Cultural Summary

I have had the good fortune to be working with the Ninth and Eleventh Grade English Classes during my time at St. Theresia Secondary School. It's been a treasure really to be working with the new students as they embark on their instruction in the English language. Similarly, I have really enjoyed teaching the eleventh graders as they were the first group I taught when I originally came to Moshi. It has been a pleasure to observe their progress over the past two years.
With the eleventh grade students we have been working from the eleventh grade text which covers various elements of English usage from structures, to forms of writing and communication skills, and a litany of writing topics.
Recently we have been focusing on national culture and its challenges in the global community with the availability of mass communication and open trade policies. In this context we have been learning to write summaries. It is still a challenging task encouraging students to think freely and create original ideas relevant to a given topic. The students were assigned the task of writing their own summary using the information from the finished questions after a brief review of some comprehension questions we completed to evaluate their understanding of the concept of a summary and the role of culture in a society. I relied on a student to translate the instructions I had conveyed in English. The results were very positive as a good number of the students were able to synthesize the information to produce a summary about culture and its challenges in Tanzania. Some even wrote a completely original essay about the subject. The students were anxious to share their work with me, and I was excited about the outcome.
We completed our successful with a song which the students have learned to sing recently entitled One Love by Bob Marley. It was a wonderful ending to not only the lesson but the week as a whole.