International Experience - Uganda 2013: Week 6 - Professional Blog

Small 'ones' (units in NI).

In my last blog I briefly mentioned that I was trying to make the children’s learning more interactive and enjoyable through adopting strategies from home such as WALT and WILF. I have continued to use these strategies this week with P2B in conjunction with some other basic approaches.

Tall tens.

Over the past few weeks, I have noticed that the Ugandan teachers adopt a rote learning teaching style. From my observations, they only ever get the children to repeat what they are saying or copy things down from the blackboard. Learning is not an enjoyable experience and there is no such thing as open-ended questions or encouraging the children to think for themselves, even though the National Curriculum for Uganda (2007, p.8) states that, “it places the child at the centre of the learning process.”

Obviously my teaching style is completely different to the teachers in Uganda. Due to the lack of resources and space, I have found it difficult to make my teaching as interactive as at home, although, I have tried to adopt a variety of simple techniques, which make the learning more child-centred. I have implemented the use of group work through talk partners and team competitions and have also used drama, stories, songs and rhymes to enhance learning, including the famous book, “We are going on a bear hunt”. It is evident that the children enjoy when I am making a fool of myself at the front of the classroom and encouraging them to do so as well. These approaches assist with child centred learning and ensure that the children “have opportunities to be actively involved in the learning” (Northern Ireland Curriculum, 2007, p.9).

Big fat hundreds.

Written work is essential in every lesson in Uganda as it is basically the only form of assessment that takes place. Therefore I have had to include a written aspect within each of my lessons. I have found that when I am introducing the concept and teaching the children orally through student participation, songs, rhymes, drama and questioning, the children seem to understand. However when it comes to written work, the children just revert back to their old habits and copy everything down from the blackboard (sometimes including the table points and pictures of WALT and WILF).

P2B doing their written work.

Five children receiving stickers.

In Uganda there are not the same Child Protection laws as there are in Northern Ireland. Caning still occurs throughout Ugandan schools. I have witnessed 10 children getting caned at the same time for talking or some other minor misbehaviour. I found this really hard to watch and was nearly crying myself, never mind the children. I don’t think this is a very effective behaviour management technique as I got the impression from the children that this happens all the time so it’s more a way of life rather than a punishment.

And the winning team is..the Tigers....ROAR!

Obviously I was never going to beat the children so I have adopted some positive behaviour approaches as according to Pritchard (2005) positive reinforcement results in favourable outcomes whereas negative reinforcement does not. These have included a similar system to the traffic light system, stickers for the best work and I have also introduced table/ group points into the classroom. All of these techniques have worked really well as the majority of the time no child reaches their third warning and the children have loved earning stickers and table points. Since I was using these positive reinforcement techniques in my lessons, I informed my teachers that they could feel free to add or take away table points at any time. The teachers have keenly adopted this approach and since I have introduced table points no beating has occurred in the classroom, which is great. I really hope that the teachers have learnt how to manage behaviour differently and continue to use these approaches in their teaching.