KIDS

Earlier this month I sat down and wrote a short summary of each kid
here. Given that there are 15 kids, and I wrote a paragraph for each
one, it was a pretty long document. I wanted to post something similar
but not the whole thing, since that is BORING for anyone who doesn’t
know the kids or doesn’t really care. Instead I thought I’d give a
short progress report of where the kids are academically and talk
about the 3 groups we’ve put them in.
   In general, the kids are doing really well with English and Math.
They all know their letters (with the exception of one girl, who I’ll
talk about in a bit) and they know the sounds of every letter. When we
start to sound out a word, they all know which letter it should be. A
few of them have progressed this to short reading. For math, they are
all doing vertical addition (a double digit over another double digit)
and many of them have begun carrying the one. A few have started long
subtraction (with carrying a ten over. Like for 52-25). Overall, we’ve
seen a lot of progress. We also do a lot of vocabulary and the kids
know a lot of animals, foods, clothing, shapes, colors, etc. in
English. We also go over what day of the week it is every teaching
day, so the kids have begun to understand the concept of yesterday,
today, tomorrow.
  When we started in January, we realized how big of a spread the
kids’ abilities were, so we decided to split them up into three groups
for part of the day. Not only does it break up the day for the kids,
but A LOT of learning occurs because it is so individualized. In the
highest group are 5 boys: Aseminow, Tariku, Bakalu, Dawit and Hailie.
These boys work with Peter and have covered a lot. They doing short
“spelling bees” and also have been trying to read. Peter also covers
some more difficult topics, such as geography, with this group.
  The middle group is currently working with Lisa (from New Zealand).
The kids are: Bahilu, Yosef, Sinknesh, Hanna and Danny. Lisa has been
focusing a lot on letter sounds with this group and going over what we
teach in class. She often goes over the days of the week and clothing,
food, etc.
   The lowest group is my group. Included are: Bezawet, Hanok, Arafat
and Sara (and now, Hiwat, which I’ll get to). My group started off a
bit behind and we reviewed the difference between b, d, p, q. They
have gotten that down and we have been reviewing consonant sounds
(which they are good at) and now are doing vowels. Vowels are REALLY
hard but they are starting to understand. We also go over things from
class and spelling. I have tried to get them to sound out and read
3-letter words, but so far not too much success.
  The last girl, Hiwat, was receiving one-on-one with Julie in
February. Now that Julie has left we are pulling Hiwat out during big
group times and doing a one-on-one session and she is in my small
group during that time. Hiwat is very far behind. She’s definitely the
youngest kid (we guess she’s 5 or 6) and is still figuring out her
letters. Without one-on-one we are afraid she’ll just slip through the
cracks. Julie made progress with her and she now knows A-I. Hopefully
we can get her through the whole alphabet and understanding concepts.
   So there is my very short summary of the kids and what they’re
doing. As a group we try to introduce something new every week, and
this week we are tackling questions. They know a few (Where are you
from? How are you? What is your name? etc), but we want them to
understand what a question is and how you ask it. Always a challenge
around here!