Jheksang and Amrit

This week was the start of term for most schools in Palpa and I made a slightly overdue return to our schools at Jheksang and Amrit. 

Making leaflets with class 7

My first visit was to Jheksang, for the very first day of term. I was prepared for a full day of teaching, only to learn that because it was the first day back they'd all go home at lunch time! Nonetheless, I had a great morning. Class 7 prepared some leaflets about the local animals and really loved getting to use crayons and do some drawings. They get very little, if any, opportunity to do activities like this normally so it was a real treat for them. 

Using the mini whiteboards

 

I took some mini white boards with me for the school and the children absolutely loved using these. They had never seen them before so needed a bit of explanation, but they soon got the idea and it really encouraged them to talk about the questions I was asking and discuss things with their classmates, something I've really being trying to get teachers here to work on. (At least I hope they were talking about my questions, I am still limited to about 30 Nepali words so they could have been talking about anything!) 


The school has managed to buy two new PCs since my last visit, and I was able to install some software, a visual dictionary, on these for the children to use. They don't get much opportunity to use the computers normally but hopefully having some good useful software will help. 

After Jheksang I went further up the hill to Amrit Public, one of our larger schools. I was both surprised and delighted to learn they now have wifi internet access! The downside is there is only one working PC, but hopefully the others will be fixed in time. 

Class 5 colouring leaflets

I did the same animal leaflet activity as I had done at Jheksang, this time with class 5. Again, the children loved the chance to be a little creative and use some crayons and colours! They also enjoyed using the mini whiteboards and I found again it helped to encourage more discussion. I did some work with a bilingual book with class one and the kindergarten, showing the teachers how adding some actions can help the children understand the vocabulary and learn new words. The children enjoyed the actions and proved at the end they had picked up a lot more new words than they would have through the normal listen and repeat story telling method usually used in Nepal.

I'm a bird!

Before leaving I was given a massive send off, presented with gifts of a hat (topi), waistcoat and tie all made from traditional local cloth, as well as being totally covered in flower garlands (mala). It really showed just how much they appreciate the visits from Manisha UK, and the support from their twin school, Kings Lynn Academy. 

My next visit is to our newest twin school, Dumre, and hopefully it will be as positive as my visits to Jheksang and Amrit! 

Only half way through the mala giving!