Day 2 June 25

Tuesday June 25

This marked the second day of the project. We had a larger turnout today. Three students showed up in the morning and two students in the afternoon. We immediately presented them with the website and the tools. One of the more challenging aspects of the program so far has been to locate where on the knowledge map the students need help. We sort of use a hit and miss approach in which the students tell us what they are doing in school and then we try to find it on the knowledge map using the exercises to figure it out. This process has yielded interesting results as we find that the students have advanced in different subjects due to their curriculum. Rarely does their curriculum follow the knowledge map precisely. We have noticed that some students have some knowledge of certain concepts in geometry but other concepts are completely new and this has happened for all the subjects we have looked at so far.
We have found that this is not a bad thing, it may even be positive in that the students then start delving deeper into the subject matter that they had a patchy understanding of before and are excited to complete their learning and apply what they already knew to try to crack these new concepts. We have also noticed that the students are tentative at first about using the software but as they get right answers with immediate feed back they get more excited and engaged. We usually have a planned snack break during the sessions, but the children sometimes are so engrossed that they work right through it and when we tell them its time to leave they are still trying to work.
We have been using Google Chrome to open the website because it can translate web pages from English to Spanish. In lieu of a Khan Academy page in Spanish this translation has been helpful. Some of the translations are rough and sound ridiculous but it does help especially for the exercises. If there are issues then one of the instructors comes over and helps. By using these translations the students have been able to work on the word problems and understand the instructions on their own.
The students seem more interested in using the exercises and working through them. When they get stuck they either use the hint button or call us over and we try to help. Some of the students have used the online videos. We usually try to use the original videos with subtitles for this purpose. The subtitles are well translated and understandable but not all the videos have subtitles in Spanish. For some of these videos the subtitles are not helpful because the student is trying to look at what is happening in the video and read the subtitles at the same time. When this happened we tried to use the videos in Spanish. The videos in Spanish are a bit of a mixed bag. We have found some very helpful ones and others which are confusing. What the helpful ones have in common is that the instructor is speaking slowly and clearly while in the confusing ones the instructor is speaking fast and even native Spanish speakers have trouble understanding their accent or keeping up with their talking speed.
All in all these small classes have allowed us to iron out some issues and to learn what teaching styles kids are more receptive to.

-EWA