Student A: But rm thirsty.
Once the students have described and analyzed the situation, write the dialogue on the board. Ask them to listen again, only this time while reading the dialogue from the board. Students can then ask questions about vocabulary that they didn't understand. They can also ask the teacher to clarify the important points.
Ask the students to pair up with someone sitting nearby so that they can each take a different role as they read through the dialogue.
Encourage them to help each other if they need to clarify pronunci-ation or the meanings. Students should know they can always ask you to repeat the correct pronunciation of a word.
PROBLEM POSING Ask two students to volunteer to come to the front of the room to act out this dialogue. Encourage the students to take on personalities
(whining, impatient, helpful, patronizing etc.) as they act out these roles. Using this miniskit as the basis for conversation, challenge the class to discuss the dialogue in more depth by using Freire's Problem
Posing approach, which was introduced earlier in this book. As you may recall, the five steps for processing a problem are:
1) What do you see?
2) What is the problem?
3) Do you recognize the situation?
4) Why is there a problem?
5) What can you do?
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156 PEACE CORPS MANUAL
UNTIL I UNDERSTOOD I HAD A HAND IN MAKING WHATEVER HAPPENED HAPPEN,
I WAS A VERY SAD YOUNG GIRL.
KAYE GIBBONS A CURE FOR DREAMS
DICTATION
As you talk about sanitation and hygiene, be sensitive to the local community and culture and allow the students to generate their own ideas. Encourage the students to respond to each other's questions and statements. "Ana, do you agree with that idea..." or "Would anyone like to answer that question..." are the types of expressions
used by facilitators to encourage participation. Keep in mind that when you are dealing with critical issues, it is important not to over-whelm the students. During problem posing, it's better if you allow the students to explore possible solutions for themselves.
As a follow-up activity, you can use a dictation and matching exercise to focus on additional causes and solutions related to sanitation or health problems. Write the word "Diarrhei' on the board and under it "CAUSES" and "SOLUTIONS." After you clarify the meanings of these words, tell the students you are going to give them a dictation.
You want them to work in pairs as you dictate ten sentences.
Before you begin, the students must agree to their roles. One stu-dent is only responsible for writing the sentences that reflect CAUSES of diarrhea. The other will only write the sentences that reflect SOLUTIONS. Encourage the pairs to collaborate quietly throughout this process. To give an example, ask the students to listen to two sentences and identify the one that could be the cause of diarrhea and the one that could be the solution.
A. Bacteria is on dirty fingers.
B. Wash your hands.
Write each of these sentences on the board under the appropriate category to indicate whether it is a cause or a solution.
Tell the students to leave two spaces between each sentence that they copy on their page. (After the dictation they will create sentence strips.) As you dictate the following sentences, there's no reason to dictate in any partic-ular order. In fact, if your students like to be challenged, mix them up.
CAUSES
People spit on the ground.
Germs are under fingernails.
Feces are near the house.
The water is contaminated.
Bacteria is on food.
SOLUTIONS
Don't eat food that falls on the ground.
Cut children's fingernails often.
Build and use latrines.
Don't throw garbage near drinking water.
Cover food to keep flies and insects away.
1 4;
S
When you finish giving the dictation, allow the pairs to work together to discuss their sentences and correct spelling and grammar mistakes. When you notice that some students have finished quickly, ask one pair to come to the front of the room and each partnerwill write one sentence under either CAUSES or SOLUTIONS. Ask the class to give feedback regarding meaning or accuracy of spelling.
The students at the board can make their own corrections. Con-tinue to check the dictations by having pairs come forward to write sentences under the appropriate category onthe board. At this stage, the CAUSES and SOLUTIONSdo not have to match up.
Have the students compare their dictations to the sentences onthe board and correct their own work. Tell the students to savetheir
papers for the following class.
MATCHING SEN iiENCE STRIPS During the next class, give oral directions as you show thestudents how to fold and tear their papers into strips so that eachstrip has one sentence. When they finish, each studentin a pair will have five strips of paper. Tell them to mix up the strips and then analyzethe sen-tences to match CAUSES of diarrheawith SOLUTIONS. After the students have a chance to match their sentence strips, have pairs
of
students come to the board to write their answers. Discussthe new vocabulary and encourage students to ask questions. Note anddiscuss the grammatical form of the SOLUTIONS (imperativeform).
OTHER OPTIONS
158 PEACE CORPS MANUAL
With this information on the board, ask the students to comment on the problem of diarrheaand dehydration, not just locally but worldwide. A common local problem can be the basis foradditional communicative activities, including cooperative work whereby stu-dents in pairs create their own dialogues and take turns actingthem out in front of the class. Student-generateddialogues can be inter-esting and fun, and they provide great cultural insights,especially
for a non-native teacher.
In the example above, pair work is integrated throughoutthe lesson as learners are encouraged toexplore a particular theme. Hygiene and sanitation can be further developed through small group activi-ties. We will continue to explore this critical healththeme when we discuss dealing with dehydration in Chapter Nine, whichwill focus
on group work.
Pair activities provide many other options for student-centeredlearning.
Information gaps are situations in which students in pairs depend on each other to complete a task. For example, partners with onebudget
can be given the assignment to agree to oneweekly shopping list based on the prices they eachfind at two different grocery stores. Or partners may have a list of questions to answerabout a current event, but each has a different source of information One may havebeen told to listen to the radio while the other wasasked to read a newspaper article.
Other pair options include guessing a described picture or item, drawing pictures that are described but hidden from sight, and working together to create exercises and games. Students in pairs can quiz each other before tests and help each other to remember information. And they can solve problems and puzzles together.