Loving Learning - English

Early in my time here I offered a Professional Development session in reading to the teachers at my school as I saw it as the greatest area of need, and perhaps the area of teaching I most enjoy and think is most valuable. Many teachers seemed interested and since that day I have had further opportunities to share ideas with some.

Immediately after the session though, one teacher approached me and said that while the ideas were interesting, they would never work in Bhutan with Bhutanese students. Even in those early days I could say emphatically that 'No! These ideas definitely work in Bhutan and my students are making great progress!' She wasn't to be convinced then, and probably never will be but below I have photographic evidence of Bhutanese students learning in an active, interactive and exciting way! It most certainly can be done!!!!!

I teach Class Two with students ranging in age from 6 to 9 and all are English as a third or fourth language, and in most cases it is not a language known by parents at home.
I work with the Bhutanese Curriculum Guide which was created in partnership with Canadian educators, and I find it is a great resource to use to begin planning my lessons.

For each two week block I have a set text - and they have been varied - stories, recounts, a play and a non-fiction text so far. They are Bhutanese texts with Bhutanese illustrations and so are easy to relate to for my students and I think it is a wonderful step in the right direction that I have enough of these texts for each child to have their own for the two weeks we are learning. At first when the majority of my class were non-readers it was ridiculously challenging (texts are about level 15 +), but only a couple of months later most are now able to attempt to read the text from the beginning and over two weeks become familiar with the words through a lot of repetition and focussed vocabulary work. Along with the texts come about ten suggested activities to develop reading, comprehension and writing skills. Many are ideas I have used before, and in the most part I am happy to give them a go. Sometimes I substitute another activity which has the same outcome and which I think will suit my students more. Sometimes the activities seem to be created with native English speaking students in mind and I adapt the activity to the abilities of my students.


I am left with approximately ten lessons a fortnight with which I can plan my own English lessons. I have been using the spelling program Words Their Way which I am familiar with from my Australian school - and we are having great success! I sometimes I run rotational literacy groups which allows me to work with a small group at a time on a particular skill while the others do an independent activity (my groups are called Koalas, Kangaroos and Tassie Devils!!). In this way I hope to encourage my students to become self-directed learners, to talk with each other, problem solve and peer tutor. I can see how proud they feel to be allowed to get on with an activity independently.

What I don't do very much of is 'chalk and talk' copying off the blackboard. I try to think of more creative and engaging ways for the students to learn. I do not have access to photocopying so there are no worksheets at all. I have been very fortunate to gradually put together an astonishing range of stationery that has been sent from all over the world by kind friends who read the wish list I posted earlier in the year and exceeded any expectations I had of what might actually arrive. It is with great excitement that I can now incorporate coloured paper, colouring, cutting and glueing into my lessons!

One of the first parcels I received from home - a treasure box full of of things that make learning fun!

A box full of books that I have given to the library or added to the collection of books I keep in my class for early finishers.

The sight of these two boys who not long ago couldn't read, now yelling out their favourite Dr Seuss books is what it is all about.

I wanted to share some of the activities that we do - none of which are ground-breaking to my Australian readers, but perhaps may inspire others working in the developing world or with ESL learners to see what can be done with very limited resources - and let me tell you, these kids are coming along in leaps and bounds, greet me with enormous smiles in the morning and farewell me with 'I love you' at the end of the day. We are having a great time and learning so much as well!




I purchased this collection of levelled readers in Thimphu and use them to assess and teach reading in my class. At the book fair I bought a box of 110 more of these type of readers which students can borrow from the library.

For some of the texts I made sentence jigsaws with sentences from the book. They find the sentence in the text,  put the words in the correct order and write it in their book. I made enough so there were plenty for each table group of three to work on, and then share around.

 A fun way to reuse the word cards: I taped them all over my blow up globe and then we threw the ball around the circle and kids chose a word to read and remove when they caught the ball.

Here the girls are using the same cards for a different activity - putting them in alphabetical order.

Sometimes we write about our weekend on Monday mornings and here they illustrated with some aquarelle pencils I brought from home - easy and not too messy to use in the classroom, but lots of fun!

Here students chose their own sentence from the text and wrote it on a strip of coloured paper (which made it even more engaging that plain old white paper!) and then chopped it up, mixed it around and glued it back in order.

