Reading Education

Teacher classes in Englishcontinued today. Again, very interesting watching adults react to children´s literature. Just the fact that you can read something in another language is a good feeling.

In the course of using the children´s literature with adults, we are discovering that children´s TV programming is very limited. While in the US there is concern about small children spending too much time in front of the TV even for educational programming, here it doesn´t happen but on a VERY limited basis. Reading is just beginning to be taught in second grade. There are no reading books as we would have in US schools at this age or at any other age for that matter. All school books are in workbook form. I saw my first student all year reading a book on the bus the other morning.

The fact that we tend to work on vocabulary building at the lower grades while delaying the grammar instruction until later just blows there mind here. Grammar IS the most important thing that can be taught. The concept that everyone has limited thinking ability based, in part, on the amount of vocabulary one has, just doesn´t register. No one challenges the thinking that being grammar rich and vocabulary poor may be a problem.

We have just mentioned some educational differences that we can not address to any degree this school year.

First Grade Literature Books For Adults

This afternoon we began using the first grade literature books to teach teachers English. The pictures, repetion, and simplicity of vocabulary really seemed to improve instruction. There were still a lot of questions about grammar, which to some extent is necessary. However, the emphasis on reading and enlarging vocabulary was still the main theme. The books (there are five in the series at first grade) become difficult fairly rapidly. The next lesson will probably have to go much slower as vocabulary overload becomes a factor very quickly.

The next two days we will be having staff meetings after school. We will discover the topics when we get to the meetings.

Pictures For Those Experiencing Winter

This blog entry is for the benefit of those readers in the upper midwest who have had one serious bout of winter recently and apparently today are experiencing round two. These pictures were taken just outside Puyo last week. Hope it helps warm you a bit and thoughts can turn to spring.
Click on any picture to enlarge it to full screen.

Teaching Teachers English

We started a new approach to teaching English to teachers today. The approach may sound a bit basic, but when one puts the shoe on the other foot, maybe it is not. If you didn´t know any Spanish, would reading first grade literature books in Spanish be too simple? Probably not for most people. All we need to get past is the idea that adults are reading first grade material. Wednesday is our first experiment with this approach.

We brought back a wooden clock with moveable hands which would be used in first grade. This was a big hit last week in the teacher class as we worked on how to tell time in English.

I have started typing the story content of the first grade books in double spacing so that the reader can write the translation on their own copy of the story since writing in the book is not possible. We may even try this approach in some of the classes for students.

This approach will rely heavily on the use of pictures in the stories to build vocabulary. This is what pictures do for primary students in their own language.

By the time we are finished with this experiment here, we should finally know what we should have known at the beginning.

More Field Trip Pics

The pictures scattered around this posting are supposed to show two themes. First some of the creatures we encounter on a field trip include a huge ¨wooly worm¨with a very interesting tail

. One of the teachers was willing to show it on his arm. The monkey was a tame-wild camp monkey. He is free to run as he likes, but is clearly not afraid of humans. He is about the size of a very large rat. Of course, he was a constant pesk in the kitche, running over the food and the dishes. Didn´t seem to bother anyone but me.

There were two large parrots that were also tame-wild. They too came into the kitchen and dinning room at will. Some of our group were feeding them bread on the table. They enjoyed it so much they immediately left a ¨thank offering¨on the table before flying off. Again, I´m the only one bothered.

One picture above shows the camp from the river. It was actually about three times larger than the picture shows.

Finally, the kids had a lot of fun swimming in a waterfall and in the river. Of course kids go full blast all day and only crash when it is all over. It was a 12 hour day for all of us.

The field trip to the jungle was a great one. We will probably write a couple of blog entries about this trip. We will concentrate on the historical or "old ways" of doing things in this posting.

Cooking fresh fish and a look at the old hollowed out canoes used on the river for centuries were both a fascination.
On the way to our "camp" located about an hour out of Puyo, we stop near the camp site at a fish farm. The man working there threw a net into the water and brought back about six fish per throw. One of the teachers, who worked as a tour guide at one time, cut large green leaves from a plant on the banks of the pond. Pictures on this page show how the fish are finally wrapped in the leaves and placed over a low fire. It takes about an hour for the fish to be steamed (water coming from the leaves). The fish was absolutely delicious. Just wished the head and tail had been removed first. The insides were removed prior to cooking.

I am not sure about the kind of wood the canoes are made of. I had imagined canoes as we know them which are made of plastic. As the pictures indicate, these canoes are huge. They easily carry ten people and additional cargo beside. One of the hazzards of these canoes is that over time they tend to crack. Some of the picture indicate strips of tin or even plastic nailed over the cracks. Nothing like getting a few more years out of a canoe that must have taken considerable time to hand carve.
Wasn't hard to imagine the local indian tribes catching fish, cooking them from nature's frying pan and eating them. It would have been a much more pleasant task then poling that canoe back up against a very swift current!
Please recall you can click once on any picture to enlarge that picture. Clicking the back arrow in the upper left of your screen gets you back to the blog.

Venting About Grading Students

Will have to ¨vent¨a bit today. Probably the next entry will have some pictures of the field trip.

