Teaching in the UK may have its difficulties, but fortunately Maoist strikes are not one of them. For volunteer teachers from UK charity Our Sansar, teaching in Nepal has thrown up considerable challenges, not least of which has been the closure of the schools by a countrywide shutdown. But with the schools now open again, they have been experiencing the challenges and rewards of teaching in one of the world’s poorest countries.

For the next year, Bethan Pink from Richmond and John Buckley from Twickenham will be teaching and organising interschool activities for disadvantaged students in and around Hetauda, a city in Nepal’s green but impoverished south. They will also be working with the local schools to establish education programs for street children.

‘The scenery is very beautiful and the family [we’re staying with] has been lovely to us,’ says Bethan, who previously taught at Lancasterian Primary School, London. ‘There are so many ideas I have for improving the running of the school, such as trying to change the attitude to time keeping; trying to make the classrooms nicer places to be by sweeping the floors, putting up cheerful displays and removing dangerous obstacles; trying to influence the teachers to use more interactive approaches to teaching…We’ll see what can be done with all these ideas.’

Bethan and John arrived in Nepal in late April and are currently based at Shree Kamala Lower Secondary School. Both are experienced professionals who will bring valuable skills to a school that currently has just 9 teachers for over 330 pupils.

The school day has 7 periods and the teachers swap between classrooms to teach their specialist subject. ‘Lessons are quite dull to be honest,’ adds Bethan. ‘[They] rely heavily on call and repeat. I would like to try and have an impact on this.

Adapting to the severe lack of resources, Bethan says that she has been making simple things at home and improvising with whatever is around her.
‘The school has a small library that looks quite cheery,’ she continues. ‘Otherwise classrooms are very bare with only desks and a chalkboard. The library has a copy of an EKTA scheme of learning for English, called Harmony, but they have only 1 copy of each book and with no photocopier, it’s pretty hard to use for the classes. Other text books which are quite inadequate are being used.’

Our Sansar will be sending another experienced teacher to Kathmandu in June and hopes to be able to send a further 7 to schools in Janakpur, Kathmandu and Hetauda before the end of the year. The project will help 50 street children and over 3000 school children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Would you like to be involved in future projects? To find out more, visit www.oursansar.org.

Following part 1, part 2 and part 3, here is another collection of wonderful teacher blogs which you might enjoy exploring:

• Tales from a Trainee Teacher – An extremely interesting blog from a Tom Henzley, who is currently a PGCE student. This is well worth a read.

• Living Geography – A really useful blog with lots of links and ideas for Geography teachers. There is also a list of Geography blogs on the Geographical Association site.
• Chris Leach – ICT teacher, Chris Leach, shares his suggestions for how technology can engage children and inspire learning.
• Teacher Reboot Camp – A place to discuss strategies for engaging all students through effective instructional methods and technology. Created by @ShellTerrell and recommended by Steph Westwood.
• Ideas for Teachers – Shares lots of wonderful ideas and resources that you can use in the classroom.

• Teaching, Learning, Technology – The thoughts of newly qualified teacher, Oliver Quinlan.
• Year Six Teacher – The thoughts of a Year six teacher… but useful for teachers of all age groups.
• Ruminations and Cogitations – A relatively new blog, with a focus on the use of technology in the classroom. Created by Anthony W.
• Box of Tricks – A wonderful blog about MFL and technology, by José Picardo.

ESL-Library has also suggested some good education blogs:

• Burcu Akyol’s Blog - Impressions, reflections, reviews, tips and resources from an English teacher.
• Nik’s Learning Technology Blog – Tips, resources and teaching materials to help EFL and ESL teachers use ICT and new technology.
• Six Things – Regular collections of ‘six things’ which might be useful for English teaching.

Do you have any favourite teaching blogs? Share them in the comments and I’ll add them to the next part in this series.

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Travelling to Teach is an exciting summer travel programme aimed specifically at teachers interested in volunteering and teaching abroad. The project is currently looking for dedicated teachers who would like to use the opportunity to volunteer abroad to really change lives teaching English, Maths, Science, Art or Drama.

What’s involved?

The Travelling to Teach programme works with a number of charity/community schools in India, Nepal and Tanzania which provide education to children from some of the poorest backgrounds.

This is a three week long trip which will see selected volunteer teachers visit and work in a school in India, Nepal or Tanzania educating the local children and working with the existing teaching staff. The aim of the volunteering programme is to provide interactive and interesting lessons to the children, bringing amusement to their classes.

Here is a video where teachers share their experiences from previous trips.

Here are details of two new teaching resource sites that I’ve discovered recently, both aimed at primary teachers:

PlanBee is a resource website aimed at providing primary school teachers with all they need to create exciting, relevant and inspiring lesson plans. Becky Waters, creator of PlanBee, says that the aim of the site is to “take the sting out of planning”. Joining the site is free, but there is a charge to download some of the lesson plans and resources.

www.planbee.com

Twinkl is a new online resource centre for foundation and Key Stage 1 teachers. It offers ‘bright resources for bright teachers’ and everything is free to download and use. There is also a ‘suggest a resource’ section which allows teachers to suggest things that they would like to see on the site.

www.twinkl.co.uk

What are your favourite teaching resource sites?

