August 5, 2016 -- Comparing Emafini to CFIES Curriculum/Pacing Guides

August 5, 2016 – Curriculum and Pacing Guides – While both schools have curriculums, the grade 3 students of Emafini engage in the subjects of Math(s), English language classes, isiXhosa, and Reading.  This is very different for our CFIE students who are taught ELA, Math, Social Studies, Science as well as the arts through enrichment teachers.  Although we were told that the teachers do write lesson plans, I never seen more than the pacing guides in any of the third grade classes I interacted with.  The “English” classes are taught through the use of a workbook.  Students read and discuss a short passage and are given questions with fill in the blank responses that they copy in their notebooks.  Their readers contain short two page simple stories without much of an involved plot.  I have taught reading using two of the stories in the text.  I was told to select 10 “spelling words” from the text and list them on the board for the children to copy in their journals.  At first, I thought the teacher was going to test the students on the spelling of the words, but I think what she calls spelling is what I would call vocabulary.  I suggested having the students draw pictures to represent the words, but the teacher only wanted the students to copy the words.  Of course, I followed her directions, but felt certain that many of the students did not know the meanings of the words.  I read the story aloud first, discussed the vocabulary, we choral read the story and acted out the story.  Then I had the students “share pair” read with their elbow partner and I circulated and had individuals read aloud to me.  As in all classes, some students read more fluently than others.   Given my lack of isiXhosa skills, I felt very unsure of the students full comprehension of the stories.  Students then drew a picture of the story and were to write one sentence in English telling about their picture.  Some simply copied a sentence from the story, others actually created their own sentence about their pictures.  A few of the students’ sentences did not make sense.  I worked with the majority of the class while their teacher worked with a small group of 8 students who were reading something in isiXhosa.  Student English First Additional Language workbooks also contain a list of spelling-phonics words (oi/oy for example).  I did not see a relationship between the spelling patterns and words presented in the unit and the short reading passage.  I can only assume that there is a systematic process for teaching the English spelling patterns since my interaction with the students is at the beginning of their third term.