Whiteboards in the Jungle

This is my last blog about my experience teaching ESL to LIFE in the Bolivian jungle. This is a typical kitchen outside a house in the community. 

In the jungle, everything is damp. In addition to being limp from the humidity, paper of any sort is somewhat scarce. So I used home-made whiteboards. The co-ordinator of the project had given me the supplies to make them,  but until I used them, I did not realize how valuable they really were. Then I was hooked. 

Here is how you make them:

• Take one plastic paper sleeve (also called paper protector) and put a piece of plain paper in it.
• Voila,  you have a mini whiteboard!

I had enough so that each learner had a mini-whiteboard and whiteboard marker. They wiped clean with toilet paper. We  used these whiteboards for all sorts of things including copying dialogues and making bingo games.

I had brought a blank set of bingo grids with me which I slipped into  the plastic sleeves, thus creating a bingo board for each learner. We brainstormed vocabulary which I wrote on the chalkboard. Learners would then write down enough of the words to fill their bingo grid, change pen colours with the person next to them and then I would call out the words for bingo. It was a great deal of fun!

On my last day of class, we had a party with fish, yucca and rice. I contributed dried fruit and the last of my pistachios. Here is a picture of the feast. (In additon to the usual children and dogs checking out what we were doing, chickens also came to eat up the bits of rice on the floor). A good time was had by all!