Math Competition and School Meetings

 We continue with the advanced pace at the school heading to the end of the school year.  This week we had our normal events like "Reading with Barnabas" and classes, but we added in our Math Competition which I have been working on for the last two months and a sort of surprise school parent committee meeting (I will explain later)

Let's start with the big event for me, the math competition.  I tried to model this on the MathCounts competition the Professional Engineering groups have for middle school kids.  However I had to modify for the school level of our students (obviously) and somewhat for cultural understandings.  We started the morning off much the same as the spelling bee.  The Standard I and Pre-Unity Classes were given a written test so I could get the 10 best performing students.  We had a large group tie for 6th place and for 10th place so I actually just had the top 9 students for the afternoon competition.  We held the afternoon competition during the debate time period.

The afternoon competition consisted of 4 rounds.  The first round consisted of 6 simple math problems with 6 minutes to complete the round.  Each of these questions count as 1 point.

The second round were slightly more difficult math problems.  The difficulty was cause by either having to carry a digit from the ones to the tens or borrow from the tens.  This round consisted of 6 problems (G-K) with 10 minutes to complete.  Each problem was worth 2 points.

The third round were much more difficult math problems.  Typically these had addition and subtraction as a part of the problem or adding into the hundred by adding three large numbers.  (remember these are 1st graders).  There were 4 math problems (M-P) in this round with 10 minutes to complete and each problem was worth 4 points.

The fourth round were four individually timed questions.  Two were word problems and one was a difficult math problem and the fourth was a recognition problem (where they need to recognize the solution without really thinking about it).  Recognition problems are a great way to determine how many math problems they are trying on their own.  The more they do the more likely they will recognize the easy solution.  For example 24 +24-24=. 

So they had a total 54 points they could acquire over the four rounds.  Teresia blew everybody else out of the water with 30 points.  Next up was Kimani at 21 points.  I was hoping more of them would have gotten in double digits but this is the first time they have had to work problems with a time element.  The first word problem, I recognized that most of them were writing the problem on their own sheet of paper word for word and time expired before they got anywhere.  So the next word problem I talked to them about looking for the important information and what you want to answer.  I was shocked during the written portion to see the Pre-unity class have an easier time reading questions about a survey than the Standard I class since that was a question directly from the Standard I Mathematics book.  The Pre-Unity also did a good job with other questions they have never seen before. 

I am sorry the pictures from the competition were not better, but since I was leading the competition I had to rely on others to take them.  You still get the general gist.

One of the other big events of the week was the School committee meeting.  It sort of was a surprise and sort of not a surprise.  They have been talking about it for months.  This week they informed it would be Saturday and they needed me to type up a letter to the parents to let them know on Tuesday.  Now I normally try to stay out of Tanzania meetings.  In the past they normally start several hours late, run for way too many hours to cover what they need to.  My presence also tends to lead to a trend of what can the White guy do for us line of discussion.  The other line of discussion was to complain.  These were my experiences at my previous site.  This was my first meeting here.

I was pleasantly happy to find we start on time here or at least within a couple of minutes.  Only 4 people showed up late, most where there early.  We had a good turnout of 28 parents not including our staff and the school supervisor who has a kid in the school also.  This was pretty good considering the rain we could see moving in since the previous night.

sitting on the porch reminds me of being a teenager cutting fields with the tractor bush hog and watching rains roll in wondering how much time I have left.  They took about 3 hours to get to us from this picture but the majority of rain happened during our meeting the next day.

What was also different was the seating arrangement.  Normally those that get there first pick their seats based on what they want to accomplish.  Here younger parents went to the back and the older parents sat closer to the front.  Never once did they start the line about what we could be paying for in addition to what we already were.  Instead they acknowledge and thanked us for everything we have done and are doing.  Some of the parents even thanked me personally for the spelling and math competition, the felt had sparked their children to work harder as well as for the "Reading with Barnabas" program which most of the kids talk about when they go  home.

At the end of the meeting they elected an actual school committee.  This was done by everybody lowering their head so they could not see and raising their hand for their candidate.  The first proposed people in the group they felt should be on the committee.  The first couple of votes were to decide the leadership then the committee members.  I was happy to see mostly those who raised opinions and discussed items during the previous parts of the meeting.  Those parents will be engaged.  Two others were voted in that had not spent much time talking during the first part.  At least one gentlemen declined to be on the committee even though he had been very active.  They told me later he is actually the headmaster at the primary school close to the district headquarters about 5 miles away.  He and three teachers from other primary schools are sending their kids to our school.  That seems to be a pretty good endorsement. The last big surprise-they ended early.  Only 2 1/2 hours total despite allocating 3 1/2 hours for the meeting.  I was very happy with this meeting.

 

The official school committee after about 5 votes.

This week Lily (the daughter of my high school friend) read Eeyore finds Friends written by Isabel Gaines and Illustrated by Josie Yee.  When she finishes reading her story she waves to the camera and says goodbye.  The kids are all waving back now.

On the shoebox alternative front, I found out the government wants them to promote all of our kids based on age and not on how ready they are for the standard classes.  So I need one additional bible story book which I have to go all the way back to Arusha to get.  Plan to do that next weekend.  Here is hoping I can get internet to watch the Clemson game which I believe is against Carolina that weekend.  Here is hoping!

I also got a great week of crochet in bringing my total number of washcloths up to 56 leaving 4 more to go!  I also completed a pattern in the pentagon shape.  So now I have rectangles, triangles, circles (hexagons), squares, pentagons and hexagons.  I tried to make true octagons but they just don’t lay flat because I keep increasing too much.  The circles are actually done based on a pattern that increase by six every round so they are actually hexagons and not true circles.