End of Term Exams

P2 working on their math end of term exam.

My time at Rwentutu Christian Community School ended with the end of the term exams.  As a teacher I was very nervous.  Even though I followed the curriculum I was supposed to I was nervous that things we hadn’t covered would be on the exams and or the extreme amount of information that my students wouldn’t be able to recall the large amount of information they were expected to memorize but not necessarily understand.   Any way I was nervous.

The exams didn’t follow our curriculum as closely as I thought they would.  Our English exam was fairly different than the curriculum work we had been doing in class.  I don’t know if this is because we are using an out dated textbook that I no longer matched up with the current scope and sequence of the National Ugandan curriculum, I am not sure.   I feel strongly that the English exam did nothing to really measure my students ability to use and understand English.  The exam was filled with sequencing and fill in the blank questions in which the directions barely made sense.

Both the math and English exams were riddled with typos in directions and questions that made it difficult for anyone, let alone a ELL P2 student to figure out what they wanted them to do.  I am seriously considering contacting PRIME to see if they would offer me a job from the U.S. to proof read some of these exams before they are distributed to EVERY school in Uganda.  When your English exam has grammatical errors in it and typos in mathematical sequencing questions it’s a miracle that anyone can answer in the “right” way.

In math the last few weeks of instruction I was debating with myself, Pamela, other teachers and Jenna about how to spend my time.  My students were far away from being done with the Math curriculum they needed to cover between the end of term 2 exam.  School was ending a week early and our first week at school was interrupted due to a water shortage and I was feeling the timing squeeze!  I was unsure whether I should keep going at a slower pace, really focusing on understanding, not memorization vs. exposing all of my P2 students to the rest of the content that could possibly be on the exam.  I really struggled with what to do. There are some students in my class who would be ready to move on quicker and really benefit from quickly seeing and exploring the new topics where as the majority of my students would benefit from spending more time working on understanding our current topics well.  In the end I decided to cut out a few topics that were review from earlier units and squeezed in an extra unit.  On the math exam the topic that I debated spending all of the rest of our time on was a major focus on the exam, the only topic that I taught that was actually on the exam.  Looking back I wish I would have just stayed working at the pace that promoted understanding instead of memorization.  Although this choice wasn’t entirely my own I do think I let the pressure of the exam over weight my knowledge of my students and how they learn best.

After my students took the exams I got to mark (grade) all of the exams.  For both English and math each question was worth 2 points and could be marked either right or wrong, no in-between.  I graded the exams very strictly, only allowing 100% correct right answers to pass as correct.  In a staff meeting during midterms King James stressed the importance of marking accurately because it gives the student an accurate gauge of how they are doing with the content.  While I was marking I was horrified at both the mistakes my students were making on the test as well as their percentages.   My students struggled with the directions and thus lost a lot of points because they didn’t understand what they were supposed to be doing.  This was very frustrating because I know that they would or could be capable if they understood what they were supposed to be doing. The lowest exam that I marked was 20% in English and the majority of the exams were between 40% – 70%.  While I was marking I felt like I had failed my.  Once I was back at school working with Pamela to fill out the end of the year reports I was surprised and happy to find out that almost all of my students improved on their end of term exam grades when compared to their mid term exam marks. 

After giving my students the end of term exams and marking them I wish I would have spent more time with them working on test taking skills.  My students need to practice reading directions and making sense of them as well as taking time to proof read their exams when they are finished.

It has been a strange experience teaching for the test.  During my entire time teaching here I’ve known that in the end my abilities or inabilities will be shown on the exam so I tired very hard to follow the national curriculum to a T and yet I feel as though I didn’t accurately prepare them for the exams.  I don’t yet know if that makes me feel like if I were to do it again if I would sick even closer to the National Curriculum or if I would now feel more comfortable straying a little when it was in my students best interest because the test was somewhat unpredictable.  This is something I am not yet sure of.

Rwentutu is working toward developing critical thinking in with their students but it is difficult because there is no space for it in the National exams and curriculum.  These independent thought and problem solving skills will be the most useful tools for our students as they move past primary school.  I celebrated this in my classroom by creating portfolios for all of my students’ creative writing work.  On our last day together I gave my students portfolios of all their writing work arranged by date so they could share their stories with their families and so they could see their development as writers and problem solvers. 

