Week Four - Professional Blog

28th February 2012

As I stood before a class of eighty-one children, it is not surprising that I found my first few days in City Parents a bit daunting. Rows of children stared at me as I introduced myself. “Teacher Ashleigh” some responded as they caught its pronunciation, whereas some simply stared at their new teacher. Immediately I felt that the class were excited to have the presence of a new face, yet unaware of what I would bring to their classroom. I experienced a mixed range of emotions; excited to finally be teaching in Uganda, nervous of the large amount of pupils I had to motivate, yet apprehensive of how my class would respond to my lessons.

Having observed the style of teaching within our classrooms, Lynsey and I immediately knew that our approach towards teaching would be completely different to what we had seen over the first few days of our new school. Given the impression that City Parents Primary School focused highly on the performance of the pupils, I felt that the end result of learning had much more emphasis than the actual process.  It can be said that “A guiding principle is that learning is a social activity.” Schools must therefore create an environment which will provide, “an intellectual, creative and stimulating environment.” (Hansen, 2000)



Some of my P.3 Class

Lynsey and I lost count at the amount of workbooks each child had in our classes, and most lessons incorporated the exact same style of teaching. P.3 classes in Northern Ireland would not have the same complex writing skills, yet at home, our learning focuses on the skills learnt throughout the process as a whole. Structured lesson plans including an introduction, development and plenary seemed non-existent here, and what is written in chalk, is exactly what pupils copy into their books. Focusing on a method of rote learning and memorisation, the learning process in Uganda did not allow for children to think for themselves.  Repeatedly in Mathematics I would hear, “A set is a collection of well-defined objects or members.” Yet when I challenged the pupils what this actually meant I received numerous responses. Some stared blankly as if they were hearing the words for the first time, a few mumbled what they thought the phrase meant, yet overall the class were unable to grasp its real concept. 

Taking on board that these methods were not what we were used to, I noticed that these methods did not allow for the different learning styles of each pupil. Active learning plays a huge part within Northern Ireland yet there was no evidence of this in Uganda. I was surprised to find that thematic units are in place. Teachers explained to me how they like the idea of sticking to a particular theme, yet through observation, there is no clear evidence of teachers following this. Taking a closer look at the schemes, I personally felt that there were weak links and were often found pointless. My lesson theme for maths should be “My sub-county” yet I found this meaningless for the content I was expected to cover.



Teaching P.3.S

 As ‘Teacher Lynsey’ and I begin to introduce our experience of teaching, it should be interesting to see what the children grasp from these lessons; how they react to new styles, how we structure each lesson and how we vary our techniques. From experiencing only a short time in P.3.S, I can sense that the children are excited to learn in a way which is new to them.

ReferencesHansen, S. (2000) “Project assessment as an integrated part of the learning process” SEFI Annual Conference, Copenhagen.