Last Wednesday, we finished the unit on Malaria. We briefly reviewed the life cycle from Monday and then talked about symptoms, when to see a health worker, and prevention (the big one). I taught P2, P4, P6, and P7. P6 and P7 both did the pre and post assessment for the lesson. For P2 and P4, we took a short field trip to the surrounding areas to look for places that mosquitoes could potentially breed, such as in maize and in stagnant water. The field trip helped to reinforce the concepts that the kids learned in class, and they all had a great time and enjoyed it a lot. Unfortunately, P6 and P7 couldn't have the field trip also due to limited time.
I've been transcribing the lesson-specific pre and post assessment questions, and from the responses, the kids seem to already know a lot about Malaria. It seems the next step would be to put this knowledge into practice. I'm not quite sure what is the barrier behind putting knowledge into practice is right now. My guess is probably access since many of the kids responded that they are "extremely worried" about malaria and many definitely believe it to be
widespread.
On Thursday, we had a staff meeting at the school with the headmistress and teachers. During the meeting, we talked about possibly getting cement floors for the classroom if our budget allows since the many kids run barefoot on the dirt floor and Jigers. It's also really dusty in the classroom when the wind blows. We are also planning a school-wide sports/field day where the kids are divided into colors. Sadly, the day of the tournament is set on the Saturday after I leave as that is the only day we could get the field. I'm really sad to be missing the tournament since it sounded so fun and a great way to end the projects and the kids are all so excited about being in their color teams (each of us have been assigned to a color too), but I guess I'll just have to be
filled in afterwards.
On Friday, we played soccer and netball with P5-P7. We had a little pre-tournament match-up where we had different color teams play each other. On Saturday, we had vocational training again with the basketweaver and carpenter. The kids are really good. One girl finished a big basket with pretty designs, and the boys made stools and molds for making bricks in carpentry.
On Monday (yesterday), I started the unit on hygiene/parasite. We got back late from Kampala since the taxi was late, so I was only able to teach P6 and P7. I introduced what parasites are to the kids (which many knew already), the symptoms when we get infected by parasites, why parasites are bad, and how we get infected by parasites. The kids really liked the pictures of parasites and you can hear eeewwws throughout the classroom as the pictures get passed around. I had two picture of people doing different things at a lake (ex. getting water, fishing, swimming, peeing) and we discussed what is happening in the pictures and how parasites could be transmitted because of the actions. They responded well to the visuals. We'll be covering prevention on Wednesday. Today, we played games, such as duck duck goose, with the nursury kids and they really enjoyed it. I can't believe that time is passing so quickly and that I'll already be leaving Uganda next week. The weeks really flew by.
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