I
had a couple of days in Tansen to get organised again after the Bhalebas trip
and to start thinking about teacher training which was fast approaching. Saran
and I also put in an order for 50 whiteboards which will mean that all of our
twinned schools will now have a whiteboard in every classroom. Saran has been
really great in getting this sorted and getting a good price for us.
I
was also able to squeeze a day visit into Bagnas, only a one hour walk from
Tansen. I took Deepa from our homestay with me to act as a translator as Saran
was not available and her English is excellent. We started off watching a
couple of lessons and stepping in where required, as normally I do the teaching
and so I wanted to get the chance to see how they do things . The first lesson
we watched was an English lesson and I was pleased to see the teacher was
getting the children to do some talking in it, although taking it in turns to
talk to the teacher. I suggested that the children work in pairs and have a
conversation together and with some encouragement they did start to be more
willing to speak. They really do seem to lack confidence in speaking out though
so it is really important they continue with these kinds of lessons.
 |
| Pupils from Bagnas school. |
The
second lesson was not so successful. It was a science lesson and when I asked
the teacher what it was that they would be learning today he told me he needed
to check the book first. This was about a minute before the lesson started. The
subject was different environments within the world such as desert, rainforest,
mountainous regions etc. This could have been a really nice lesson with a
little bit of planning. Pictures could have been found of the different
environments and the children could have discussed what it would be like to
live there and maybe how animals are adapted to that particular environment.
However we had very little in the way of pictures, only a couple of tiny ones
in the text book. I took the children outside and asked them to look around and
tell me what they saw and then asked them if everywhere was like this. It was
really difficult however without any decent pictures or visual aids and despite
looking in the library quickly and finding
a few pictures there was very little to help the children understand how
different the world is., bearing in mind most of the children may not have left
Palpa district and most certainly none would have seen another country. Just a
short amount of preparation time could have really transformed this lesson and
this is something I am trying to get across to all the teachers out here.
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| Year 5 Bagnas children with their twinning dictionaries. |
The
afternoon was spent with Year 5 making dictionaries for their twinned school
(Warkworth First School), though with Bagnas being such a small school there
was only 5 of them!!
I
hope in the New Year to spend a longer period of time at Bagnas as many of my
visits have just been short day visits, owing to it’s proximity to Tansen.
Hopefully with a greater amount of time I can work with the teachers to deliver
some really good lessons.
The
following day was Christmas Eve but I spent it largely preparing for teacher
training which meant trying out lots of practical experiments and was actually
quite a fun day though I was definitely starting to feel some pressure about
delivering the training. Saran was really helpful though in getting the snacks
and drinks sorted for the day so at least that was one less thing to worry
about.
In
the evening we started making some Christmas decorations, which Abhi really
enjoyed and I put some Christmas songs on. We were joined in the evening by
Sonja, a Dutch lady who is setting up a homestay in Badira National Park with
her Nepali partner. She was really lovely and there was also a nice American
girl, Rachel, staying so we had good company for Christmas.
On
Christmas morning Dhanni, Sonja, Rachel and I set off on an early morning
sunrise walk and it was a particuarly clear morning giving fantastic views of
the mountains. It was a somewhat different (I have never felt the urge for a
6am walk on Christmas Day before!) but lovely way to start Christmas morning.
Afterwards we sat up on the balcony with
the family and I opened some of the presents I had received. It was so kind of
people to send me some gifts as I know the postage can be a bit pricey but it
was really appreciated by me and the Bashayal famiy, who seeem to share my love
for chocolates and sweets!!!
 |
| Christmas morning walk - first time I have ever woken at 6am on Christmas day to go for a walk!!! |
After
a good breakfast, Sonja, Rachel, Abhi and I went down to the Christian church in
Tansen, which has a surprisingly large Christian community. I am not really
religious but it was really nice to see the, rather bizzarre, it has to be
said, service. It was very much a happy clappy kind of church and there were
lots of songs and drama sketches by the children, though I couldn’t make out
anything that was to do with the nativity story!
I
was a little worried as we were a good 5-10 minutes late for the 10am start but
I needn't have worried as we were amongst the first there and, in typical Nepali
style, people trickled in through-out the service whilst it was in progress and
also started to trickle out before it ended – we were amongst those but to be
fair we did give it the best part of 2 hours and it didn’t seem to be showing
any signs of ending!!!
