School opening extravaganza and more!

Our secondary school building was officially opened on June 21^st with much pomp and ceremony.  The planning has taken months. 

Some things happened at the last minute – painting lines on the carpark – and some had happened in the last week – the staff ‘uniform’.

 The parents from Katuuso arrived in their best gomesis.

The children and teachers have been practising their dancing and singing all term to be ready for this important day.  Parents have been bringing donations of food – a crowd of over 1000 were fed!  There was quite a large contingent from Australia; they were very impressed with the singing of Advance Australia Fair.  

The local Member of Parliament arrived slightly late as the Cabinet meeting she’d had to attend in Kampala went longer than expected.  We had an impromptu dance item by the construction crew to fill in time and also many parents were keen to show their appreciation and joy about the new school through dance!

It was a great day and everyone had a wonderful time.  There was a sense of relief and of a job well done when it all wound up.

The secondary school will have its first intake into Senior 1 next year.  There are 34 children doing Primary 7 at Katuuso and we hope to attract at least 40 more students from the Mbazzi local area so we’ll have 80.  One of my tasks over the last 6 weeks of this assignment is to look at what teachers we will need, what subjects we will have to teach and to find an amazing person to be the Head Teacher of Mbazzi Riverside Secondary School.  It’s an exciting new beginning for School for Life in Uganda.

One of the (native English speaking) office staff commented to me recently how horrified she was that many of the teachers misspelled opening.  English is such a difficult language!  There are rules of spelling, grammar and pronunciation that have so many exceptions.  We learn that for words ending with a short vowel then a consonant we double the consonant before adding ‘ing’, hence openning!  I hadn’t though about it until I pointed out an error on a poster one of my teachers had made and he reminded me of the ‘rule’.  He thought maybe it was because opening was also a noun.  I said it was just because English was a horrible language!  ( * See below for an example of ‘ing’ rules )

Pronunciation of English words is also a problem when children only have phonics as a guide.  I have compiled a booklet called Tricky words, which my father-in-law, Don, has illustrated.  It looks at the effect W has on vowels (woman and women are totally inexplicable!), the many silent letters and the minefield of ough, augh and their ilk.  I put it together for adult literacy teacher Joseph and printed him a copy but other teachers have since asked for a copy so it has become a bigger project than I originally envisaged.

Thanks Don for all your wonderful drawings!

A Guide to 'ing' in case you're interested!

The following is a guide to the correct spelling of –ing forms of verbs and gerunds (from the Grammar site http://www.grammar.cl)

The general rule when changing a verb into its -ING form is just to add -ING to the end of the verb.

Infinitive	ING form
to feel	feeling
to go	going
to work	working
to sleep	sleeping

• She wasn't feeling very well.
• He is working on a new project.
• The children are sleeping so be quiet.

Spelling exceptions

The following exceptions exist when spelling words ending in ING:

1). If the verb ends in an E we remove the E and add ING.

Infinitive	ING form
to live	living
to have	having
to make	making
to take	taking

• People are living longer now than they were 100 years ago.
• We are making a chocolate cake.
• He was taking his time to get ready.

2). If the verb ends in a consonant + vowel + consonant, we double the final consonant and add ING.

Infinitive	ING form
to stop	stopping
to sit	sitting
to plan	planning
to get	getting
to swim	swimming

• The policeman is stopping the traffic.
• We are planning a surprise party for our teacher.
• I think I am getting a cold.

3). If a two-syllable verb ends in a consonant + vowel + consonant, we do not double the final consonant when the stress is on the first syllable.

Infinitive	ING form
to happen	happening
to enter	entering
to offer	offering
to suffer	suffering

• What is happening?
• They are offering a discount.
• Many people are suffering from a lack of food and water.

4). But, we do not double the final consonant when the verb ends in W, X or Y or when the final syllable is not emphasized.

Infinitive	ING form
to fix	fixing
to enjoy	enjoying
to snow	snowing

• He fixing his bike.
• We are enjoying this great weather.
• It's snowing outside.

5). If the verb ends in IE we change it to YING.

Infinitive	ING form
to lie	lying
to die	dying
to tie	tying

• I know you are lying to me!
• You should water your plant more because I think it is dying.
• The little boy is tying his shoelaces.

6). If the verb ends in consonant + vowel + L, we normally double the final L and add ING.

Note: In the United States (US) they do not double the L when the accent is on the first syllable.

Infinitive	ING form (UK)	ING form (US)
to travel	travelling	traveling
to marvel	marvelling	marveling

• I have been travelling around South America for 6 months.
• He was marvelling at her beauty.

