The Phumlani primary school and volunteering after 4 weeks

What has been reached after 4 weeks of volunteering?

Having arrived with an open mind and ready for surprises of any kind, and thinking the school needed an English teacher, it seemed that there was no real need for such a person in this primary school.

So I decided to observe some lessons before I knew what to do. I also took over some lessons of the teacher, in which I was not very good. There was no real co-operation, and I didn’t come to do someone else’s job. I should do something else.

Because it was the habit, I took up the after school activities with the support of the staff members of Live4Now, as well as for the lower as for the higher grades. As I chose for empowerment of the learners, all activities had some elements of language learning. I tried to put in elements of the four language skills, being listening,  speaking, reading, writing. It’s amazing how strong these children are in the auditive and imitation skills: they really can realize a perfect pronunciation and intonation of the sentence, even  without understanding it. But that is how we all learn a language: you imitate and by repetition of the actions and contexts, the meaning reveals itself by the time.

In one of the lessons I had given, I let the children read one by one, and so I discovered those who couldn’t read. So I proposed to do something for them. We have been doing some remedial teaching in two groups and I suppose there was an opening to continue this indispensible intervention.

I also did some lessons with the strongest learners, hoping that they could get something more. This formula didn’t last for a very long time. I don’t know if this was a success.

As I offered a lot of spoken language, especially by visual and auditive impulses, I may have contributed to the knowledge of English. We also did a lot of rhymes and nonsense limericks and ended up with fun in the seventh grade, in a loud voice and with a lot of funny gestures:

'What noise is this, on the roof?

It's an elephant, cycling around.

It's an elephant, chic and elegant, 

with a tail here and one behind.'

                                   'What do I see? At the tree.  

It's an giraffe, eating leaves.  

What do I see at the tree? 

It's a giraffe, an another giraffe, and another giraffe, 

with buckets of water. 

They carry them to the sea’.

In my heart I also hope that I encouraged the teachers in this school who do this work every day.