There are lots of places where teachers can chat and share ideas on Internet forums. Two of these include the TES Forums and our own Teaching Forum. A few months ago, I came across another forum… the Primary Teacher Resource Centre Forum (more commonly known as PTRC).

http://primaryresourcecentre.myfreeforum.org/

The forum is full of a really friendly bunch of people who are always happy to give answers to any questions for help. They also share some wonderful resources and links – I have discovered lots of new teaching material through the forum.

I had the pleasure of meeting some of the regular posters on PTRC at BETT last week. It was lovely being able to put faces to the names that I see so often when I’m browsing through the forum.

Do you know a teacher who’s gone the extra mile and really changed lives?

The BBC is looking for an inspirational teacher, an unsung hero who has somehow made a real difference, someone whose story deserves to be told.

Perhaps they have brought new and innovative methods to the classroom, with outstanding results. Maybe they have thrown away the rule book, only to prove their way does actually work. They may have transformed a school, a class, or perhaps simply touched individual lives.

It might not be a teacher – we’re interested in hearing stories of outstanding classroom assistants, school supervisors and other education professionals as well.

For an informal chat please contact Gemma Collins on 02920 322572 or email gemma.collins2@bbc.co.uk

Image – China_155

From an article at guardian.co.uk… “Ed Balls is to publish a new curriculum for all primary schools which will reorganise traditional subject areas into “thematic” headings and introduce compulsory sex education for the first time, under plans set out in the Queen’s speech last week.

The bill will legislate for the new primary curriculum, starting in September 2011, to reorganise traditional subject areas such as history and science into thematic areas of learning, such as “historical, geographical and social” lessons. The aim is to try to ease the pressures of the cumbersome curriculum on schools and give schools more freedom to do cross-subject thematic lessons.

There is greater emphasis on children’s happiness and wellbeing. The bill also makes personal, social and health education – including sex education – mandatory in primary schools for the first time, though parents will still be allowed to opt their children out of lessons until they turn 15.”

How do you feel about these proposed changes? I know that some schools have decided to move towards thematic teaching anyway… each term, we have one theme and base our teaching and learning experiences around that theme (although sometimes this isn’t always possible).

How are you planning at the moment… and do you welcome the new ‘thematic’ lessons? Leave a comment…

Image – Ed Balls

Here are links to some of the most popular ideas on Teaching Ideas over the past few months:

1. The Hundred Square (Maths) – Use the 100 square to find patterns by colouring in certain squares.
2. Story Plans (Literacy) – Two free worksheets which children can use when planning their stories.
3. Story Settings (Literacy) – A fantastic resource which encourages children to describe settings without telling the reader directly.
4. Millionaire Place Value Game (Maths) – A competition between the teacher and pupils which develops understanding of place value.
5. Feelings Flowers (Art) – A wonderful way of encouraging children to think about their feelings.
6. The Skeleton (Science) – A handy worksheet on which children have to identify different parts of the skeleton.
7. Place Value Clap (Maths) – A brilliant method of getting children to think about place value.
8. Decimal Number Lines (Maths) – Three number lines which children can refer to during their work on decimals.
9. Place Value Hats (Maths) – Use this excellent idea to develop children’s understanding of place value.
10. Fill in the Punctuation (Literacy) – Children need to put the correct punctuation into a piece of text.

What is your favourite teaching idea? Send your ideas and I will add them to the site as soon as I can. Thank you

Sophie Hadden at WRAP has sent the following information about free recycling resources for secondary teachers (although the site mentioned also has material for primary schools too):

“From this term, teachers will have new online resources to teach the benefits of recycling. The resources have been developed by WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), with advice and support from the recycling industry and classroom teachers.

The resources use recycling as a theme to deliver some of the core concepts of the Key Stage 3 Citizenship curriculum, helping students to play an active role as citizens in their community.

The teaching materials include a series of innovative lesson plans, assembly resources and an extended school project to show pupils how they can make a difference by recycling more.

The resources have been tested by teachers and are designed to be interactive, relevant and engaging for pupils, while helping teachers deliver against the national curriculum. Each lesson uses video, featuring teenagers Charlie and Joel, to introduce ideas, raise questions and set challenges, and is built around one or more core activities, like role play, card sequencing, or student opinion lines. The lessons focus on the following areas:

• lesson one looks at students’ current attitudes, behaviour and understanding of recycling;
• lesson two explores the consequences of students’ decisions to recycle or bin their rubbish;
• lesson three includes an interview Environment Secretary Hilary Benn, and uses role-play to help students think about the role of government, businesses and consumers in recycling more; and
• lesson four helps students to think about actions they can take in their own lives to recycle more, and leads into a whole school project.

All the resources can be downloaded for free from www.recyclenow.com/schools, where teachers can also access a range of information and advice on recycling at school and learn more about what’s working well in other schools.”

Blogs are a wonderful way of discovering education news, ideas and new web links. I’ve been reading blogs for quite a while now, and I use Google Reader to do this. Each day, I visit the Google Reader site to see what my favourite websites and education blogs have to share… it’s much easier than having to go around the different websites manually.

To add new sites to Google Reader’s list, I just add the RSS feed. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. To find out more about RSS, watch this handy video:

There are lots of other wonderful education blogs… far too many to list in one post. So, I’ll share some more of my favourite blogs another time!

If you have a good education blog to share, please leave a comment or send me an email! Thanks.

Image: ‘Britain Going Blog Crazy – Metro Article‘