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.

Weather Art

In Science and Performing Arts we have been learning about the weather. This week for Art we used three different mediums to show what the environment around us looks like during stormy and sunny weather.

We used charcoal to draw trees in dry environments. Charcoal is black so it worked very well to show that everything was dead, dying and dry. We practised drawing hard and light lines to see the difference.

Ally drawing a dry environment.

 We then had a go at using water colour to paint a spring environment full of brightly coloured flowers and leaf covered trees. We learnt about blending colours together to make the sky look more realistic.

 The third table had pastels. We got to choose if we wanted to draw a sunny or stormy picture. For a stormy picture we used a lot of black, grey, brown and dark blue. For sunny pictures we used a lot of yellow and orange and other bright colours.

 We all really liked using watercolours but we thought that charcoal was hard to use and didn't look as pretty. We will be practising using charcoal, water colour and pastels this term and we will learn how to blend the colours to make really good artwork.

Thank you Rosa Purbrick from Australia for donating heaps of great art stuff for us to use in class. The water colour paintbrushes are a clear favourite!

Questions:
1. What are the three activities we did in art class?
2. Have you used charcoal, watercolour or pastel before? Which was your favourite?
3. Using coloured pencils, or any art equipment you have, draw a sunny and a stormy environment. How are the two pictures different?

Colourful Khangas

Khangas are beautiful pieces of material with lots of colour and pattern that many women and children wear in Tanzania. They are very versatile, that means that they can be used in many ways. This week the students at STA would like to show you the different ways to use a khanga.

Women and girls wear khangas as dresses.

Muslim women wear khangas to cover their hair.

Lawrence wearing the khanga as a scarf.

People don't just wear khangas in Tanzania, they also use them to help carry things.

Carrying a baby.

Clothes and other things can be wrapped up in a khanga and carried.

Carrying water on your head can be tough. To make it easier some people rest the bucket on a khanga.

There are many other uses for a khanga.

Khangas usually have a message written on the bottom. People give them as presents at weddings, Eid, Christmas and to newborn babies and their mothers.

When two people love each other, god blesses them.

A Christmas Khanga.

A few weeks ago we made necklaces out of khangas. Have a look at our blog post 'Kanga Necklaces' to read more.

Questions
1. What are some other ways you could use a khanga?
2. Khangas have many patterns. Draw your own khanga design. Draw a patterned border and then draw another pattern inside. You can even write your own message at the bottom.
3. In other countries, such as Indonesia, they also have material that they use just like khangas. Do you know of other countries where people use khangas? Do they have a different name for it?

High Kicks

WE LOVE TAEKWONDO! 

Thanks to a very generous donation from a family in Dar es Salaam, the biggest city in Tanzania, we have Taekwondo lessons every Thursday. Students in Prep (Kinder) to Grade 3 all get to learn Taekwondo from our teacher Patrick.

Last week Patrick brought some Taekwondo uniforms with him. We were all very excited to try them on. With the uniform on we felt like we kicked even higher. There are not enough uniforms for everyone but we are going to take turns to wear them each week.

The Taekwondo uniforms are great!

 We have learnt how to kick, punch and jump. We have to listen really carefully to our teacher and pay attention. Taekwondo is about concentration, flexibility and self control. It is also good exercise.

Mariam doing a high jump

Mariam and Cornelius

Kicking

Punching

Questions:
1. Close your eyes and try to spell Taekwondo. Have a partner tell you if you are correct.
2. What is the Taekwondo uniform?
3. What does self-control mean?
4. Where does the sport of Taekwondo come from?

Kanga Necklaces

This week we read a book called 'The Sun, the Wind and Tashira'. It is about a girl who lives in Namibia. She wears a lot of bracelets and necklaces. We think they are beautiful. So, this week we made our own jewellery.

Tashira is a story about a girl who really loves colours.

We made necklaces out of kangas. A kanga is a colourful piece of cloth, a bit like a sarong, that we use for all sorts of different things like carrying babies and wearing as clothes. The material was cut into strips and then sewn into a tube.

Then we collected stones to use as beads. We tied a knot at one end of the tube so that the stones would not fall out.

Thanks Karen for helping out.

After we had tied the knot, we put in a stone and pushed it all the way to the bottom. Then we tied another knot and put in another stone. We continued until we had put about 8 or 9 stones. Then we tied a knot at the end.

We love the necklaces we made. We loved wearing them and posing for lots and lots of photos.

After we made the necklaces we had a guessing game. We had to guess how many necklaces there were. Doris guessed 41 and she was right! We were all very surprised!

The students from Avenel Primary School, in Australia, are going to sell some of our jewellery to raise money for STA. Teacher Lauren is going to sell the rest of the jewellery so that we can get some more great books like 'The Sun, the Wind and Tashira'.

We want to make more necklaces to give to our family and friends. They are so bright and colourful!

Questions:
1. What equipment do you need to make kanga necklaces?
2. How many necklaces did we make?
3. Think about what is in your classroom. What jewellery could you make?
4. What is a good name for our necklaces?
5. A lot of people in Tanzania wear jewellery. Do people in your country wear jewellery? What does it look like?