The USB that provides the internet went MIA for a couple of days but we have access again. The last day of community classes consisted of the completion of “The Alligator River Story” for the advanced class and an introduction to the home in the beginning class. The teacher training session began with the completion of the literature unit and was followed by “The Alligator River Story” which acted as a model of an activity to encourage meaningful interaction in the language classroom. Saturday, we went swimming at a hotel and it was really relaxing. Yesterday, we presented the teachers with their certificates and took some photos. The teachers, Gregory, and Pere Noe made some speeches and the teachers presented Pere Noe with a certificate for his dedication to teacher education. Today, we are meeting with the new sixth grade teacher to share our lesson plans with her and then will meet with some highly motivated students to practice English conversation. The electricity and water have been on and off for a couple of days but everything is in working order at this moment. The end of the year exams for the school began today; students spent this morning taking a four hour mathematics exam! Students begin taking the national exams on 12 June. Tomorrow, we are heading to Cape Haitian! We’re very excited to see the beach!

The final exams for the school begin Monday so the students are busy studying for them. As a result, the community language classes had much lower attendance today. The beginning class had about twelve students and the advanced class had about ten. The beginning class reviewed introductions and the advanced class read “The Alligator River.” After reading and going over the story, the students individually ranked the characters. Tomorrow, they will debate and develop a ranking in groups. The students seemed to understand the story, though we had to go over some difficult vocabulary. They also appeared to have some strong opinions so I think tomorrow’s class will be very interesting.

The teacher training began with a discussion about music as it related to the teachers personally. The teachers were then equipped with example songs and activities for utilizing music in the classroom. Following this, they further practiced writing SWBATs and lesson plans by writing one that used music. The teachers seemed to enjoy the prospect of using music to teach English and it appeared to be a fairly new idea as all but one said they had never used music in class before. Afterwards, we introduced them to Content Based Instruction (CBI) and modeled it through a culturally relevant literature activity.

Tomorrow we will wrap up the literature activity and model various activities that the teachers can use in their classes. The electricity and water have been on and off all day but they are working right now. It has been lightening and thundering for a couple of hours which has been really nice. It has only been sprinkling but has cooled down significantly.