Another bright and beautiful morning and Elisabeth and I set off for Galillea. We joined a primary 4 french lesson to start, and when the teacher had to unexpectedly leave early, we jumped at the chance of continuing for him (rather than letting class prefect Kamal take the class). After we helped with the French class Kamal told us it was now time for English. As the teacher did not appear, we opened up the books following on from their last lesson, and began to teach them about verbs and adverbs and the differences.
After break it was time for Maths, Kamal informed us that the Maths teacher had told him the class should simply revise. Perhaps he knew the two obrunis would take over, and we happily did. Elisabeth presented a neatly drawn number line including fractions and decimals. I then incorporated percentages, and began teaching on how to change fractions to percentages to decimals. Interchanging all three was at first confusing to the enthusiastic primary 4 class, but the children soon caught on and hands were flying up to come out and write the answers on the board.
Considering I had observed numerous lessons in my previous weeks, I decided assigning some classwork would be appropriate, and set out some questions. There was clearly a broad range of ability within the class as some of the children had finished the questions in a few minutes while others were still struggling at the first question. It is this vast range in ability that I have found one of the hardest to overcome when trying to teach an Omega class. In Britain, teachers are instructed to teach to the highest ability children, so they are not sat bored in the classroom. Whereas in Ghana it seems the teachers teach to the lowest ability children, leaving any who find the work fairly simple the task of putting their heads on the table. This constant waiting for the less able in the class is seriously damaging the progress that some of the higher ability students could be making and is something which should be addressed.
Following our interesting Maths lesson we were faced with the daunting task of trying to teach Citizenship, which neither I nor Elisabeth had a real clue about. However, the textbooks provided were fairly self explanatory, which allowed the two of us to work out what we needed to teach. The topic was communities, something which I believe to be a central part of most Ghanaians lives. With hundreds of small communities in the Kasoa area alone, each having different aspects and characteristics. We then discussed what the childrens own communities needed, the most common answers included; better roads, cleaner streets and a larger market.
After school we headed to the bank and bumped into Ken, David and John, and managed to get a cheeky lift of Ken to Kasoa for my mini project research. Unfortunately, the lights had only just come back on when I arrived, and so the kids had already gone home on the school bus. I will return on Thursday and hope for a more successful outcome.
The evenings entertainment was provided but the much anticipated friendly football match, Ghana v England. Marc Beas had set out all the chairs they owned in front of their projection screen in anticipation of the large crowds. The game was evenly matched throughout and although England went up a goal in the first half, Gyan (Sunderland player and now hero of Ghana) equalised in the 91st minute. The whole place erupted in cheers of delight, with viewers running up to the screen in excitement. It might have only been a casual friendly to the English, but to the Ghanaians it seemed like an epic victory, and I was happy to be wearing a Ghana t-shirt. Final score Ghana 1 - England 1!
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