Assessments

Just before school.

Over Eid, several of the resident children have come to me for a bit of extra English.  I have found again and again that they have a total absence of knowledge of phonics.  The children are completely unable to read aloud even the most basic words, such as ‘a’, ‘is’, ‘here’.  In spite of this they are able to communicate orally because of their exposure to live-in American visitors.  The school children don’t have this advantage. 

School children just before school.

To keep tabs on individual levels I have been keeping a spreadsheet of all my pupils including comments on their homework.  Unfortunately many do not do the homework, and I suspected that this is because of a lack of understanding.  So, yesterday and today, I took the bull by the horns and started to take my Primary 4 students out of their lessons for individual assessments while the others had a comprehension task.  I have started with those who have never submitted any homework to me and will expand gradually.

I thought the children would be very nervous of being singled out and taken out of class by me.  In fact it has caused great excitement.  They are all unexpectedly eager for a bit of one-to-one attention, regardless of their lack of English.  Each one of them is desperate to be the next on the list.  I think this is most probably because of being part of such huge classes where there is no individual attention.  Also, at home, older children are expected to play very responsible roles in doing chores and looking after younger ones and get little individual attention.  Tellingly, I noticed that some snuggled right up to me during the testing.  Ages vary, but many students in Primary 4 are 13 – 14 years old.