Grading students can be more trouble than it is worth under the wrong conditions. I discovered today that about half the staff is so into the calculation part of grading that they give no consideration to the rest of the process. Wanting to calculate a grade to two and three decimal places suggests that student evaluation is as scientific as launching a spaceship. Problem is that there are some teachers who, judged by their actions, actually believe this to be true.

I am in the process of writing a one page paper that outlines a brief grading process. Taking an appropriate sample of questions from the unit, writing the questions in clear language, and considering statistical matters of too few questions (or even too many that makes the test time period the critical factor) never seem to be taken into account. Violating all these basics of test writing simply allows the teacher to calculate the results of a poorly written exam to two or three decimal places. What is this?????

I am hoping one of our co-teachers will translate the paper and make a presentation to the staff. Somehow we need to teach the fact that evaluating students is a process, not just a caculation. This fixation with detailed grade calculations also teaches parents that we are capable of that precise of a system of evaluating students.

Evaluation of students is, at best, an approximation! There, I feel better.

A Miss Is As Good As A Mile

Today was a fairly normal day. Only a few near misses. Kids were pushing to get on the bus which returned late from a field trip. Of course one fell down near the back wheels as the bus was rolling to a stop. Miss is as good as a mile, I guess. Saw some kids turning back flips on a landing pad today. One kid came very close to a miss and nearly hit his head on the cement. A miss is as good as a mile, I guess. Yesterday when kids were demonstrating their volcano productions, they used black cat firecrackers to explode down inside to produce smoke. One didn´t go off and a kid reached down inside to move it. It still didn´t go off. A miss is as good as a mile, I guess. Don´t knock leading a charmed life.

On Friday grades 8-9-10 are going on a field trip to the jungle. This includes waterfalls, river tubing , etc. I plan to go with them. I can only imagine on a day like this a miss better be as good as a mile.

Volcano Student Led Program Today

There are some days in education when things just happen to come together when the theory of teaching a concept meets the real world. Today was one of those days. The social studies class (grade 7) was studying volcanoes. The usual volcano erruption was produced by the proper chemicals.

About four student groups presented their project and made their volcano errupt with varying degrees of success.

Other classes looked on in anticipation as the volcanos did their thing.

You will notice in the background of some of these pictures that the rainforest is present as well as the fog. What you don´t see (and we had a hard time seeing it too) was the real volcano some 30 miles away was beginning to spit again. These kids live with the reality of volcanic ash being a part of their lives at any time. Fortunately, they are far enough away not to have to worry about evacuations or any real threat resulting from a serious erruption

And a good time was had by all while reality lerked in the background.

Back In Puyo

The bus ride from Quito to Puyo was fast and uneventful. The volcano in Banos along the way was quiet. We could see only a little smoke. The bus driver must have an important Sunday afternoon event in Puyo. We made the five hour trip in four and a half hours. We learned Sunday evening that another bus recently "lost it" and six people died in a crash.

The Latino culture which emphasizes personal relationships was alive and well when we returned to school. Special welcome was given at the morning assembly and staff and students gave personal welcomes all day. Nice to be back!

We are not sure what are next steps will be in working with teachers. We will meet with teachers on Wednesday, but Monday is too early to know the contents of that meeting.

This afternoon is hair cut time ($1 each) and time to restock the frig. We did some "difficult to find in Puyo" grocery shopping in Quito. Freezing fresh hamburger all night for the trip here yesterday worked well.

For those readers in the Midwest, please be reminded that it is the usual 75 degrees here with a little rain.

Funerals And The Return To Puyo

We are finally back. Our last posting indicated that we were leaving Ecuador for Iowa for the funeral of my mother. That travel included a lot of changing of air travel in order to get to Miami. Avianca (Columbian) airlines were wonderful in doing everything possible for us and with no additional charge. Phil Long made the trip to Miami in the middle of the night to take us to North Port where we changed our suitcase content from warm clothes to winter clothes and then took us on to Tampa to catch a plane to Iowa. The Longs were a vital link in making a difficult three day trip even possible. Thanks!

After the funeral of my mother it became apparent that my father would not live long because of kidney failure. Because he had bounced back so often we could not tell when he would go to join mom. We returned to Florida to take care of business and work around our house. On Friday January 4, my father died. We knew he had gone into a comma and had made plans to travel back to Iowa even before he died. His funeral was Monday January 7, exactly three weeks after the funeral of my mother. While saying goodby to both of them in such a short time was difficult, they both had such serious health conditions at the age of 89 that God spared them any additional suffering.

After spending some time on family business and visiting children and grandchildren, we returned to Florida on January 14. We left Florida yesterday for Quito. LAN Ecuador is one of the finest flying experiences we have had. A newly refurbished interior of the plane leaves each passenger with their own monitor and a wide range of entertainment options. The four hour flight went quickly with great service.

Today we will make the five hour bus trip from Quito to Puyo assuming the volcano is still just spitting and not fully errupting. We pass within two miles of this volcano at Banos. It will be good to get back to work.

After the experiences of the last month, we have so many friends, extended family, and even companies to thank for all the prayers and support. It is truely humbling.