Essafa High School

    What is an ideal learning environment? What makes a lesson successful?  What language is best to teach content? How does one feel when learning a new language?  What tools can be used to retain new vocabulary?  How does one learn new content and a language together?  Should grammar be taught? Should religion be part of school? All these questions buzz in my brain as I negotiate my days at Essafa High School in Agadir.

     As a visiting American teacher, I was to observe a lesson at school today first.  A very gentle, soft spoken science teacher welcomed us to his classroom.  The lesson was completely in Arabic with a powerpoint that had captions in French.  The title was "Genetique Humaine", the students were eagerly asking and answering questions, taking turns to go up to the whiteboard, and writing answers in Arabic.  Arabic is written from left to right.  Does the brain have to do some strange gymnastics to process two languages at the same time?

    The topic in the English language class was learning to use the simple past tense in sentences.  My host teacher Youssef and I came up the idea to have the students pick a verb, and use role play for others to guess and use complete sentences.  We all had a really good time acting and guessing, and answering in complete sentences! They are so eager to learn and share!
And to end with, another love song!


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