Mid-Year Sports & Games Day

To celebrate the completion of one whole semester, we had a sports and games day the day before the last day of the term.  Students are always excited when they are allowed to wear play clothes to school and they get to just have fun playing with their classmates.  As an administrator, I find it a bit chaotic and makes me so thankful that our schools days are usually much more structured and organized.  I'm also very thankful to say that we walked away from the day without any major injuries.  Kids and teachers had a blast. I didn't have to take anyone to the hospital. I'll count that a successful sports and games day.

Standard 3 Water Relay

Starting off passing the water as instructed

Quickly deciding: Forget this, I'm just going to turn and pour :)

Standard 1 Sack Race

Standard 7 Sack Race

Teacher vs. Student

Standard 5 Soccer

Standard 1 Water Relay

Standard 6 Sack Race

Pre-Primary 3 Sack Races

What happens when 3-year olds do sack races
with sacks that are bigger than them.

Standard 3 Sack Races

The day ended with a teachers vs. students soccer match.  This was probably the highlight of the day for many students.  They think it is the best to see their teachers out there playing and to have the chance of beating them.  In the last 2 minutes, however, the teachers scored a goal for the win, 3-2.

What a fun end to a wonderful semester full of hard work by all!

The same week, our girls soccer team was selected to represent our entire region in the national soccer competition.  They'll continue their training for the first couple of weeks of June and then will travel to the national competition towards the end of the month.  We're excited for them!

The team with their regional coach

Energy Science Experiments

As I mentioned in the previous post, the S6 science class spent the next week doing various experiments pertaining to energy.  I would like to share some of their documentation and findings.

One group tested the temperature of metal containers that were painted black, red, and white plus one that was left unpainted.  It was rainy season, so they couldn't test it with solar energy.  But they got the same results that we would have expected by using candles as the heat source.

Another group experimented with forms of energy.  This is a classic.

This group experimented with energy changing forms.

And the final group did further investigation into how the village uses energy wisely or unwisely.  After their discoveries, they made some recommendations of how to be good stewards of energy.

Energy Research Presentations

In the previous post, I included some footage from research and investigations that the S6 science class was doing about energy.  The next step of their project was to present their findings.  Here are some snippets from their presentations.  Even if you can't understand what they are saying, it's pretty entertaining to watch the teammates.  Keep in mind that they are 6th graders.  They're still working on their presentation skills, but they've definitely made progress :)

One group presented on different energy sources that God has given us:

Here is just the introduction of a presentation on forms of energy.  It's enough to show you who the class clowns are because you know there's at least one in every class.  Haha!

And my group presented their findings of how the village is being good stewards of energy and using energy wisely.

After doing their research to gain some foundation knowledge and presenting it to their classmates, each group moved on to experiments.  Look forward to those in a future post!

Student Projects and Demonstrations

As we near the end of the 1st semester, I am busy visiting all the classrooms to observe my wonderful teachers.  I see so many exciting things happening.  Here are just a few of the projects and demonstrations I've seen taking place.

The Standard 5 class was studying vehicles in science class.  At the end of the unit, the teacher had them gather materials to design and construct their own simple vehicles.  The vehicle had to carry the weight of at least one Bible.  With copier paper boxes, food boxes, tea boxes, tape, nails, and some tools all the groups were able to create vehicles that successfully carried the weight.  Here are the teams hard at work.

In Standard 3, they were learning about the different body systems.  On the day I visited, they were specifically learning about the cardiovascular system and common diseases that affect the cardiovascular system.  The teacher wanted them to understand clogged arteries, so he had a great demonstration to help them really grasp the concept.

Each group was given two straws (labeled straw A and straw B), petroleum jelly, a thin stick, a pipette, and water.  Straw A remained completely empty.  They filled straw B with petroleum jelly.  Then they filled the pipette with water and squeezed it into straw A to see how "the blood" freely flowed through the "artery", as it should.  Then they filled the pipette with water again and squeezed it into straw B to see that the "blood" was blocked by the "buildup of cholesterol and fatty deposits" in the "artery".  It was clogged!  For the final demonstration, they stuck the thin stick through the petroleum jelly and again squeezed a pipette of water into the straw to see that the "artery" was partially clogged which made the "blood" flow very slowly.  Isn't that great?  That's the type of learning that kids will remember.

Standard 6 is doing a unit on energy - energy sources, energy conversions, and using energy wisely.  I got to join a group of students going around the village to see how we are using energy, whether wastefully or wisely.  Here are some of their findings.

Don't let me fool you into thinking they're always on task and serious.  They're just as goofy and silly as any group of 6th graders.  Sometimes you just have to laugh :)

Teacher In-Service Marshmallow Challenge

At the end of our two-week midterm break, the teachers came back for two days of in-service before the students returned.  Our days were a mixture of team building, training, and classroom work time.  One of my favorite activities from the two days was The Marshmallow Challenge.  This was an activity I'd done with my previous work team, and I thought it was great for teaching teamwork and the value of learning from trials and mistakes.  Each team was given 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti, 1 meter of tape, 1 meter of string, and 1 marshmallow.  The task as to build the tallest free standing structure that would hold the marshmallow on top in only 18 minutes.  The spaghetti can be broken, the tape and string can be cut, but the marshmallow cannot be altered.  I captured their progress at each 5 minute interval.

At 5 minutes:

Team 1

Team 2

Team 3

Team 4

Team 5

 At 10 minutes:

Team 1

Team 2

Team 4

Team 3

Team 5

 At 15 minutes:

Team 1

Team 2

Team 3

Team 4

Team 5

I got caught up in the excitement in the end and forgot to take final pictures after the 18 minute timer.  But in the end, Team 1 and Team 4 had standing structures that held their marshmallow.  Team 1 was the tallest at about 62 cm and Team 4's was about 57 cm.  With 2 out of 5 teams successful, 40% is actually pretty good.  It's interesting to see the different dynamics, different strategies, and different attempts. 

What does the winning team get?  The bag of remaining marshmallows :)

If you're not familiar with The Marshmallow Challenge, you can learn more about it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower?language=en

There are some interesting observations and statistics that might surprise you.  Maybe something you'd like to do with a team or group.

All of my teachers wanted to do it again now that they've been through it once.  Maybe we'll do it again at the end of the year and see if there are any improvements.