E3L or English as a third language...

I have been busy marking the exam papers today. I can really see the impact of the fact that for many of our learners English is their third language. Khoekhoegowab or Nama is their mother tongue, then they learn Afrikaans at primary school, and in grade 4 they start to learn English - which is the official language of Namibia. It was hard enough for my learners in the UK to learn all the names of the quadrilaterals but in your third language... it wasn't surprising to see that one learner when asked to name a shape forgot that I has said a parallelogram was LIKE a squashed rectangle and wrote "squashed rectangle" as their answer!
Evenings have been busy this week with last minute revision classes - the photo below shows some of the grade 8 girls earlier this week.