Messages of the Day: 1. The purpose of life is not to win, the purpose of life is to grow and share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in your life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasures you brought into other people's lives that you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them. Attributed to Robbi Harold Kushner.
2. If the child is not learning the way you are teaching, then you must teach in the way the child learns. Attributed to Rita Dunn.
Shared by Gary
Today started as usual, with the
team getting together for breakfast. At
9:30 the classes started. As everyone
knows, since the study teams are of different capability levels, there is no
uniformity in the manner that each class is conducted.
In my class, which covers the
more advanced group of “English speakers” (of the seven class members, five
have been studying English for six years and the other two have been studying
it for eight years), we started with a game of “Quiddler” – this is a
relatively new game which consists of a deck of cards with varying quantities
of each letter of the roman alphabet (numbers of each letter vary with the
frequency of how often that they appear in normal, regular, everyday
usage). In addition to the twenty-six
standard letters, there are five letter combinations such as “qu”, “th”, “in”,
etc.; and rounds are played with the dealing of three cards, then four, then
five, up to twelve. Points are scored
based upon the number values pre-assigned to each card, with bonuses for longest
word and most words formed.
In the second hour of class, we
played a game of Scrabble. In order to
make the game a little quicker, we played in teams of two, with the instructor
sitting in as one of the team members.
The game today was slightly more difficult than previous ones we had
played, because for some “fall of the tiles” reason, we wound up being somewhat
constricted in our ability to play, due to the fact that with the overlapping
of words, our playing area was somewhat confined to only the upper left
quadrant of the playing board, which left only opportunities to play one or two
letters on each subsequent turn.
In the third hour, I was able to
borrow one of the “Uno” decks from one of the other volunteers and play a game
with the class. This seemed to be a
pretty good “hit” with the class members since during the third game the final
players were willing to play for ten minutes into their break period in order
to finish the game.
During fourth hour, we had a
presentation by a team member who is on her twentieth or so Global Volunteers
program in Poland. Lori gave a presentation about the “Community Jingo” game by showing and explaining a large number
of photographs that she had personally taken to show a large number of
items/locations within the USA and explaining what they were (with translation
help). Many of the items were things
that were common to both Poland and the USA, but some were only used in the
USA; the items included fire stations, police stations, libraries, community water
pressure towers, and numerous other items, so as to have the class members more
conversant with things as they are in the US.
This completed the formal class presentations for the day.
After lunch Dorota, the team
leader, asked each team member to give a brief presentation about what seemed
to “work best” during each instructor’s morning period.
In addition, as a personal item,
I must add that I find it exceedingly interesting to be working in this
particular program with both my son and grand-daughter; but NOT to be working
directly with them. It is interesting to
hear my son’s insights into this program, since in his “American life,” he is also a school teacher of the same relative age group
that we are working with here. Further,
it is also very interesting to see how the girls in the program react and
interact with my grand-daughter who is also in the same age grouping as many of
the participants.
The highlight of the
evening was, of course, the campers’ talent show. Not only was there a great variety of acts,
but also included were two of our very own team members. The phenomenal variety of acts ranged from
the standards of singers, both male and female, and also included instrument
players including the clarinet, the violin and the piano, but there were also
multi-talents displayed. One of the
presenters played the violin, sang a separate song, and also presented some of
the horse artwork that she had drawn. The
two members of our team that presented were Sophia who sang one of her
self-written songs (that she had taught to one of the campers so he could
accompany her while she sang), and Ben who did a record setting solution of
Rubik’s Cube that he solved in 1 minute 27.8 seconds. Unusual talents that were displayed were
karate and a female “rap dancer”. Further, the camp director also began the
whole evening with a vocal presentation.
Including the director, there were at least fourteen acts presented. At
the end of the program each person received a certificate of recognition.
A good time was had by all.
Journal prepared by Richard
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