Teaching English to Preschoolers

“Ma-ma-Mohammed!”

“Fa-fa-Farah!”

“Ba-ba-Bashar!”

The children enthusiastically shout their names and the sounds that go along with them, delighting in learning the English letters that their names start with.  They are my students at Al-Namothajia daycare, where I have been teaching 4 and 5-year-olds English phonics for the past two and a half months.  In addition to being the cutest beings on Earth, my students are filled with eagerness and quickly absorb the many songs, games, rhymes and words I teach them.  English is a ubiquitous language around the world, and even at this young age, I know that they hear English on TV, on the radio, on the street and in their homes constantly.  It must be thrilling to begin to make sense of the jumble of English they hear, like piecing together the clues to a mystery.

The biggest focus of my lessons has been for my students to learn the phonics, or sounds, that go along with the English letters.  The children had mastered the alphabet’s order and the names of the letters—their favorite song to sing is the alphabet song!—but the connection between, for example, the letter “D” and the sound “duh” hadn’t quite been made yet.  The nursery teachers asked me to focus on one letter per week, and the unhurried pace has proven valuable.  I plan two lessons a week, all centered around the letter we are learning that week.  When we did the letter “E,” for example, I played games where the children “exercised,” we looked at pictures of “elephants,” and sang songs beginning with the word “everybody.”  Throughout it all, I would repeat the letter E’s phonic: “Eh-eh-elephant,” the kids would happily chirp.

In the last three or four weeks, I have seen promising retention of these concepts.  If I use a word we previously learned, several children will say the phonic unprompted with it—“Ha-ha-hand!  Fa-fa-finger!”  I have also started informal assessments of the children’s ability to find the letter on an alphabet chart that corresponds with a certain sound.  At this point, at least 50% of my students are able to correctly identify the letters.

But the lessons in no way are all grammatical!  A large part of my goals in teaching at this nursery is for the children to simply participate in activities that are done entirely in English, even if they don’t fully understand all of the words I am using.  Learning English songs, or simple games like Simon Says, will increase their capacity to learn English later in school, as they will have had practice forming the sounds, words and sentence constructions associated with English.  And a personal benefit for me—I have had to learn some basic Arabic to translate the meanings of some of my lessons to the children.  It is truly a symbiotic relationship, and as much as I give the children as a teacher, I know that the joy that they bring every time they greet me with smiling faces and a zestful “Good morning, Miss Ashwini!” is worth more to me than I can begin to describe.

-Ashwini

Ashwini is an intern at TYO Nablus.

Intern Journal: Conversing and Corresponding in English

In addition to the dance and aerobics classes that I teach on-site at Tomorrow’s Youth Organization, I recently started leading English conversation classes at An-Najah National University for second-year medical students.  Most of my students have studied English for ten or more years, and they are all eager to put what they’ve studied to practical use in order to communicate effectively with native English speakers.  In our most recent class session, my students worked with a partner to develop appropriate dialogues to accompany the medical and social scenarios I assigned them, which ranged from communicating with a patient at the doctor’s office to inviting fellow classmates to form a study group.  I also arranged for my students to write a joint letter to an American peer: a fellow alumnus of Georgetown University who is now studying at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.  My students described their experiences studying medicine in a Palestinian context, and they were curious to learn about the opportunities and challenges that present themselves to medical students in the United States.  A few of them shared their motivations for pursuing a career in medicine, describing a doctor as “a servant to heal other’s wounds” and the medical profession as “the best way to help people,” and they asked their American “pen-pal” why he had chosen to study medicine.  We expect to hear back from him before our next class session, and his response should provide some interesting material for a class discussion!

- Julie

Julie is an intern at TYO Nablus and a participant in the Kalimatna Initiative.

INTERN JOURNAL: First Week

I’ve just finished up my first week of classes at TYO and I have to say that they have been much more challenging that I anticipated!  However, I think I’m getting the hang of things as the second class for both my moms’ dance class and my youth theater class ran much more smoothly than the first.  The cardinal rule about traveling and teaching is to adapt, adapt, adapt!  As I rework my teaching methods to better suit my students, I can already see my students getting accustomed to them.

Sundays and Tuesdays I will be teaching 45-minute dance classes to help the mothers and young women in the area have a chance to get a little exercise.  The ladies were a bit skeptical as to the health merits of dance, but I’m on a mission to disabuse them of this notion and I think that it is working!  My goal is to have them all be very tired and very sore at the end of each class, from not only having had a great time, but also from having used every muscle in their bodies.  As the women start to really get into the aerobic portion of the workout, I hope to have time to explore different dance techniques with them—ballet, jazz, Latin, hip hop and swing are all in my planned curriculum!  I really want them to see that working out doesn’t have to be boring and that you don’t have to run laps to get a great cardio routine in.  Over the coming weeks I will hopefully have a chance to stress healthy eating and exercising habits so that they all really feel good about their bodies and love to exercise!

Mondays and Wednesdays you can find me teaching theater to my 9-12 year olds.  We have some very strong personalities in our class and I can’t wait to channel all of that energy and confidence into performance!  In my introductory week I tried to show the kids some theater games, which are great for building group dynamics and teamwork.

