Going to Zambia: End of teacher training at Bwacha

Last lesson at Bwacha Highschool

The final grammar lesson before the exams.

Revision of some grammar they'd seen at the beginning of the term.
I thought it would be easy, just go over the material and then we would have plenty of time to answer other questions about the exam, and time to practise another text.
The grammar was about intensifiers, in their book it was quite difficult explained so I made an easier summary for myself, and my idea was that I would let the pupils explain the grammar and I would write it on the blackboard, and if they didn't have everything from the summary in their original notes they could copy or add on.

At the start I noticed, only half of the pupils remembered what intensifiers were.

And only 2 of them could explain somehow what they were.
I asked them if they had the notes from the previous lesson, and only a few, 8 or 9, had some good notes from the original lesson.
At that point I decided that I would help them some more with giving intensifiers, but I wanted them to come up with the explanation and examples.
It turned out that it was very hard to explain what an intensifier does to a sentence.
But I encouraged the pupils to at least try, they had to give an example, and with the help of their classmates we would make it a correct sentence.
I did notice that the pupils were getting used to giving the examples themselves, they sometimes even came up to the blackboard (without me asking them) to write.
It sometimes was hard to explain to them why you can't use an intensifier in a certain way. For example with the word quite: they had to learn that it can mean: 'completely' and a 'little less than', but when they started giving examples they mixed things up, and then I used every possible example I knew to explain why it was or wasn't used in a correct way.
The grammar part of the lesson took much more time than I expected, and at the end of the lesson there was only some time to answer other questions about the exam and say goodbye to my class, because I would only see them again at their exam.

Now I don't know why only half of the class had the notes of the previous lesson.

I wanted to ask my mentor Mr. Mwanza what had happened that lesson.
But he wasn't at school anymore.

The exams at Bwacha Highschool

Monday morning, 10.30 class 11A had their English exam.
When I saw the exam I had to think about all the lessons we've had at Xios Hogeschool about making exams. Well they can learn something from us.
I noticed some small mistake in the exam and went to Mr. Mwanza with them, he corrected them.
I also explained to him that I didn't think the exam was very clear.
Pupils could give more than one answer that would fit with the question that was asked, but only 1 would be marked as correct.
We discussed about how thinks could be done different next time, and he agreed to keep those things in mind for next exam. And with the dubious questions, all the answers that could be correct would be marked as correct.

When I observed several classes making their exams I noticed that some teachers just give the exams orally. For example a part of the French exam was just some instructions the pupils had to copy at the start at the exam. Maybe the printer didn't work, but it can also be that the teacher did not finish the exam on time, and that he was improvising.

With the making of the English exam I did not have to help, because the English department would make the exams the same for the entire grade 11. And I'm 'only' a trainee, so they didn't want my help.

But when it came to the correcting I got a big pile of exams to take home and an answers sheet, at that moment I wasn't 'only' a trainee, but a colleague :)
Not a problem of course, I was curious how my class had performed.
And it was good to see that they did okay!