December 4th – 25th, 2009 Nakavika, Fiji

English Education

• Immerse completely into the village to analyze teaching methods in English and develop improvements for the classroom’s effectiveness with the headmaster and teachers (classes aren’t in session)
• Offer personal tutoring sessions in exchange for room and board in highland family homes (nothing was required in exchange for room and board, aside from monthly grocery visits for basic items)

ACTUAL SITUATION

• Conducted “classes” for one hour on weekdays with the children of the village, attracting them with games and group activities
• Experimented with many different teaching techniques and analyzed which methods were most effective at exciting the kids and having them catch onto the subject matter
• Interacted with the kids constantly to identify English weaknesses and discussed these grammatical or conversational issues as subject matter for classes and beyond
• Worked with the male youth members to expand their vocabularies through spelling tests and definition explanations
• Supplied youth with novels in English to practice the language and identify words they don’t know, followed up by personal discussions of these words and their definitions

Health Education and Awareness

• Brainstorm and collaborate with the village chief and elders to identify the state of basic health supplies and their application/usage (this is the next step)
• Offer free, entertaining, creative tutorials in dental health to educate the village children in how to maintain healthy mouths and their overall hygiene (done)

ACTUAL SITUATION

• Began nightly classes with male youth members of the village to discuss basic aid and sports injury care
• Created weekly themes for the children’s classes that focus on specific health issues, e.g. hand washing week or toothbrushing week, which involved active games, drawing, word identification and spelling, and understand why we do these things
• Distributed toothbrushes and travel size toothpaste to youth members and children lacking these supplies, encouraging them daily to be using their new tools
• Demonstrated proper cleaning and covering techniques for treating bodily wounds

Here’s the new plan to be implemented in the village…

January 4th – February 13th Nakavika, Fiji

Develop the new, overall theme for the project:

Learn Something New Every Day

English Education

• Utilize techniques that have proved successful at capturing attention and interest:

• Anything involving balloons (water balloon tosses, running games with balloons on strings, passing inflated balloons, etc.)
• Simon Says
• Games with two white boards at opposite ends of the room where kids have to decide upon a questions which board they run to
• Anything involving music and dancing

• Boost confidence and individual thinking by implementing the Socratic method and stressing more classroom formalities (hand raising, no cheating)
• Encourage group and individual reading of children’s books by setting aside time daily to read to them, to read alone and to create their own stories to be written
• Involve more artistic activities in the daily plans, which include drawing, crafts, painting, music, and video creation for their viewing
• Introduce the youth to the book exchange and encourage their use of the resources to learn more English, eventually finding a reliable book worm to manage the system while we are gone

Health, Lifestyle and Financial Planning

• Develop publicized seminars for the youth and families to learn specific topics, such as:

• How to treat common injuries
• How to treat sports injuries
• How to manage your money
• Goal setting and financial planning

• Discuss with the rugby manager the possibility of using their clubhouse as a first aid center, where anyone can receive basic resources and care for free or for a small donation of their choice
• Impressing on the village the savings and benefits of reducing or eliminating cigarette costs and irresponsible alcohol consumption.
• Be examples and demonstrate healthy practices
• Continue with weekly themes of healthy habits to be reviewed each day via creative modes of teaching
• Distribute personal hygiene tools where they are lacking and invite the children to join our practices to create routines