On behalf of the School and Duhita Ma’am, I thank you for hosting us so warmly in your school during our visit. We felt so very comfortable at every phase of our stay that we did not feel we were out of our country, Mearns Primary sort of became a second home to us:)

Mrs Dillon-Ruddy, we really appreciate the positive school culture, the outcome of your leadership and connect with teachers and students. And we thank Mr Rodgers for organizing everything, just the perfect way, for both of us.

I am appreciative of so many things that we saw and observed in your school and shared the same with Seema Ma’am and Mrignaini ma’am. I  am now going to share my learning with the English Teachers this coming Thursday.

While we appreciated so many things in your school, below are the few that we loved the most:

What we loved about the Scottish classrooms:

1. Very colourful classrooms with lots of learning resources on walls. You could just read the walls and get to know what the students are learning currently.

2. Very organized classrooms with everything organized in labelled folders and files.

3. Lots of resources in classrooms; each class had a computer and a printer.

4. Lots of stationery in classrooms like highlighters, sketches, pencils, coloured sheets, and other required stationery items.

5. Very well behaved children.

6. Children were highly focussed towards learning.

7. Teachers were very clear with their instructions.

8. All the writing tasks were supported by value points/audio/video for guiding students towards effective writing.

9. Each class began with the discussion of ‘Learning Intention’ and the teachers ended the class by discussing the ‘Success Criteria’. 

10. Teachers focused a lot on developing the skills rather than merely focusing on content and knowledge. This was clearly visible in all the classes that we attended.

11. Some very good practical sessions were happening in Science classes.

12. Children worked very well in groups and showed respect to their group members.

13. Children got ample of opportunities to self assess their work.

14. Children got a lot of opportunities to assess their peers.

15. Teachers’ comments in the notebooks were very specific and focussed towards achieving the learning intention.

16. What surprised us was the fact that teachers checked the notebooks on the same day.

Once again, thank you for everything you have done.

Hope that both of our schools sustain this partnership with new projects, as discussed, in the coming year!

Warm regards

Anjali Mittal