Mid-First Semester Break 2019
We have finished our Mid-First Semester Testing and officially closed the school for their normal two week break. There was some good and bad for the whole of the last two weeks. First let me apologize for no blog last week as the internet was insufficient to post pictures with the blog.
We had our first set of tests printed by our new printer on site. Though it took a bit of doing to make that happen since it took 4 black ink print cartridges to print 600+ sheets for our tests. The printer was not expensive and the ink is fairly cheap and now I understand why. Though we have found a place to refill the ink cartridges in Moshi so I just have to tell the HP warning about using refilled cartridges to go away every time I use the printer now.
The previous week our "Reading with Barnabas" story was one of the Storyline Online stories featuring Caitlin Wachs reading the story. Don't worry I had to look her up too. While she is 30 years old, she is best known for playing kids on shows like Profiler. Her Twitter says she was a child actress but now is a human person. It was a good story about Sebastian who learned to overcome his shyness by learning to skate in the park.
This week our story was read by MUMC's own Jared Triplett reading "Goodnight Construction Site" where all the Construction vehicles were getting read to go to sleep. The kids loved it with all the funny pictures of the construction vehicles many of them things they have not seen yet.
The best thing about this week was the return of Gift (pronounced Gif-ty). He is one of our preschool students who got badly injured on his ankle from a fire. He has been out for several weeks but came back for the testing. (yeah I know that is opposite of the US) Gift is one of those kids who always flashes a good smile and is just nice to everyone. So I was very happy personally to see him back at school.
So on to the testing results, which I know many of you have been waiting patiently for. Our school overall did great again with an average score of 82. This includes the skew of our Pre-Unity class which featured 19 students with a perfect score out of 30. Yes I have had a second talk with that teacher and the head teacher about it needs to be more of a challenge. Our Standard teachers have that perspective down pat with their average grade being 75.
Standard II class finished up as expected, though only 2.8 points separated 1st and 3rd place and Gladness did not win 1st place until the last test. The first place prize this month for the two standard grades was really nice. One of the books that has three stories in it from Kohl's after Christmas sale.
Standard I had a huge shakeup-For the first time since we have been keeping records, Nice did not finish first. She blew it on her Math test, which means I get to rib her even more. Though only one point separated 1st and the tie for 3rd place. Congratulations to Baraka P. who has been hanging on to second and third for most of last year and all of this year for finally getting first place.
Now to our pre-unity and the 19 kids that finished in 1st place with perfect scores. The lowest score not including the student that joined the school last week (more on that in a second) was 94. Again I think we need to challenge them a little bit more. The student who transferred in last week was actually a standard II student in a government school. They could only transfer him into Pre-Unity because he had taken an English class. He scored a 66 with his highest score actually coming in English. I think that says something about how much our kids are learning that a student from another school drops down two grades and gets the lowest score in the class by 30 points.
We have hired a new teacher (actually supposed to be an assistant in the Baby Class) named FIimena. So they split the Baby class into two separate classes called the middle class (as in it is the middle pre-school class) and Baby Class. The middle class did well with an 89 average. I don't push this group to make the tests more challenging just the last pre-school.
The Baby class also did well, though I think at that age you should grade them on if they can sit down for more than 10 seconds. You know what I mean.
So you are probably wondering how my individual tutoring with Elvice went. I can say it was a moderate success. I only had three weeks with about 3 hours per week to go over a lot of things. Of the things I was able to cover with him he did well. He is still struggling with the concept of opposites and when they asked to give the plural or single of a word in a sentence format he struggled but he did well when it was just here is the single give us the plural version. Even on tricky ones for his age like glasses, branches and children. On math he did well on carrying numbers forward, showing he understood what were hundreds, tens and ones in a number. Things I did not get to cover with him in depth were borrowing and writing numbers in words. So I think if I keep this up he will bring his grade up to the 70s which is my immediate goal for him. Right now he still brings up the rear with a 38 but that is almost 10 points higher than last month.
On Thursday we had a ceremony to give out the prizes for top students and then we were supposed to be in class going over the correct answers for the tests. However one of the problems we have with our headteacher is his inability to control his teachers who basically turned it into free time for all of Thursday and what little the kids were there on Friday. Friday was more about giving the kids instructions for the break. In the US we could cover that in under 15 minutes, but here it takes a couple of hours and formal ceremonies with the teachers all seated up front leaving me to do crowd control with the students who started to get ancy.
