Halloween

Today our American volunteer teachers Justin and Alisha taught us all about Halloween and how it is celebrated in the States. We learnt that you make Jack-o-laterns to scare away spirits and ghosts from your house. There are not many pumpkins in town at the moment so Justin and Alisha made a Jack-o-latern out of a watermelon.

They explained to us that, in America, children usually dress up as something scary (but you can dress up as anything you want, like a princess). They showed us how to make scary masks. We had fun making our masks.

Alisha explained to us that, in America, on Halloween night lots of children go "Trick or Treating" in their town. They wear their costumes and visit people's houses and get lollies. As we left the classroom we got a ghost lollypop if we said "Trick or Treat". It was very exciting! We even scared our van driver, Mugi, with our masks.

Questions:
1. Do you celebrate Halloween in your country? If yes, how do you celebrate?
2. Which do you think would be easier, making a jack-o-latern out of pumpkin or watermelon? Why?
3. Make your own Halloween mask.

Hairy Adjectives

At STA from Prep to Standard 3, we have been learning about adjectives. We are learning that an adjective tells us more about a noun. We always put the adjective in front of the noun. Which sounds right to you? An ice cream yummy OR a yummy ice cream!

Guava and Orange reading groups today practised using adjectives to talk about hair. They have been reading a book called 'My Hair' and they have been learning about all the different colours, lengths and shapes of people's hair around the world. George really wants to see a photo of someone with orange hair. He has never seen that before.

Each student put on a wig and then we made up sentences about their hair. Here are some of the sentences that the students made up.

"George has pink hair"
"He has short hair"


















"Doris has brown hair"
"She has plaited hair"

"Asha has short blond hair"
"She has curly hair"

"Mariam has long hair"
"She has beautiful black hair"
"She has a short fringe"














It was great fun dressing up in wigs and learning about adjectives at the same time.

Questions:
1. Tell us about your hair. How many adjectives can you think of to describe your hair?
2. Who has the longest hair in your class? How ill you measure it?
3. Create a graph about your classmates' hair. How many have curly, straight, long, short etc...?
4. Write a short story about hair. Use at least 10 adjectives in your story to make it nore interesting.
5. How many adjectives are there in this blog post. Write them down and then get your teacher to check them.

STA staff

On this blog you read a lot about the students who attend STA. This week we would like to tell you about some of the people who work at STA and make sure the students learn, eat and get to school each day.

Teacher Leonard
Teacher Leonard started at STA when the school opened in June last year, that makes him the first STA teacher. He teaches our Standard 2 and 3 students (Grade 2 and 3). He is also our Swahili teacher. He comes from Nairobi in Kenya.

What do you like about teaching at STA?
All the staff at STA are passionate. It is a great place to teach.

Where did you teach before you came to STA?
I taught at a school in Kenya. It was overcrowded. There were too many students and not enough teachers.

Which subject do you like teaching the most?
I enjoy teaching Maths and English.

Teacher Lauren
Teacher Lauren started at STA in January this year. She teaches the Prep and Standard 1 students (Kinder and Grade 1). She is also our Visual and Performing Arts teacher. She comes from Melbourne, Australia.

What do you like about teaching at STA?
I think all the students are fantastic and they love learning, they also love dancing and singing. The students work really hard. I find it very difficult to learn Swahili and so I understand how hard it must be for them to speak in a different language, English, at school every day. They are real chatterboxes though and never let language difficulties get in the way of talking!

Where did you teach before you came to STA?
I taught at a school called Wilmot Road Primary School in Shepparton, Australia. It is a great school and I miss the students and staff there. I was very happy I could visit them when I went to Australia in September.

Which subject do you like teaching the most?
I really love teaching English, especially reading. It makes me very happy when a student learns to read a new word.

Mugi
Mugi drives the school van. He picks up students in town in the morning and then drops them home at night. Without Mugi, some students would have to walk for more than an hour to get to school. He plays great music in the van which we love listening to, especially a song called 'Chichi Buddo'by Father Goose. Mugi has been working with The Baobab Home, the organisation that runs the school, for more than 5 years. He has driven the STA van since the school opened last year. He comes from Tanzania.

Baba Davi
Baba Davi is the cook here at STA. He makes delicious and healthy meals for us to eat. We love when he makes pilau on special days. We also love meat and gravy. He has to serve 25 students, and the teachers, and the pre-school kids and all the other people that work and live at the farm. Baba Davi started working at STA last month. He comes from Tanzania.

There are so many other people who help out at STA. Some people come all the way from places like the USA, Sweden, and New Zealand to help out at the school for free. They are called volunteers. Lots of Tanzanian people help out as well, including some parents of students. We hope to tell you about all these people in another post. Stay tuned!

Questions:
1. What does Mugi do? Why is his job important?
2. Which countries do the 4 staff members that you read about come from?
3. Which job would you like to do if you could choose (teaching, driving or cooking)?
4. List all the people that work at your school? How many are there? What do they do?

Thank you!

Recently one of our teachers, Teacher Lauren, visited her home country, Australia. She took Michael, our class bear, with her. Michael and Teacher Lauren visited six primary schools in Australia to tell the students, teachers and even some parents all about STA. The students saw photos, watched videos and even played some games that we play here in Tanzania.

Teacher Lauren and Michael at the airport in Australia.

We saw some photos from the trip and we liked seeing Michael in the photos with the students.

Many of the schools we visited had raised money for STA. That means that they asked people to give money to them and then they gave the money to us to buy things that we need.

We wanted to say a big THANK YOU to all the students who worked hard to raise money for us.

Yea Primary School has a great skipping team and they donated some ropes to us. We only had three broken ropes. The new plastic ropes help us skip faster and do great tricks. They also raised money for us to buy some big books and picture books. Thanks Yea!

A special thank you to Melina and Abbey who donated the money they made from their 'Business in a Bag' project. These two young entrepreneurs donated the profits from their business to STA. Watch the book video above girls and see one of the books you donated. It is called 'The Pig in the Pond'.

Nagambie Primary School, which is Teacher Lauren's old primary school, also made a donation to Steven Tito Academy (STA). With their donation we will be able to buy over 200 levelled reading books! We also got great containers to keep them in, which will protect them. Thank you NPS!

Some of the books bought from the donation made by NPS. The books are printed and then put together by our teachers and volunteers. The new levelled reading books will be put together over the next few weeks.

Avenel Primary School had a few fundraisers and they made enough money to sponsor one of our students. Asha is so happy to have a sponsor and she feels very lucky to have a whole school sponsoring her. Thank you Avenel PS!

We really appreciate all the donations that we received and we also love it when students and teachers and other friends comment on our blog. If you aren't sure how to comment on the blog email Teacher Lauren at laurengeorge@hotmail.com and she can help you.

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Questions:
Some Maths this week!
1. How many letters in the words 'Thank you'?
2. How many big books did you see in the book video?
3. If 1 Australian dollar equals 1500 Tanzanian shillings, then 9000 Tanzanian shillings equals how many Australian dollars?
4. Isaya can jump rope 3 times in 5 seconds. How many times will he jump rope in 1 minute?
5. Using an atlas, measure the distance from Melbourne, Australia to Bagamoyo, Tanzania. Use the scale to figure out how many kilometres or miles it is.