Queen Elizabeth

Here are some highlights from our game drive at Queen Elizabeth National Park yesterday!

Lion!

Kob!

Water buffalo!

Elephant

Hippo!

Kilembe Mines

Last weekend Sunday Jenna and I took a trip to the Kilembe mines with our neighborhood primary school friends.  The mine is a shut down copper mine that now uses the water to generate power and supply the surrounding community with power.  After an initial confusion we were able to go on a tour of the mine.

Jenna getting decked out in miners gear.

Starting out on our hike!

Water exiting the old mine

The shiny part is copper.

Our friends waiting for us, they didn't want to go underground.

Jenna and I infront of the old mine.

PD at Hotel Margarita

Every year the Canadian team hosts a Saturday professional development day for the teachers at one of the local hotels.   The Canadians were kind enough to invite us as well.  This year they decided on the Hotel Margherita.  The day pampers the teachers while also providing professional development.  Jenna and I attended and really enjoyed the day.

At about 11 o’clock the teachers arrived and we started with spiced milk tea, samosa and coffee cakes.  After the snack we started with literacy development, the teachers were broken up into different groups depending on the grade they teach.  The group I worked with did mostly imagery development.  Next we broke for lunch.  I got to try both the veggie curry and garlic chicken.  Then after lunch we worked on math games focusing on different ways to use cards, dice and dominoes. 

Jenna and I looking smart.

Getting started with tea.

The teachers at Rwentutu!!

Pamela, Me, Margaret, and Jenna!

My co-teachers and I!

The ladies looking great!

Happy!

Just cause were doing PD doesn't me we don't have fun too!

The day was wonderful.  It was so nice to spend a day with all of the teachers away from school.  The atmosphere of the PD session was very festive, like a party.  It was very different than the atmosphere of other PD sessions I’ve attended.  At the end of the P.D. the Canadian team gave the teachers a bonus, which was greatly appreciated because the teachers have not been paid since June.

Professional Development

My students working on creative writing

The Canadian team that is visiting provides professional development for the teachers and their focus has been literacy development for the past 6 years.  The national curriculum, which is almost exclusively what is taught at Rwentutu, does not have much space for literacy development as we know it in the U.S..  Within their English curriculum most of the content is focused toward vocabulary and grammar.   Focused reading and authentic writing experiences are almost non-existent.  This is something I noticed once joining P2.  At Rwentutu they have been working to create a space for real literacy development but it is still a work in progress.  In my P2 classroom I worked with Ziporah to make Library time more meaningful by working with students to select good fit books, practicing different types of reading out loud and creating time for creative writing.  

One of the Canadians big projects a few years ago was sticker journals.  These were journals that started with a sticker selected by the teacher which the student then created a story around.  This activity is paired with the prompt “If we stepped into your story what would we…. smell, hear, see, hear fell, touch, think, taste, ect." My P2 students are very familiar with this format and enjoy the opportunity to write creatively.  The prompt pushes students to be more descriptive in their writing. My students familiarity with this type of journal was evident when I did some creative writing with them when I gave them no prompt. Some students really wanted that sticker to jump start an idea where as others were excited to be able to write whatever they wanted.

This year the Candaians are focusing on reading, which I think is very important.  My friend Jenna who is also student teaching at Rwentutu did a lesson on reading were we were observed and our supervisor asked her “What is the point of letting them read books?”  This was not an academic exercise or challenge for her to defend her practice, this was an honest question and reaction to her lesson in which students spent the hour reading individually. 

At our professional development day the main focus was on reading comprehension.  The Rwentutu teachers were split into two groups based on what class they teach.  The Pamela, Zipora and I  worked with the P1, Top, middle and baby class working on building comprehension using images.    We focused almost exclusively on the concept of reading the pictures of a book, and practicing this skill with our students, then reading the text.   The teachers main role in this is picking an appropriate text and questioning students to push their engagement and increase their reading comprehension.

