The second lesson then focussed on different kinds of fabric - synthetic and natural, and how various kinds of substances become fabric - like the process of ginning with cotton balls then spinning in making cotton yarn, and then the process of weaving to make fabric. To demonstrate the process of weaving I used strips of paper and asked the seniors to demonstrate this to me. I am finding it useful to periodically re-cap various questions within a session so the knowledge becomes cemented in the children's brains, then the day after, re-asking those questions to assure that these are in the children's long term memory.
Then, we moved on to Mathematics. This involved looking at numbers and looking at how to arrange a group of random numbers in ascending and descending order. I then decided to use my own knowledge to help the children with their multiplications. I presented to them a Japanese method of working out multiplications which involves constructing a grid.
I also enquired from some of the students if they would like to learn the Urdu script. In their everyday spoken forms, the languages (Hindi and Urdu) differ very slightly, but both share different scripts - where Hindi uses the Sanskrit derived Devanagri, Urdu uses a modified Arabic script in it's Nastal'iq form (a style of writing), which is used in Iran today. The children were very keen on the idea, and so we commenced classes today. Despite being taught by a foreigner who has limited knowledge of spoken Hindi, and despite learning for the first time letters of a very difficult script, the vast majority of the group absorbed the rules of the script and new letters very easily. The children have an unmatchable thirst for knowledge, and were all keen to have their names written down in Urdu (and also Gujarati and Punjabi, too!). I am looking forward to future Urdu classes and I am really enjoying sharing my personal knowledge with the children, as my Urdu reading and writing was self taught.
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