Snap

Our visitors have continued to work very hard and have had a great impact on the children, staff and our work. Pete and Alex will be leaving to go back to England tomorrow so we had the sad task of saying good-bye to them at assembly this morning. (They will be leaving before school starts tomorrow to catch an internal flight from Kisumu to Nairobi hence the early farewell). Many thanks to them for all that they have done during their visit. I really hope that we will be seeing them in Kenya again in the future.

I had a very entertaining meeting today with Madam Nyangwe, (our head teacher), and Mr Isaiah who teaches in our Agriculture College. Like schools all over the world we are trying hard to improve our pupils’ achievements in maths. During our meeting today we took the first steps in planning a training day for all of the teaching staff in developing a more dynamic approach to maths teaching. It was a lot of fun. 

The quantity and quality of resources available free on the internet never fails to amaze me. With the usual uncanny timing I managed to find a Maths Teachers’ Handbook produce by a UK based organisation called VSO, (Voluntary Service Overseas). VSO works a bit like the American Peace Corps and sends volunteers all over the world to work on a variety of projects, including teaching. The Handbook was produced to assist maths teachers in the developing world and is geared towards producing resources for teaching using easily available resources, (like bottle tops, matches, nails and string). It is a mine of useful information, advice and solid teaching practises.

During our meeting we played mathematical snap, based on the children’s card game. There are a number of suggestions about how this can be applied to maths. Our game involved recognising equivalent fractions, decimals and percentages. We played a simpler version of snap using bigger number cards for the younger children and finished off our games session with a paired activity designed to help pupils to accurately estimate and draw angles without using a protractor. During our games we were able to reflect on how the children would play them and the learning points that the teacher could draw out of them, (including cheating!). We had previously identified a need to add more variety to the school’s approach to maths teaching. The Handbook provided a very helpful starting point.We are looking forward to sharing these and other ideas and resources with all the teachers. It should be a good training day.