Week Five

 Emma with Nursery Reading Group

We welcomed Colette last week and she has been a tremendous help in class this week. Nima had to go to Kathmandu this week, so Bikram has provided classes to take while she is away. Initially a little overwhelmed by the sudden request, we all just got stuck into classes, with varying degrees of success! While we found that simple communication with the youngest classes was challenging, after some days with the same groups, we are developing visual commands to aid class management along with occasional input from teacher - Thank you Kumar and Tilak.

Emma and Colette teaching Nursery "The Animal Boogie-Woogie"

Emma Colette and Guy have been teaching classes, Nursery and Grades One and Three. Guy has introduced computing and typing with the Grade Three’s and it has been very successful, they were extremely excited to use the computers. The girls have been teaching and singing many songs in English, and had fun teaching English names for many animals. One favorite song is the “Animal Boogie Woogie”; we hope that it will be sung in years to come!

Grade Three - Computer Posters

We have been using the resources that we prepared, and they have been used to good effect in class. After discussing the resources with Nima, she thought that it would be good to have a set of A to Z cards for the nursery classes with the words that she usually teaches and then another set for grades 1 and 2 with new words.  So the local A to Z has changed a little and this will now be used in grades 1-3. We hope that the teachers will be able to use these resources to aid their English teaching; unfortunately the teachers have not seen these resources in use. But we have discussed their use with Nima and have brainstormed a list of potential activities and games for which the cards should be useful.

Some of the Laminated Learning Cards

Colette has also been gathering video footage of school life and certain classes. We hope to all work together on making a document to outline school life here with some photos and footage to go with it.

Library

Guy and Sangay have been working hard to complete the library. They cleared out the library and laid the vinyl floor into the night. The library is now looking most inviting! 

Guy and Sangay - Floorlayers

Emma and Colette have worked extremely hard writing out all the library borrowing cards and we are now working on attaching them to all the books, along with organizing the books into their categories on the shelves. We are excited that there is now a new room to use, and hope Nima can begin to take her dance classes in there again shortly. And Vicky – Don’t panic, the playground is safely stacked in the store cupboard!

Fresh new Library

Computers

Although we never got round to running computing classes with teachers, Guy has passed on some knowledge to Tilak. He will be able to fix the remaining PCs when the power supplies arrive. Also, Tilak was very interested in setting up a website for the school. But as this takes time and requires purchasing of a web address, Guy advised that for now it would be better to set up a Blog spot for the school. Tilak made the page and should keep it updated with further school news: http://shreeluklaschool.blogspot.com

So this is our final week in school. We will take the short trek to Everest Base Camp tomorrow and then head home. The three of us have rounded everything up - completed the library, finished resources, collected some videos of teaching for Sarah and helped the teachers with using them (such as the audiobooks). The computer suite is gaining popularity, and people from the town regularly come to use this amazing facility out of school hours. We hope to update this blog in the future, and that it will be a valuable resource for further volunteers to document the amazing work at this school.

We have very much enjoyed our time at the school, and leave knowing that we have helped to make school life at Shree Lukla more enjoyable and educational (particularly for the staff who have discovered Facebook)!

All the best, and feel free to contact us in future, Emma, Guy and Colette.

Class 3 Proudly Display Their Outdoor Artwork