A whole class introduction to comprehension activities. I wrote statements from the text that were either true or false, and then we sorted them on the board.

 

I find varied ways for kids to work with their vocabulary words - using stencils to write them, writing them in bubble-writing, rainbow writing using a different colour for each letter, or alphabet stamps.

I bring my class twos to the library so we have the space to work in groups - it wouldn't be possible in our tiny classroom. But here the kids are engaged and working on small group tasks.

Students using coloured pens to write their vocabulary words.

I have been making chatterboxes with all my classes (thanks to receiving origami paper in the mail) - writing questions to ask friends which makes it fun and interactive, not to mention some good listening to all the instructions on how to make them. So lovely to see kids out in the playground with them afterwards.

I made sets of onset and rime cards for children to work with word families.

I also made a few word endings dice - roll the dice around the circle and try to think of a word with that ending.

I made a heap of these missing medial sound cards. We sat outside in a circle and sorted them into groups of vowel sounds and then the kids wrote them in their books.

Following this I made it into a game for small groups to play - I made a dice with a vowel on each side and a lucky 'wild' star. Kids took turns to roll the dice and find a word card that needed that vowel.

I have made many sets of word concentration games to build and reinforce vocabulary. Topics for each set include: transport, nature, colours, vegetables, fruit, days of week, months, shapes, family names, sightwords. At first the kids couldn't read them, but now they can!!! I use them as an early finishers activity that kids can access independently.

Colourful displays outside our classroom of their first attempts at writing. How far we have come!

Thanks to a friend, I have some very fancy laminated sheets and whiteboard markers to use for practicing our spelling!

 

I write the frequent words and new vocabulary on a poster for each text we use, and often in the morning use them for a quick warm up activity such as cloze where we also learn about writing sentences/questions/speech.

 

I brought a set of laminated fish and magnetic fishing rods from home and we use these to practise our sightwords and even maths too.

The class 5s saw me outside with the fishing game and begged me to play it with them. Easy! I wrote words at their level and they had so much fun!

The older students enjoy playing bingo games in the library. I have made many sets for different reading levels and a contraction set and plurals set. They can play independently and I can differentiate for different abilities within one class.

 

Playing an oral-language game - cards have categories on them such as 'something that you find in the kitchen' and then all the children in the group need to say a suitable word.

I have made a number of these 'loop games' - each child gets a card (and any literacy, maths or other skill can be the topic - this set is 'verbs') and they stand to read their card, then the child who has the next card in the loop reads theirs and so on til everyone has had their turn. Encourages interaction, reading, pronunciation and fun!

 

Here we are playing the 'Bang' game - have made this at many different levels. Sightwords are written on strips of card and placed in a container with four cards that say 'BANG!'. Students take turns to pick a card - if they can read it they can keep it otherwise put it back in. When someone takes a BANG! card they must return all the cards they have collected. The winner has the most cards at the end of the game.

 

I made some verb cards to build vocab and look at spelling patterns of verbs. Rather than copy words from the board the kids shared the words around until they had written a sentence and drawn a picture for them all. Later I turned these cards into a BANG! game to reinforce reading skills.

I have three pen-pal projects going - these ones from Class 6 went to Canada, and I have my UNESCO Club girls writing to two different groups in Australia - one at my school and another a group of girl guides in Bellingen.

And of course I use lots of songs - simple songs with actions are loved by all classes, even up to class 6.

And stay tuned, I will follow this post in a little while with the fun and interactive ways I am teaching maths.

I'd love to know if anyone is inspired by these ideas.

 

Sightseeing - Wangdue #2

It was so lovely to have a sleep in Saturday morning before enjoying a big breakfast at the hotel. We caught a taxi to the small village of Lobesa near where we were staying to stock up on food for a picnic. I went to an Indian sweet shop and bought a box of sweets and some fruit juice and went over to the market to get bananas. Heather bought cucumbers, cheese, crunchy fried ‘bread’ and Senge bought tomatoes and apples. We hopped back in our taxi and headed down the hill in the direction of Punakha but turned off towards Chimi Lhakhang.


The road through the village of Sopsokha was rocky and bumpy, but the village itself was picturesque with green rice fields surrounding the cluster of homes. Chimi Lhakhang is up on the hill and we walked up the path in the sunshine and could see the type of views in all directions that you dream of when you come to Bhutan. At the top of all the hills in every direction were monasteries, topped with golden rooves, seemingly impossible to reach.