On Monday Pamela started this with our class.  I was very excited about it because our P2 classroom has a diverse group of readers with a few reading at grade level and almost all reading below grade level.   I have done a few read alouds with P2 however I noticed that my students with lower English abilities usually zone out during these readalouds.  I saw this picture reading strategy as a way to engage all of our students no matter what the English language ability is.  Pamela started by having students look at the cover and asked “What do you think this story will be about?”  Hands shot into the air and almost all students had ideas they wanted to share.  After watching Pamela do the picture reading I noticed that my students who are usually zoning out during read aloud were much more engaged, however when it came time to read the text as a group those same students where doing other things than following along with the text.  Over all I am very excited about how this strategy will help my students make meaning from the texts and also increase their ability to use images to check their understanding of the text.

The older classrooms, P3 and up, focused on reading comprehension strategies with chapter books.  They started by selecting good fit books, books with less than 5 difficult words on a page.  Next they looked at the cover and back cover and made predictions about what the text would be about.  Then they read for 10 minutes. After that 10 minutes they sketched an image detailing what they had read about.  Then they read for another 10 minutes, and sketched an image detailing what the new reading was about.  They ended their reading time with a summary written from the main characters perspective.

One thing I really liked about both PD sessions is that they all focused on images, which built off of the PD they have done in previous years with picture journals.  Have students study images in the lower grades is accessible to all learners no matter their English level.  Additionally asking students to draw images of what they are reading about allows us to check in with what they are understanding from their reading without adding another level of complexity by making them write about what they are reading. 

Note:  One thing that I am still struggling with and have been since I started working on reading comprehension and focusing on images in texts that may not make much sense to  my students.  The texts and images that our library is filled with are texts produced and published in the U.S. or Canada.  A lot of the images and stories don’t make a lot of sense within my students' lives.  This is something that I haven’t yet figured out how to navigate.  When I get home I will be researching more Ugandan published picture books.  I think it would be very cool for our teachers and students to publish their own stories and share them in the library.  Unfortunately wear and tear would probably destroy these texts faster than they could be produced, but this would be a very cool possibility.

A Very Ugandan Birthday

Last Sunday Jenna and our new house mates the Canadian team threw me a surprise birthday party!  They had been cooking a delicious meal all day and when Jenna and I went to the market they decorated the house, made me a giant card on the wall and as we walked in from the market they started singing happy birthday.  It was a wonderfully surprise.

My wall birthday card!

I even got gifts! 

Everyone enjoying the delicious spagetti with chicken.

AND the last surprise was Jenna
found me a CAKE!!!! :)  It was a delicious
spiced date cake.

Accountability

Rwentutu Christian School has a very complex accountability system.  Rwentutu is accountable to the families of the students they serve and the surrounding community.  After the third term in November Rwentutu P7 will take their final set of National Primary Exams which will dictate what secondary school options they have.  These results will be published in  newspapers and shared with the community.  This is the norm in Uganda.  Rwentutu is different because a major portion of their funding comes from Canada and with this funding comes specific goals and expectations that may or may not align with the teachers, community and parents goals and expectations.

Rwentutu was started by a parliament member Amos, who is from the Ruwenzori area, whose main goal was to build a school in the Rwentutu area.  During a change in administration he was forced to exile to Canada.  From Canada Amos continued toward his goal of creating a school in the Rwentutu area.  He raised funds from Canada and has worked with friends and colleagues in the area to make the school a reality.   Now that the school is up and running the connection with Canada is still strong.  Every year a team of teachers come from Canada to do professional development with the staff and deliver supplies.  This strong connection to those outside of the Rwentutu community place the teachers at Rwentutu in an interesting place.  They area accountable to the Canadians, however they know their school, their students and their needs much better than the Canadian teams do who stop in once a year.  It is a very unique and complex situation.

The Canadian team reports back to Amos and ultimately decide who keeps their jobs, who has what job and they decided if supporting the school is something they want to continue doing in the future.   I am very surprised that they feel as though they can make these recommendations after only two weeks in the school, with little observation of teachers.

The week before the Canadians came was very tense at school, our teachers were very nervous about meeting the Canadians expectations, maintaining their jobs and maintaining the monetary support from the Canadian team. 

The first week the Canadians were here there was a big disconnect between what they thought should be happening at the school, what they thought was happening at the school and what they thought would be best for the school. As they’ve been here and learned more about how the school is doing now the goals of the Canadians and the teachers at the school have become more streamlined.