An Educational Study

   So, I realize that I can be a nerd sometimes. It's fine. I embrace the nerdy parts of my personality. I mean how many people vacation in Spain and get most excited about living in your own little literary world in Barcelona exploring the city by tracing the footsteps of your favorite novel. Nerdy, I know.

    I know that this probably isn't a blog post that will really interest most people, but I, in my nerdiness, am excited about it and want to share our findings…

    When I was teaching second grade in Atlanta, I learned about a very simple reading comprehension exercise. A big part of reading comprehension is being able to form an accurate picture in your mind of the events that are taking place in the story. So, for this activity, you dictate to the children a sentence that includes several details. You repeat it various times as the kids write the sentence down at the top of their paper. Then you ask each child to draw a picture of the sentence, one that includes all the details (pictured right). By examining their drawings you can conclude how accurately the students are able to picture the sentence in their minds. I had an idea to use this comprehension exercise as an educational study here in Chichigalpa. I wanted to choose third graders from each of our four villages and from a variety of schools and perform this activity using the same sentence and to see educational patterns in the schools and to see how our sponsored kids are doing in terms of reading comprehension. Cadence, a fellow education nerd and our other full-time sponsorship worker, was just as excited as I was to perform and to see the results of this study. 

     This past month we have started doing this experiment with several of our precious third grade students in Candelaria, Santa Matilde, Nuevo Amanecer and La Isla. So far we have done this activity with 13 third graders from three different villages and five different schools. We still have a few more kids that we want to see represented. It has been so fascinating to see all the things that you can learn from examining their drawings. We have learned really simple things such as which of the schools teach kids to put spacing between their words and which do not. We were also able to see bigger patterns in teaching and learning.

    Since living in Nicaragua I have noticed that the schools' lessons are not integrated. Each subject is separated and themes seem to be chosen at random. Education programs in the States focus so much on creating integrated units of study where math, reading, science, social studies, etc. are all focusing on the same theme. Here that never happens. I have a hard time seeing a logical progression of things being taught. I walked into a third grade class the other day where geometry and division where being taught in the same class period. Subjects aren't taught interconnectedly and that comes out in the kids' drawings. Our sentence was: The twin boys in the red shirts wait in the long line to buy icecream on a sunny day. I was surprised by the number of kids who drew each detail separately. They drew twins and then beside them drew red shirts and then next to that drew icecream or the sun. In their mind they didn't connect these items together. Here are a few examples:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     There are also some really beautiful things that you can discover about individuals by examining their drawings as well. I loved to see the resiliency of hope that resides in my beautiful hija, Juanita. Despite the horrendous abuse that she has endured, she still sees the world as a beautiful and happy place. It's a hope and beauty that still stands firm in her. If you look closely at her drawing you can see that everything is happy… the clouds, the sun, and the boys' icecream cones are all smiling. I know that it may not seem like a big deal to see an eight year old girl drawing smiles in the clouds, but if you know her background and the things that she has been through then suddenly it becomes unbelievably beautiful.

    These are just a few little tidbits of information that we have learned so far from this educational study. It's been so interesting! Next we would really like to ask in the schools if we can do this activity with entire classes to see where our children rank in comparison with other children in their schools.