Chimi Lhakhang is at the top of this small hill.

Walking up to the monastery under the shady trees.

View down the river to Wangdue.

 



Jacarandas, prayer-flags and rural scenery - I love this photo.

Chimi Lhakhang was built around 1499 and is famous in Bhutan for being the place to come for couples who are having trouble conceiving a child. In the event that a child is born after these prayers, they are often given the name Chimi or Kinley (Chimi after the name of the monastery, and Kinley after Drukpa Kinley, the Divine Madman of Bhutan who built a chorten here - both names suitable for girls or boys). We enjoyed the atmosphere but feel blessed with our two boys and didn’t pray for more!

Afterwards we found a lovely spot outside with views of the temple and the gardens with Jacaranda trees in bloom. It was another precious opportunity to hang out with our friends.

Picnic time!

Walking back through Sopsokha.

Meanwhile we were in contact with more of the teachers who live in the nearby area and one by one they let us know they would be able to either meet us in the afternoon at Punakha Dzong, or back in Bajo town for dinner. We started walking back to the main road and the clouds were getting heavier and heavier and at the moment that large drops of rain began to fall a large taxi appeared, dropped off some passengers and agreed to take us to Punakha – good timing!

Although we had visited Punakha Dzong in February when we travelled east, I wanted to see it again as the Jacaranda trees are in bloom, and in many images of Punakha Dzong in tourist brochures you can see how beautiful it is at this time of year. At home in Queensland we love our lilac Jacarandas, and it was a very familiar sight to see them, but unusual that it is May.

 

Punakha Dzong

You cross the river over a covered bridge to enter Punakha Dzong.

Xavier, Bob, Valerie, Andrea and at the front me, Heather and Senge-la.

 

One by one we gathered on the bridge and talked and chatted and caught up on 3 months of settling into Bhutan. Another Andrea, who is in her fourth year living in a village high above the Dzong, about a 40 minute walk away, took us for a walk to the longest suspension bridge in Bhutan which she walks over when she comes to town. It was impressively long and in the unstable weather it was swinging from side to side. Looking through the metal slats to the river below was a little unsettling, but the views up and down the river were beautiful.

View across the suspension bridge.

View from the bridge upriver.

 

Some of us returned to look inside the Dzong again and then we took a taxi into Bajo, stopping for tea at Dragon’s Nest, where we all stayed in February.

Dinner was again at SNS Hotel, the Indian Restaurant we had lunch at on Thursday. We had enjoyed such a delicious lunch we were really happy to return. An enormous feast was ordered – it felt like we were making up for months of eating fairly simple meals. Uttapam, dosas, sambar and coconut chutney, pappadams, fried peanuts, and a variety of curries with rice and garlic naan. All washed down with some icy cold beer! Our spirits were certainly lifted after such a lovely meal, a chance to connect with at least half of our group (the friends from the far east and some further west couldn’t make it), and the promise of all meeting again in six weeks for our summer retreat. We are a diverse group of individuals who had to come all the way around the world to meet in this way, but united by the unique experience of living in Bhutan, I think we’ll always share a special bond and meeting these people is a real highlight of the Bhutan experience for me.

 

Madness at the Book Fair - Wangdue #1

The Bhutanese ‘Bush Telegraph’ had been in overdrive in the past couple of weeks with rumours of the upcoming Book Fair in Wangdue. Outside of Thimphu there are no book shops (or certainly none in the area where we live) and so schools rely on this annual event to stock their school libraries. Since 2008 the government has provided a budget to each school based on the number of enrolled students, and consequently most Bhutanese schools have adequate libraries that in many cases would be the only library or place to find books in the whole community. As the primary school librarian it made sense that I be offered the chance to attend, and aside from that it was a wonderful opportunity for us as a family to have a get-away and see a bit more of Bhutan, and catch up with our BCF colleagues, many of whom had also convinced their principals to send them to the Fair.

 

We stopped on the way for a snack at a roadside stall - coffee, popcorn, boiled eggs and momos.

These yellow snacks were a perfect play telephone for Remy (and doesn't he look like cousin Lachie in this pic!)

 We always love seeing these water-propelled prayer-wheels.

