Today was Practicum! It went very well! I was sooo nervous at first just because I wanted to do really well. I taught on soil composition. We discussed the three types of soil and how they become acidic and basic. I also taught on the basic nutrients in plants and how the lack of nutrients in plants effect the soil. We did fill in the blank on flip chart paper (big poster board size) and I said things like "I am a soil. Water cannot pass through me. Who am I?" And I had students come up and fill in the blanks. I did the same thing for nutrients as well. When I got through the material I had them use their creativity to draw a loamy soil which has three different components. Then I said draw a plant from your soil and label the nutrients that are essential to plant growth and soil fertility. These kids were so creative!! I was so excited that they worked so hard on their drawings. When they were finished they presented their pictures and explained to us why they labeled certain things. 

After the lesson Kim debriefed with me and had lots of positive things to say! I was so excited to hear that! She said I have a wonderful teacher presence and awesome organisation. She said my lesson was wonderful and I had great use of the board. The only suggestion she gave me was to slow down sometimes when I explain things. Since I am a native English speaker I have to remember to slow down my words. Other than that I got only positive feed back! 

After class we danced with our students to one Tanzanian song that they all love! Then we headed home for lunch. I took a nap for an hour before Swahili. Swahili was two and a half hours today!! Super long. We did drills outside where we practiced speaking with a teacher and they asked us questions, etc. I liked that a lot, it was very helpful to me. I definitely learn by doing and practicing. 

After Swahili we had tea and had a session on critical thinking. We learned about blooms taxonomy, which is a pyramid that categorizes the levels of questions. We looked at two of our lesson plans from this week and had to see where they fell on the pyramid for the type of questioning we have been doing with our students. All of mine fell under comprehension and application which are in the middle of the pyramid. The highest level of questioning is evaluation and synthesis. Examples are designing and debating. We had to rewrite one of our lessons incorporating a higher level of questioning. This was a really useful session. Because a lot of my students are struggling on such lower levels of the pyramid and I feel like I'm really challenging them, but the thing is there are much higher levels that I need to assess so it's hard to find that happy medium. 

After session we had dinner and then lesson planned for tomorrow, the last day of our teaching week! (The next time I teach will be at my site! That is so exciting!) I decided that since tomorrow is Friday we would have a review day of all the material we covered this week. It will also be a good way to close out the week. Emily and I made jeopardy with math and chemistry. We incorporated all of the topics that we have taught this week by making them different categories. Hopefully they will understand how to play the game! We will have to explain it to them a few times. I will let you know how it goes! La la salama.