Spelling Bee a success!!!! Plus Rashida Jones reads to our kids this week.

It seems every week I have a lot of items to go over in this blog.  The first is about the spelling competition I have been preparing for the last two months has finally happened and I have to say it was a big success.  I wish I had not been in charge so I could have taken video of the kids and especially the teachers during the competition.   Gladness Stephano won the competition but she got challenged by Teresia and Grace for Standard I (First Grade) and also Meri and Nice from Pre-Unity (K-6?).  I have been downloading vocabulary lists for first grade students in the states and pulled my list of words from that.  We started with a written test in Standard I and Pre-Unity with 25 words I would call out and give in a sentence.  Some of the items I also drew on the board to help them recognize what I was asking them to spell.  I had originally not planned to include the Pre-Unity group but the Head Teacher asked me to.  For the most part they had no clue what was going on, but Baraka P, Dorine, Meri, Noelli, and Nice all did as well or better than some of the Standard I students.

 

Gladness, our spelling competition winner!

In the second part, instead of asking them to orally spell the word I had them write it on the board.  I am pretty certain the teachers helped a little they got so excited during this part.  But Gladness, Teresia, Grace, Nice and Meri all approached their words and wrote them very confidently.  We started easy and worked our way up to harder words.  They had no trouble with words like Elephant, Apple, Banana, Eighteen, Fifteen, Triangle, Pyramid, motorcycle and Fraction.  Nice got knocked out on Flower using an "a" instead of an "e".  Meri had trouble the next round with "Doctor" after breezing through fifteen.  That left the three ladies from Standard I.  We went past the end of school bell before Environment finally broke the deadlock.

Next week is the math competition-you can only guess how excited I am.

On Friday, I did the religion class and discussed the Bible itself.  Things like how long it took to be written, how many languages, the types of writing and types of writers involved.  Normally they do choir practice but since I had the computer, the teachers asked if I would show some of my music videos like Babu Yetu.  

I also got the grades from the October end of month test.  The school overall stayed right in the 82 average score.  Standard I made the largest improvement with a 4 point increase but being the smallest class it did not have a huge impact on the overall grade.  I happy to say that for the third month since our "Reading with Barnabas" program was implemented we have seen an increase in Reading and Writing Skills.  Since the program started those grades have increased by 11 points each.

 

Standard 1:  Kimani in 2nd place, Teresia in 3rd Place and Gladness is in 1st again.

In the baby class we had some big turnover as some of the new kids (here for 3 months) started to reach the top grades in their class.  Mineal and Catherine both increased their grades by 22 and 11 points respectively.  Even sweet Isaack, who threw up last week, cracked the top three.  Here are the pictures of the top kids in all three classes:

 

Pre-Unity top scholars of the month.  From Left: Nice in 1st place again, Baraka P. tied for 3rd, Dorine in 2nd Place again, and Clara and Meri also in the 3 way tie for third place.  This is Meri's first time in the top three.

Some folks, including our teachers, wonder why I look so much at all the numbers on the tests.  This month we had a sudden drop in the Phonics score in both Baby class and Pre-Unity.  So I sat down with the head teacher and then he discussed with the teachers to see if we could find the reason why.  The culprit was Times New Roman Font.  The kids are used to seeing the small case A as "a" and not as "a"  that distinction threw them off in the Pre-School classes.  It cost them close to 40 points on that one test on average.  That is why I analyze the numbers.

 

Baby Class:  From left:  Catherine in 2nd place (her first time in top three), Mineal tied with Isaack for 3rd place (first time in top three for both of them) and then Gertrude who once again took 1st place. (Issack was out sick)

This week on the "Reading with Barnabas" Program we showed another Storyline Online Video featuring Rashida Jones reading "Please Please the Bees" written and illustrated by Gerald Kelly.  The kids continue to enjoy the stories and have become so well behaved, that I have added some music or funny videos to the stories they get to see.  I had hoped to make a big announcement concerning the Storyline Online fundraiser, but I think something got crossed up.  They have seen me posting the blogs about using their videos and asked for permission to write an article about "Reading with Barnabas" program using their videos for their fundraising banquet.  This is done by the Screen Actor's Guild AFTRA foundation so the event was a fundraiser where they honor directors and actors in a black tie affair.  I had sent in my permission to use the pictures from my blog and the article, but I must have been too late with the once a week internet or something along those lines because I have not heard back from them.  All the same it was nice they thought enough of what we are doing to write the article in the first place and I wish them great luck on fundraising for future videos.

On the crochet washcloths for the Christmas Shoebox alternative gift bags for our students front, I am up to 41 as of Sunday.  They have added about 5 students since I started this program, so I now need 60.  I have three more weeks so I am feeling a lot more comfortable I can get it done.  So long as I don't have any emergency travel coming up again.

I also wanted to show the rainbow picture I got but I will have to do that through instagram later since my internet will not upload that picture to Google for me.

Instead you get a flowering tree photo: