A blizzard has descended on the Primary 2 classroom. Our wonderful artists have made snow globes as part of our weather topic. We will display them for a short time then the children can bring them home to show off their artistic skills. Meanwhile here is a photograph to whet your appetite.
Mrs Creaney

I have posted some photographs from our partner school, Nanjala Primary, in Malawi showing the classrooms of Primary 1 and Primary 7.  There is also progress being made with the building of the new  classroom. The welcome message on the board was very humbling especially since the school is so short on resources. There was also a collection of locally made crafts which I brought back with me to use as part of an enterprise initiative. Some of the photographs show the very talented P7 children dancing and singing in a welcome celebration. I will continue to post regular updates and photographs.

After 2 days at Nanjala Primary I am so impressed at the progress that has been made since last year. The teachers are fantastic and the children are so keen to learn. The teachers were displaying and using the maths resources I brought over, which was fantastic to see.

I was greeted by all the staff and the Parent Management Committee, the equivalent of our parent Council.  The children had prepared traditional dances and the staff had a display of the crafts they teach to the children.

I then visited every class to chat to the children and develop my links from last year.

Today I was in 4 classes helping the teachers and trying my hand at teaching the very large classes. The children were extremely well behaved and patient when trying to understand my Scottish Accent.

I will be supporting a local charity at a disabled children’s camp tomorrow where children are brought to have their needs assessed. This shows great progress from a few years ago when attitudes towards disabled children were discriminatory.

I will be back at Nanjala on Friday to teach angles to Standard (Primary) 7 and colours to Standard (Primary) 1. I don’t know which will be the more challenging!!

I’ll keep you posted.

Zikomo (thank you)

I finally arrived in Malawi on Thursday evening 30 hours after leaving home.
After a two hour delay, and a flight change to take us via Mozambique, we landed at Blantyre Airport to be met by our Malawi partnership teachers who had been waiting for us for 6 hours in sweltering heat.
On Friday we met with our partnership group to discuss our visit. It was a very positive and productive meeting where we discussed not only what the Scottish teachers could do to help but how we Scottish teachers and our pupils could learn from our Malawian counterparts. I also showed our Partnership teachers, including Mr Owen Kasitomu from our partner primary, the resources I had made and explained how I used them in a Scottish classroom.
I will be going in to our partner primary Nanjala Primary for 3 days this week to share resources for each stage with all staff and to teach a lesson for each class. Including the Primary 3 class of 150 children!!

We also have a football coach with us who will be coaching girls and boys from each school and organising a tournament between the ten partner schools.
I am looking forward to my first visit to Nanjala Primary tomorrow and will keep you updated.

Mrs Creaney

Tomorrow, Wednesday 7^th October, I will be travelling to Malawi to spend 2 weeks working with teachers and children in primary schools, including our new partner school, Nanjala Primary.

Nanjala Primary is a school in the Mulanje district of Malawi where there are 770 children in 7 classes. The children are taught in bare concrete classrooms where the only resources available to the teachers are a blackboard and chalk. The children at Uphall Primary have begun fundraising to provide resources for the children of Nanjala.

Many thanks for those of you who have already handed in pennies for our Malawi Mile as well as pens for the children of Nanjala. We had over 370 pens handed in and I will be taking these with me to enable the children to write letters back to us.

I will keep you updated, Wi-Fi permitting, throughout my time in Malawi.

Kind regards

Mrs Creaney