

Monday, November 4, 2013

Geography With Class 3 + 4

For my first week teaching class 3 and 4, ages 8 - 10 years old, at Navunisea Primary School, Cara (the other volunteer in class 3 and 4) and myself decided to do a geography lesson. 

Cara had done a great job at drawing a map of the world, and painted the continents in different colors to make it more visual. I started with introducing the notion of the world being made up of 6 continents: Asia, Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania and Antarctica. We went through the pronunciation of each continent several times and the students repeated each word. 

I then introduced the notion of country. I started with Fiji, so they could relate. I asked what the capital city of Fiji was, and what the Fijian flag looked like. I then told them that Cara was from another country, called Germany, and that the capital city of Germany was Berlin. I then showed them what the German flag looked like. I am from France, so we went over the same details for France as well as 3 other countries; the USA, Brazil, and China.

We practiced the pronunciation of each country and capital city, as well as the colors of their different flags. 

I had made stickers for each flag and each continent. I placed each flag on the map to then show where each country was. To make it more interactive, I came up with a little exercise: I told them that France was in Europe and asked who wanted to come to the blackboard and place Europe on the map. They had to use the colors assigned to each continent to determine where each continent was. All the hands in the class were up and all the kids wanted to come and participate. 

It was so rewarding since most these notions were totally new to them.

Finally, in the afternoon for arts and crafts class I asked them to pick a flag of their choice and make a collage to represent that flag. It was a great day!

Now all the new volunteers that will come to the class can keep showing the kids where they are from and therefore the kids will keep practicing. 

-Nathalie, 3 week Expedition Volunteer Dawusamu 
Paris, France