Today we delivered our first day of teacher training to Malawian educators. Charity, our lovely driver and friend dropped us off at Chigumukire Teacher Training Centre in Blantyre rural. We had 31 teachers attending our training who had travelled several kilometres on foot in the hot sun. We kicked it off with some training on The Good Lesson cycle followed by how to set up a school library and finally how to train up Standard 7 & 8 children (the oldest children in the primary school) to be Reading Leaders for the younger children.
Our participants demonstrated good willingness and got involved in role play activities as well as some singing to engage and motivate learners. We even taught them the Scottish song Heed, Shooders, Naps and Taes! Mr Sweeney was able to show off his impressive Chechewa phrases and even attempted reading a Malawian book...which had the whole classroom filled with laughter! A much better attempt than mine shall I say!
We had the opportunity to share some active learning ideas too and used a TALULAR (Teaching and Learning Using Locally Aquired Resources) ball made from plastic bags and cellotape to gather in some of the teachers responses. We took lots of videos and photos for the MLOL website and plan to put the videos together and upload them to the MLOL YouTube channel and Google Classroom. The Malawian educators will be able to access this from their phones to keep the communication and collaboration going even once we are back in Scotland!
We had a very quick visit to the local primary school next to the teaching centre before the heavens opened and the rain POURED! The children were very excited to see us and we had the chance to talk to the Headteacher too.
Tomorrow we are back out training at Ndirande Teacher Training Centre...watch this space for the next daily blog!
