Storyboarding

I spent the day with the boys today, working with Grade 3, 6 and 9. Sadly my Grade 3 lesson wasn't that much of a success..... Enough said
Grade 6 are retelling an Arabic folktale, Ali and the Camel race. Today I gave them the storyboard and a whole lot of thumbnail images and they had to retell the story by cutting out and sticking the images onto the storyboard. Storyboarding is a new concept I have introduced in my schools. The students here are all engaged. Do they see the relevance and the purpose? I can't answer that because students in my schools are pretty compliant. They do tasks because it's the thing to do. It's all about respect which is one of the pillar of Muslim faith and therefore a value. I've sat in on some crap lessons, and the students just sit through them. No one would say this is boring!

Tonight for homework they have to write the captions in English to correspond with their images. The captions will be written but sadly not by most of these students. In this country the girls frequently do their brother's homework. You can tell because everything is in pink and has lots of flowers around the edges and borders and the language is so different. In the higher grades the students often pay some Indian or Pakistani worker in the local village to do their classwork and assignments eg create a spreadsheet for a car budget. When it matters I often get the boys to plan things on paper and collect the papers in, and watch the project grow from the drafts and additions. I'm doing moderation at the moment for secondary classes and its amazing how some of the finished products have suddenly deviated from all the drafts. I have been teaching long term and learnt these tricks.