Claire TS #13

Date/Time: April 14, 7:00-9:00pm

Location: Tutee’s home in Sienna Square Apartments

Topic/Skill: Family member vocabulary + possessive pronouns/possessive -‘s marker

I met with Damarce and her sisters for the sixth time yesterday. Usually when I arrive, there are a lot of kids playing outside near their apartment building, but this time only Damarce was there waiting for me. She explained that her sisters were swimming at the pool and we walked over there together with her mom to collect them. I heard Damarce and her mom use the word “piscin” when they were talking, and I asked if it meant pool. I explained that the word for pool in Spanish is very similar, “piscina.” Throughout the rest of the evening the girls would ask me what the word was for different things in Spanish.

I started our lesson by showing some pictures of my family on my laptop. I would pull up each picture and point out people, saying “This is my mother, this is my cousin, etc.” They were really excited to see my family and insisted that I say hi to my mother on their behalf. :) I had written up some good example phrases with translations showing how possessive pronouns (my, your, her, etc.) and the -‘s possessive marker work in English compared to their language. Showing possession in Kinyarwanda is pretty complicated, so I tried to encourage them that in English it is easy! We went through the words and example phrases, but I didn’t give them much to do in the way of practicing using the words themselves. I gave them a crossword-style worksheet with 8 clues like “My mother’s mother is my ___.” I thought it was really straightforward, but they all really struggled with it, and ultimately, I had to feed them all the answers because they couldn’t figure any of them out. They were also trying to write in the words sideways or looping around and changing directions, so I guess I needed to have explained the right way to fill in the boxes. After that I had them work on filling out and coloring a page of a little book that I am having each of them make over our last 3 meetings. When finished, the book will be called “All About Me” and will have a picture of each girl on the front. The book project will review many of the different topics we have done together and will hopefully be a fun souvenir for them.