Second Day of Teacher Training

It was another successful day of teacher training at St Matthew's today. Miranda and Steph D taught a session on starters and plenaries, showing the teachers some fun and high energy activities they can play with their classes at the beginning of the lesson to engage children or to gauge prior knowledge. They made resources using readily available materials such as bottle tops to create matching games, which the teachers enjoyed playing.  They also focused on reflective plenaries and the importance of deeper questioning - asking the children to be specific about the skills they have learnt; why they have learnt something; what they found difficult. They were delighted that all the groups were extremely responsive today, and loved learning all the new activities.

Jenny and Emily worked together on delivering a lesson explaining the virtues of group work. As so many of the teachers have large numbers of pupils in the classes, they wanted to give some practical examples of how they could employ this type of learning back in their own schools. They started out with a Diamond 9 activity on the topic of 'What do learners need in order to be successful'. The teachers had cards with labels such as motivation, listening, being cheerful and having respect for teachers, which they needed to put into order of importance. This activity helped to encourage the teachers to discuss and share ideas with the aim of forming a group consensus at the end. Once completed, the groups then observed each other's work, which they found very interesting, with some having polar opposite ideas.  This starter ended with a discussion on how this group activity could be used across different subjects and with different ages of children. For the main activity they set up a group challenge called 'Circle of Voices'. This is where a topic or question is posed to a group of about four learners. After thinking independently they talk to the group before the discussion is opened to the whole group. The teachers found this useful as it encouraged everyone to take part in a lesson, instead of shying away from participating or allowing others to do the lion's share. The plenary involved setting up a fishbowl activity with four of the more confident participants sitting at a central table with the rest of the class standing around them in a circle. The teachers seated then evaluated the different kinds of group activities they had experienced that day, reviewing what resonated with them and what they would then take back to their schools. 

Ruby and Steph P enjoyed teaching assessment to the teachers. They shared views on lifelong learning and the need to teach children that maybe they can't yet- but they will be able to. Τhe Rwandan teachers drew traditional houses and ruby showed us all what the houses of Queensland look like.

Maddie and Dave ran a session on questioning: the importance of using different types of questions in lessons and how teachers can ask questions in different ways. The teachers loved the yes/no game they played as a starter - and some definitely got the hang of it more quickly than others! They were encouraged to challenge learners with all levels of questions, especially ones which make them think for themselves and give their own opinions.

At the end of the day, another debate was held - this time the motion was "Education is more important than politics". Somehow both teams thought they were proposing the motion, so team two had to do some very quick preparation in the two minutes prior to the debate! Before the debate 28 were for the motion, with 7 against, but after the opposers gave some very convincing arguments, only 22 were for with 14 against!

The teachers not involved in teacher training headed to Ngwino Nawe to give the walls some attention. Painters Noelia, Andrea, Stephan & Alex under the art direction of Beth went to begin painting two murals of Nyungwe Forest on the walls of the disabled village for the children to enjoy. They had a very productive day getting started on the backgrounds of both murals and touching up the Sea World mural painted by the team in 2014. They also painted a life size version of Shrek! Whilst many of the children have gone home for  the holiday the resident children were keen to help with the painting and enjoyed dancing along to the music. Look at tomorrow's blog to see how much the murals have progressed with the next tag team of painters.