I did get some good photos though with the one at the top of this blog being my favorite one. The first one needs some explanation though. So many kids got 1st place in Pre-Unity that those who made a simple mistake on their test were knocked out. Agnes who is a very sweet girl started to cry because she did not get a prize and could not stop so we had to give her the Baby sleeping mattress so she could cry herself to sleep for a bit.
We had our first set of tests printed by our new printer on site. Though it took a bit of doing to make that happen since it took 4 black ink print cartridges to print 600+ sheets for our tests. The printer was not expensive and the ink is fairly cheap and now I understand why. Though we have found a place to refill the ink cartridges in Moshi so I just have to tell the HP warning about using refilled cartridges to go away every time I use the printer now.
The previous week our "Reading with Barnabas" story was one of the Storyline Online stories featuring Caitlin Wachs reading the story. Don't worry I had to look her up too. While she is 30 years old, she is best known for playing kids on shows like Profiler. Her Twitter says she was a child actress but now is a human person. It was a good story about Sebastian who learned to overcome his shyness by learning to skate in the park.
This week our story was read by MUMC's own Jared Triplett reading "Goodnight Construction Site" where all the Construction vehicles were getting read to go to sleep. The kids loved it with all the funny pictures of the construction vehicles many of them things they have not seen yet.
The best thing about this week was the return of Gift (pronounced Gif-ty). He is one of our preschool students who got badly injured on his ankle from a fire. He has been out for several weeks but came back for the testing. (yeah I know that is opposite of the US) Gift is one of those kids who always flashes a good smile and is just nice to everyone. So I was very happy personally to see him back at school.
So on to the testing results, which I know many of you have been waiting patiently for. Our school overall did great again with an average score of 82. This includes the skew of our Pre-Unity class which featured 19 students with a perfect score out of 30. Yes I have had a second talk with that teacher and the head teacher about it needs to be more of a challenge. Our Standard teachers have that perspective down pat with their average grade being 75.
Standard II class finished up as expected, though only 2.8 points separated 1st and 3rd place and Gladness did not win 1st place until the last test. The first place prize this month for the two standard grades was really nice. One of the books that has three stories in it from Kohl's after Christmas sale.
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| From the Left: Theresia 3rd place, Kimani 2nd place and Gladness 1st place. |
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| From Left: Clara and Dorine for 3rd place, Nice in 2nd Place and Baraka P. in first. |
We have hired a new teacher (actually supposed to be an assistant in the Baby Class) named FIimena. So they split the Baby class into two separate classes called the middle class (as in it is the middle pre-school class) and Baby Class. The middle class did well with an 89 average. I don't push this group to make the tests more challenging just the last pre-school.
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| From Left: Kindness 3rd place, Zoe in 2nd place and not pictured is Yahya in 1st place |
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| From Left: Ramathan and Esta tied for 3rd place, Precious and Evaline tied for 1st Place |
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| The new Baby class teacher |
So you are probably wondering how my individual tutoring with Elvice went. I can say it was a moderate success. I only had three weeks with about 3 hours per week to go over a lot of things. Of the things I was able to cover with him he did well. He is still struggling with the concept of opposites and when they asked to give the plural or single of a word in a sentence format he struggled but he did well when it was just here is the single give us the plural version. Even on tricky ones for his age like glasses, branches and children. On math he did well on carrying numbers forward, showing he understood what were hundreds, tens and ones in a number. Things I did not get to cover with him in depth were borrowing and writing numbers in words. So I think if I keep this up he will bring his grade up to the 70s which is my immediate goal for him. Right now he still brings up the rear with a 38 but that is almost 10 points higher than last month.
On Thursday we had a ceremony to give out the prizes for top students and then we were supposed to be in class going over the correct answers for the tests. However one of the problems we have with our headteacher is his inability to control his teachers who basically turned it into free time for all of Thursday and what little the kids were there on Friday. Friday was more about giving the kids instructions for the break. In the US we could cover that in under 15 minutes, but here it takes a couple of hours and formal ceremonies with the teachers all seated up front leaving me to do crowd control with the students who started to get ancy.
I did get some good photos though with the one at the top of this blog being my favorite one. The first one needs some explanation though. So many kids got 1st place in Pre-Unity that those who made a simple mistake on their test were knocked out. Agnes who is a very sweet girl started to cry because she did not get a prize and could not stop so we had to give her the Baby sleeping mattress so she could cry herself to sleep for a bit.
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