This week READ for Life’s Nursery Teacher Training College student teachers began their first week of school practice. One of our biggest challenges and struggles has been to encourage more hands-on activities and group work, a big challenge when our student teachers don’t observe a lot of this in their placement schools. Rote learning and children copying from the chalkboard is the ‘norm’; this is hard to shake off and create new expectations.
But today when I spotted a recycled tub labelled ‘play dough’ come out I knew I was going to be pleasantly surprised! One of our student teachers taught a mathematics lesson on ‘shapes’ and had children make shapes out of play-dough, follow the outline of shapes with beans and thread shapes with string.
Amidst the challenges and difficulties there is a lot of encouragement and fruit!
Dan and Jodes... in Gulu, Uganda 