7). If the verb ends in a stressed vowel + R, we double the final R and add ING.

Infinitive	ING form
refer	referring
defer	deferring

• Are you referring to this one or that one?
• They are thinking of deferring payment of their mortgage.

8). If the verb ends in an unstressed vowel + R, we do not double the final R and add ING.

Infinitive	ING form
to offer	offering
to suffer	suffering
to whisper	whispering

• I am offering you a special deal. 
• He is now suffering the consequences of his actions.
• I wonder what he is whispering in her ear.

.

Road mending Ugandan style.

This is one of those times when you wished you could take photos but even so you couldn’t get it.  It was just so bizarre!

Driving home from Kibale NP we were dodging potholes in the very bad stretch of road between Fort Portal and Kyenjojo.  We came around a corner and there was a young man walking slowly down the middle of the road waving a hi-vis vest helicopter (or Kevin Sheedy) style above his head.

Following him was a tipper truck with 20 men standing in the back using shovels to pitch dirt into the potholes.  Their aim was very good!  Then followed a man with a eucalyptus branch, which he was using as a broom, sweeping any errant dirt into the potholes.  A water truck followed along last.  It sprays the water into the air to catch any airborne dust so you better be sure your windows are up and wipers working.

We laughed, but then we realised it actually does a good job!  The potholes filled the previous day were set hard as concrete and we were no longer having to dart all over the road to miss them.

Well done Uganda!  The only thing missing was the red and green flag wavers NOT telling us what to do.

Photos are of tea plantations along the road.  It is such a pretty part of Uganda!

Computers

Many teachers here had never opened a lap top computer before we started our computer competency classes 3 months ago.  Last week they were each presented with a certificate of participation in Beginner or Advanced Computer Competency.  The ‘Beginners’ have learned how to name and save a document and how to use WORD.  They have especially enjoyed changing the format of their documents and have used all the fonts and colours!  The Advanced class worked on inserting shapes and other things into Word documents and on the mysteries of Excel.

We had 8 assorted laptops for the 30 teachers to share while we were running the classes but have added to the store since – including 5 contributed by my dear Auntie Lyn.  (In some ways this is also thanks to my late cousin Allan who was an early adopter of computer technology.)  My sister Lyn has also contributed and my cousins, Ian and Sue, have chipped in with USB flash drives for the teachers.  We have enough computers now for the teachers of each class to have one to share and they should have a USB each with the ones contributed by volunteer Emily’s mum.

Now the hard part comes with teachers having to apply their skills to typing up their class and department reports and homework sheets.  We will need to insist on typed reports as, when you’re a ‘chicken peck’ typist, handwriting is faster and easier, but only practice improves typing speed and accuracy.  Evidence so far is that they’re giving it a go!

The other challenge has been teaching order and tidiness in relation to where documents are saved.  I find them littering desktops and unsorted in My Documents.  I am about to start ‘hiding’ unfiled docs.  They have been warned!

We have a small and cost inefficient printer at school so all but small numbers of documents need to go to the Kampala office for printing.  It’s just like when I started teaching 35 years ago and printing was done by the office girls and required a week’s notice!  Teachers will have to be organised.

Teachers had two weeks of PD before the students returned from their term I break.  We are so lucky to have this time of preparation and learning.  It was an excellent time for sharing ideas about active learning tasks and I gave the many examples with dice, cards and other ‘zana’.  One teacher talked about the importance of how a full stop is constructed – those on the right would result in a zero for that question!

I have been making dice from any cardboard I find.  Sizes range from 3 cm to 10 cm side length.  I have shown teachers how they can be used in maths and in phonics lessons.  Tr Geofrey from Mbazzi has taken it on with a vengeance and has made about a dozen for his P2 class.  Tr Racheal at Katuuso has also been inspired.

This large one is for a Phase 1 Phonics game.  It has the sounds a, i, n, p, s and t on the faces of the die and 18 small cards with a word on one side and a picture on the other - 3 for each sound.  I look forward to trialling it with the pre-primary class next week and then having a working bee to make some more. 

Phonics Phase 1 Game

The cut offs from the dice have also been transformed into cards for a Roman Numbers teaching task that I hope to see demonstrated by Tr Micheal next week.  Perhaps my next post will have photos of these teaching aids in action.

The children ( and teachers! ) are enjoying using the Jump Rope for Heart skipping ropes donated by Baimbridge College Hamilton.