did a session on Hari Raya where the kids did the teaching and quizzed the volunteers. Cheryl did the lesson plan and this was how it worked:

10am - Kids came and did a word search of Hari Raya related words. (There are sites online you can generate search words and crossword puzzles for free)

10.20am - We split the children in 2 groups. Each group had 1 minute (ish) to list as many words related to Hari Raya as possible. Volunteers prompted by suggesting categories like food, clothes, things they do, see, etc. 



10.30am - In their groups, kids discussed and prepared a mindmap/ presentation on on Ramadan.  3 aspects: a) the religious significance and Ramadan; b) the prep leading up to Hari Raya which culminates in Malam Raya (the night before Hari Raya); c) Hari Raya itself and the month of festivities that follows.

Social worker Khairun and her cousin were advisers since none of the other volunteers are Muslim. 

10.45am - Groups then presented and Volunteers asked questions or clarified.

11am - Kids then came up with quiz questions and quizzed us, the volunteers. They had a blast turning the tables on us. We'd learned a lot ourselves too.

The classes are comin' along. Next weekend we've got a training session with an organisation called Junior Achievement. They're donating a 6-hour module teaching kids about money smarts. Comes with games, lesson plans and course materials. And they'll teach us how to to use 'em.Lookin' f'd to it.

Sandwiches and sums

This month's theme is food. We're doing a four-week block of related classes.

Week 1: the kids made sandwiches and learned about nutrition. Steve demo'd how yeast makes dough rise. The kids were really into it- making sandwiches for themselves, the volunteers and esp. the social workers.
Week 2: the kids made a list of things they'd need for a party, and went to the supermarket with the volunteers to take down prices of stuff.

Of Sushi and Schoolwork

When the tsunami first hit, one of the kids came up to one of the volunteers, Mark, and started talking excitedly about it and about the session on plate tectonics we'd done last year.

The boy, 11, was football crazy and usually took us a lot of effort to sit still and pay attention. We certainly didn't expect him to come talk to us proactively about Japan and the earthquake. 

So, we decided to plan a couple of lessons around the theme of earthquakes. Last weekend, a group of volunteers who specialize in conflict resolution used the events in Japan in a role play.

The kids had to pretend they were injured the tsunami and had to argue for which of them should be sent to hospital first. Another kid was the "doctor"and had to decide who got priority and why.

Gaming the Lesson Plan

Last week, we had a volunteer with 20 years experience in working with Special Needs Children do a workshop with us in Classroom Management. At the end of the workshop, she gave us a BRAND NEW Monopoly set and told us that ANYTHING can be taught using boardgames. "Just replace the Comm Chest and Chance cards w/ your own."

Since she gave us Singapore Monopoly, we used a passage on Singapore from the Kids Encyclopedia Britannica to introduce new vocab and concepts like Economy, Terrain, Undulating, Monsoon, Thriving, Metropolis etc. The volunteers did a great job engaging the kids, age 9-11, to draw them into discussion - including bringing out a huge atlas and have kids find the equator, peninsulas, explaining monsoons, making sure the quieter ones (girls) got a chance to talk.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

A friend donated a P6 curriculum from a really cool US program called Pathways to Character. The program intertwines academic content, like math and English, with concepts like respect, sharing, family, tolerance. Couple of weeks ago, we used one of their lessons on "respect".

The lesson plan had us find a passage from literature where there was conflict. I took a scene from the first chapter of  Lord of the Flies. I read out the conversation between Piggy and Ralph where Ralph is crushingly patronising and rude to Piggy.

The kids made a hand puppet from a paper bag, and I put a jar of marbles on the table. Every time any of the characters said a disrepectful word the kids dropped a marble into the bag. After a couple of  minutes the bags had about 8 or 9 marbles. Noisy bag.

Then, we explained that when you're disrespectful or use disrespectful words, people hear only the disrespectful stuff  - the noise - and disregard the rest.

Everyday Heroes

So, the kids had a really really cool children's party organised for them by a team at PSA. The games were engaging, the kids were constantly moving, doing stuff, running and laughing - 80% of the kids were terrific, polite, well-behaved.

Three of the kids were being a real pain - esp. on the way back, on the bus. They were rude, one of them had allegedly hit another kid with an empty plastic water bottle, and another one was mouthing off loudly - most of that seemed to be aimed at me as I was sitting right in front of him trying to get him to sit the heck down in the moving bus.

I honestly thought we'd made more progress than that. So, dejected and distressed, I texted the social worker I work with on the program, questioning the effectiveness and purpose of what we were doing. And she emailed me a note I'll refer to every time I'm losing the faith. (Names of kids have been changed)

"I know they still have a long way to go, but they’re slowly moving in the right direction yeah. And honestly, sometimes the work that we do, it’s like if we can save 1 out of every 20, that’s already a success. But that’s the jaded social worker speaking

Tiny Steps in Winning the Education Battle

Woke up this morning to two really cool education stories – one in the NY Times about how big dsn’t mean bad. Very VERY gratified to see that it was teachers who wanted to make the change that drove the change. So much for the excuse that the system’s too big for individuals to make a diff.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/education/28school.html?src=me&ref=homepage

Then another one on Mashable on USING Social Media to teach. Beats trying to do a lock down and preventing kids from going online – kids are gonna do what they’re gonna do. And they’re smarter than adults about technology and twice as determined. So there. As a Portland teacher, Elizabeth Delmatoff said, “Don’t fight the losing battle.”

http://mashable.com/2010/09/29/social-media-in-school/

Personally I’d rather go with the winners and have the kids learn something.