I
spent most of the afternoon skyping with my family and this year all 4 of us
were in different countries, Rachel in Australia, Alan in France skiing and Dad
back at home. It was lovely to speak to them all though. Skype has been really
great here and it certainly would have been a harder trip if I was not able to
keep in touch with them as easily as I have been able to.
 |
| A packed out church on Christmas morning - Tansen has a surprisingly large Christian population. |
 |
| Janaki, Deepa, Abhi, Rachel and Sonja. |
In
the evening Sonja, Rachel and I clubbed together and we ordered lots of food in
from a local restaurant to give Janaki (the mum at homestay) a night off
cooking. We had a really great evening eating good food, having a few beers and
playing games, including a game I taught them called spoons which is a quick
game where you collect cards and once you have them you and everyone else has
to grab a spoon as quickly as possible. There is one spoon less than the number
of players so someone misses out. It was a really fun game with lots of
laughter and tug of war battles between people trying to grab the spoons!
 |
| With my baini (sister) and bhai (brother) on Christmas Day night with our Christmas lights. |
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| Dhani in deep concentration playing pick up sticks! |
 |
| Sonja and I with the Bashayal family for our Christmas meal. They really do treat me as a family member now and Abhi now calls me dai (brother). |
The
following day I was straight back to work on the teacher training but had a good
productive day and by the end was happy that I had a good programme arranged
for the next day.
 |
| A blindfold test to demonstrate the other senses we make use of. |
There
was fewer teachers in attendance than I had hoped but still a good
representation from our twinned schools, plus a few teachers from other
schools. I had the help of Sagar, a good friend, who has been absolutely brilliant in helping me out since I got here.
The day though as a whole was a huge success. I demonstrated loads of
practical science activities to them using only simple and easily obtainable
resources. There was also lots of chance for them to participate and we did
activities such as blindfolding for when teaching about the different senses we
have. This enables children to see what life would be like without our sight
and how they can use their other senses to determine what different objects
presented to them are. This got a lot of laughs as did trying out different
shadow puppets and this was exactly the reaction I hoped for as all of the
teachers joined in enthusiastically and had fun but were also really focused
on what they were doing. I hope they can see that if they enjoyed these
activities then their pupils certainly will.
 |
| Shadow puppets!!! |
The
other experiments of note we carried out were the friction experiment I had
carried out at Bhalebas previously and an investigation named ‘Making Alien
Soup’. Those who are not primary teachers will probably wander what this is! It
is a really fun practical activity where we explain to the children that we are
making some soup for aliens. They really love this soup! The ingredients are:
Water, Salt, Sand, Rice and lastly (this is the most nutritious part)
paperclips!!! Once they have mixed together this bizarre concoction together we
suddenly stop them and tell them we have made a terrible mistake and added too
much salt!! There are no more ingredients available and so we need to find a
way to separate them. They are then given a magnet, a sieve, and filter paper
(I cut out bits of cloth bags in place of filter paper) and use these to
separate out the paperclips, rice and sand respectively. The idea is then to
boil the water and condense it off, separating the salt and the water. However
without having the facilities to do this I suggested that they just use the sun
to evaporate off the water. Once again the teachers seemed to really enjoy
this activity so I really hope it will be used in schools as it’s not difficult
and does not need too much preparation work or expensive materials.
 |
| 'Making Alien Soup' and a friction experiment. |
After
a really good lunch provided by Rock Regency Hotel, who hosted the event (and were fantastic), Mr
Singh the headteacher from Bhalebas school, demonstrated a simple
electro-magnet and also how to make a pin hole camera. I was really pleased
that he was willing to participate and will be looking for future volunteers to
contribute.
The
teachers then were set the task of coming up with their own practical ideas and
demonstrations which they presented to the other teachers. There was perhaps
not as much creativity and originality as I would have hoped but at the end we
still had lots of different presentations of practical science.
 | ||
| Mr Singh (right), headteacher from Bhalebas school demonstrates his electromagnet |
 |
| There was lots of practical science going on which was great to see. Top - a string and cups telephone, middle - demonstrating water pressure (the holes were not exactly the same size so it didn't work exactly but this was a good demonstration of how it is important to try things out before demonstrating to the pupils!). Bottom - My friend Biju, making duck noises with a straw (similar to how a reed works in a musical instrument). |
At
the end of the session the teachers were given a feedback form to rate the
session and to give suggestions. The main suggestion seemed to be to give more
to give more training! They marked the following areas out of 10 with 10 being
the highest. The average scores are listed below:
The
language was easy to understand: 6.7
The
ideas were easy to understand: 8.5
The
aims and objectives were easy to understand: 8.4
I
enjoyed the group activities: 9
The
group activities were useful: 9.2
I
feel I could use some of the ideas in my lessons: 8.3
The
materials used in the demonstrations are accessible to me: 7.8
I
feel the training has been of benefit t me: 9.3
The
language score was a little low but I think they meant how easy it was to
understand me personally rather than the translation they were given. Apart
from that I was thrilled with the feedback – I just hope they do actually use
the ideas or at least use the session to inspire them to create some good
practical lessons.
I
really enjoyed the day, as the teachers seemed to also. I was however glad it
was over and now have some time off as schools are on exams and then have a
holiday. I won’t in fact be back in school till 19th January. Whilst
I’m always thrilled to have holiday in England it has been rather frustrating
just how many there are over here. I will make the best of it though and have
some good things to look forward to.
Hope
you all had a great Christmas too.
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