Big day for literacy and education

Today we welcomed Dr. Terri Bucci and other educators to Ecole Shalom. Terri is running a teacher-training seminar in town tomorrow, and several of our teachers will be there, so we decided to demonstrate how the XO laptops could be used to promote literacy in the Haitian Creole language.



For reading material, we used an illustrated story kindly offered to us by the IOM. Vivid pictures explained the situation (a mother and baby seeking shelter from a cyclone) and vital safety information. As the class read through the story, I asked questions about what was happening, and directed kids to mimic sounds that the character might hear. We noticed that students in the back row were doing most of the reading, so I asked the front two rows to complete the story. All in all, this had to be one of our best classes in terms of engagement and participation from the kids.



That group had to leave, but later in the day we held a grammar class with 5th and 6th grade, followed by an after-school sensors project with 1st and 2nd graders. This is building up to a larger project where we can use Crikey (the modified Measure activity that I'm working on) to respond to sensors with recorded sounds. I also want to add to our set of sensor-based activities by working with the Physics and Bridge activities.