English and the Environment

Last Friday’s class was the last session of Panigram’s English Lessons for the summer. The pavilion was plentiful with kids, this time about a hundred. When we arrived the kids were already waiting, cross-legged, in rows, chattering about in anticipation. The theme of this session was Plants and Recycling.

Katrina illustrates the different parts of a plant and how it grows.

Prior to the class, I wanted to demonstrate how to plant a seed, which required another trip to the crazy Jessore market. Trang and I scurried through damp allies to get to a kiosk selling all kinds of seeds. From pumpkin to mango seeds, the owner’s store was lined with packages of ready-to-grow items. (Except for the expired cabbage seeds he tried to sell me!) In addition to papaya plants, which we heard are fast growing, we also bought four baby ready-to-pot papaya plants.

The class proceeded smoothly. The kids were well behaved and still eager for more. After Caio and I reviewed the past lessons, we jumped into the world of plants. First, we discovered what qualifies as a plant. We went around pointing to various objects, like the table, cow, mud seats, banana tree, figuring out what is a plant. Although the pavilion is not a traditional teaching environment, it proved to have its positive qualities, including accessibility to pointing out plants, animals, bodies of water, and structures. We then discussed the four elements needed for a plant to grow: sun, water, soil, and seed. We identified each element, and we had a short demonstration on how the papaya seed when fed water and sunlight, will grow into our mini-papaya plant, and then eventually, the big ones that they often see.

One of the boys got up to write out the words Katrina was teaching them.

We then taught the kids some vocabularies on the essential parts of the plant and discussed each part functions. For example, we discussed how the root takes water and nutrients from the soil and brings it up the stem, or how the plant leaf captures sunlight for food. With some of the new words, we had volunteers come up to spell out the words. I was very impressed by their spelling skills and penmanship (mine looks like the writing of a five-year-old in comparison).

Lastly, we talked about the importance of trees and what they provide: heat, paper, oxygen, food, and more. They shouted out different answers for the kind of food trees provide. Shouts of banana, mango, guava and jackfruit emerged; these kids know their fruit trees.  After realizing why trees are so important it was easier for the kids to understand the concept and rational behind recycling and saving resources. I showed them an example of recycling that I’ve learned from Bangladeshi markets, using old school book paper or newspaper to create little baggies.

At the end of class, to make things more active and energetic, Viet took out a football (soccer ball) and started playing with the kids, the boys more specifically. About sixty boys were clamoring for the ball, running around as a rowdy bunch. I realized the girls were not participating. I wasn’t sure if it was out of social norm or preference. Anyhow, I knew I had to do an activity with them. So I took the scrap paper and recycled it into an origami fortune teller. The girls got a kick out of that. Moral of the story: a lot of waste could be easily recycled with a little care and creativity.

The boys played soccer with Viet after class while the girls made paper toys with Katrina on the pavilion.