Some games worked better than others and by Class Two I was much more prepared for my students.  Even simply adding chairs for each student to the classroom (theater classes generally use too much body movement to necessitate chairs) provided the structure that was missing in my first class and made for a better environment for the students.  And environment is absolutely key, which is why I am hoping to transform my classroom into TYO’s very first black box theater!  Black box theaters are simple performance areas that can be used for a variety of shows and rely on the creativity of the performers and directors (rather than fancy set and lighting) to put on a show—so they are perfect for schools, small venues, and TYO!

All in all I would declare my first week a modest success.  I will definitely be learning, changing and growing a lot and I hope that my classes continue to adapt and be enjoyable for my students!

-Bieta

An Unexpected Finale to a Night Out

A few days ago, the American and local staffs and the American interns left the grounds of TYO for a nighttime meal overlooking beautiful hills. While we knew there would be fun-filled, transliterated conversations (especially for the interns like me who don’t speak Arabic) taking place, the bonding that came to be at the end of the evening was a fabulous surprise to everyone.

I found that the evening began typically, with people waiting around the table, conversing about their jobs, complaining about the glacial nature of the wait staff, and taking turns watching Kais, psycho-social therapist Suhad’s adorable son, kick an inner tube around the pool while his older brother swam. After a few hours of eating and socializing, it was time for us all to pile into the brand-spanking new TYO bus and head home.

I don’t know if it was the general jovial mood that comes after eating a delicious meal in great company, the intoxicating rhythm of Palestinian pop, or the neon blue floor lights of our new bus but, as we headed out of Matah Zaman, the unflinchingly strong Palestinian spirit took over.

We clapped. We cheered. Some of us even sang and danced to the beat of the amazing music. And as we headed through the Israeli-manned checkpoints, we didn’t lower our voices, but raised them.

And what remained in my mind long after the drive was over was that spirit. That resilience, that perseverance, that beauty in the people I have found during my time here in Palestine, that ability to enjoy life despite the daily trials of a military occupation. It is that which I will miss dearly from Nablus.

-Maggie

Intern Kelsey’s Art Class Sings!

Check out this new video on TYO’s Youtube page singing a Nablusi song while making paper mâché!

Thank you, Al-Arz Ice Cream Factory!

As some of you may know, some items are just hard to come by in Nablus. We spent weeks looking for small, colorful pipe cleaners for crafts and, just as we were losing hope, our wonderful outreach specialist, Futoon, managed to find them!

For my science class, I was on the lookout for popsicle sticks. So many of my kids are interested in structural engineering and architecture that it made sense to start building bridges, houses, and anything else they wanted with popsicle sticks! You would not believe just how difficult it was to find popsicle sticks in Nablus. It may be my faulty Arabic, constant motioning to ice cream and saying the number “1000 please,” or my dissatisfaction with using tongue depressors as popsicle sticks from the local pharmacy, but I refused to give up on finding popsicle sticks.

Again, trusty and creative Futoon came to me with a bag of 1,000 popsicle sticks donated from the generous Al-Arz Ice Cream Factory. For that, my class and I thank you, Al-Arz Factory! The kids have been using the popsicle sticks with lots of enthusiasm to learn some basic physics and develop patience with falling towers.

Thanks for your kind donation! It is the simple gifts here at TYO that make big differences.

Pictures from Doris’ class!

Below are photos from my “Nabulsi Explorers” class and from our Ibrahim’s Path outing! The lesson for the day was “Portraits,” and we focused on how to use perspective, angles, light, and frames to take a creative and expressive photo. The lesson was part of our preparation for the students’ photography projects, in which they will use take-home disposible cameras to construct photo essays about their lives in Nablus.

Ibrahim, Amir, Yusef, and Muntaser show us they can take on the world in style.

Majdi has more kinetic energy than a speeding bullet, but his classmates got him to stay still just long enough to take this photo!

Hadil, Dalia, and the translator, Abeer pose with rubber tires being used to construct a jungle gym!

I thought to myself: "Why not use this opportunity to get a free glamour shot?"

Sundus' beautiful smile lights up the entire frame!

Intern Journal: Impossible to prepare

Now that the first two weeks of the summer session have ended, it’s time to breathe. We had two weeks of intensive preparation for what we would face as summer teachers here at TYO, but nothing could prepare me for what I faced. Nothing could prepare Kelsey when a young boy brought a knife to her class. Nothing could prepare me for having to defer kids from my class because they were too old and there was only so much chaos I could handle in a classroom with two volunteers. Nothing could have prepared us.

But more surprising than the chaos piercing your ears while kids play with the parachute on the bottom floor or while I watch Maggie surrounded by screaming children running and playing games around during every session of her Summer Camp class was the love that has pierced us interns.

It is the look of calm love as Maggie smiles when children scream around her. It is the way Kelsey walks her six to eight-year-olds in a single line, holding their hands, to the buses after a three-hour class, slowing down to match their slower pace. It is the way Adam tries to childproof everything in the building to protect the children, from putting foam around sharp corners and sandpaper on the marble stairs to slow the children down as they run up and down the stairs. It is the way Doris seems to notice every time one of her 15 or more students seems remotely bored, tired or sad and how she always addresses it immediately with concern.

We have fallen in love with the smiles of these children, and it’s entirely thanks to the people that have helped keep this beautiful organization running whether it is by coming to work or volunteer at TYO, mentioning it to a friend, donating to the website, or even sending a link to family members of the blog. So, thank you.