A short while back I did some experiments with making my own workbooks for my students. They were absolutely a success. I had conversations with my students like (and I am of course translating), “If a cat is eating a cat, then there are two cats involved, so why wouldn’t I use the plural ‘cats’ in the sentence?” A completely logical question, and one that I failed to anticipate when I designed the workbook.
My fastest vocational students needed about three hours to get through the workbook and the corresponding review sheet, and it was time well spent. I could tell from the questions I got that the first workbook was ten thousand times more effective than any previous approach I had tried.
Here are links for the revised workbook and the review sheet:
The downside is that it’s difficult to whip up the energy necessary to draw all the pictures, photograph them, and then clean them up on the computer. Part of me regrets bringing a normal laptop instead of a tablet.
Because of the time and energy problem, I’ve been applying the workbook’s methods to more conventional blackboard teaching. The method is basically to use very few words, but just shuffle them around and observe how the meaning changes. I typically write sentences on the board and have the students come up and draw a pictures that they think correspond. It can be kind of fun, and it’s easy. In the last couple classes, we’ve been dealing with “to” and “from,” like:
- The boy runs to the girl.
- The boy runs from the girl to the house.
Etc. And so far so good.
In other news, I’m in phase two of my arm infection, which means that it’s getting smaller on its own. Also, as I type this, the school is being painted in preparation for another big competition that will take place here when the term ends. Someone donated new mosquito nets, too, which will make the dorms a lot nicer.
The school is also going to clear out a room to make the new computer lab. I met with Camara a while back, and it seems pretty easy to get computers from them. This is very exciting for me, so I’ve been doing a little work to make sure the kids can use the game software that they’re used to, even if the new machines don’t have floppy drives.