 

When we arrived in Wangdue late Thursday afternoon it was pouring with rain and in a short time the roads had turned into rushing brown rivers. Our bus took us straight to the Book Fair where our friend Heather had already arrived from Chukha where she lives. I ran out into the rain and slush to find her and also briefly met up with Matt, another Australian teacher posted near to Thimphu. The Book Fair, which was set up in tents on a school sports field was being inundated with rain, boxes were piled high everywhere and people were scurrying about, trying not to get soaked.

We were taken to Bajo town, the modern new town of Wangdue and saw another long lost BCF friend there, Valerie who was stopping through on her way to Thimphu. As we chatted and reconnected after months of living in isolation, a teacher from Chumey saw us and came to offer us a lift to our hotel which was about 20km away. There was Bob, Heather and I and Xavier and Remy and our luggage including a stroller and a small hatchback already loaded to the roof with luggage! It seemed impossible, but we squashed in and were kindly taken to our hotel, which ended up taking a long time due to a landslide caused by the rain.

We were lucky to visit when Jacarandas are in bloom - this is a street in Wangdue.

 

We stayed at YT Hotel as it had great reviews on Trip Advisor and I read that they had a fruit orchard including avocado trees. Anyone who knows Xavier knows he is a terribly fussy eater, but the one thing he loves and will eat til the cows come home is avocadoes. We haven’t had one since we left Australia, and unfortunately it is not the right season, but I still wanted to see that avocadoes are grown here and perhaps later in the year we will be able to have them again.

The YT Hotel had beautiful displays of plants in pots - more inspiration for the garden I want to create back in Australia.

 

 

The hotel is a lovely respite from the modern, dusty, dirty town of Bajo, which could have been anywhere in India except for the Bhutanese facades of building blocks. A shopkeeper even spoke in Hindi when I asked the price of the grapes I bought and from somewhere deep in my brain I understood his reply. We also had a really delicious lunch of South Indian food – I had a masala dosa and Bob an uttapam with sambar and coconut chutney and real Indian masala tea. I realised that where we are in Bumthang, whenever we have an opportunity to eat outside our home, the options are limited to Bhutanese food, and I have really been enjoying it, but how nice to have different tastes and flavours!

But I digress, I need to tell you about the Book Fair itself. We were blessed with a sunny day Friday for our shopping day. The feeling of getting up and putting on sandals for the first time in months was really lovely and the feeling of warmth and heat as the day went on was quite startling.

Heading into the Book Fair I had a good sense of what I wanted to buy for the school. Along with the other English teachers, we have made a plan to start a Friday reading period and I offered to provide a set of suitable ‘learn to read’ books for each class. I also offered to perform Running Record reading assessments for all students! Well, in reality that may take me all year, but I will try to go class to class with my bag of PM readers and get a picture of reading abilities at each level and then provide books that are appropriate. At the moment the school library is very well stocked – we have a real bulk of books there, but to my mind, we were lacking books that children will be able to actually read – for the majority of students to about year three, simple engaging ‘learn to read’ books are what is needed, especially as English in most cases is a third or fourth language. Usually students choose books with nice pictures and flip the pages without reading! Also, I wanted to buy books written and published in native English speaking countries by favourite authors. The majority of books in our library are very cheap publications from India – the grammar and spelling and layout is poor and the content is invariably ‘moral stories’, ‘folk tales’ and ‘fairy tales’. I do think it is lovely that the students really resonate with these type of stories here, but I am hoping to turn them on to a new world of reading with my sets of Geronimo Stilton, Goosebumps and Dr Seuss.

I started the day by spending about an hour doing reconnaissance of all the stalls to see what was available. I was pleasantly surprised to find that everything I was looking for was there, hidden in among the masses of cheap books that the library is already filled with. Our school budget was low – about $700 total for the whole school, of which I could spend half for the lower primary school. I was so fortunate to have an extra stash of cash in my money belt, donated by kind friends at home who didn’t hesitate in seeing the benefit of donating money for this cause. To say it made all the difference is an understatement – my budget was doubled – and I was able to look beyond the cheap and nasty to the quality books I think will really inspire the kids to want to read.

Boxes labelled for schools all over Bhutan were in scattered piles - will they find their way home??

Not a cash-register or computer in sight - all bills were prepared by hand.

Stalls were set up in big tents - to shelter from rain and sun.

 Bob found some books for Remy's birthday.

 

 

Xavier wouldn't smile for the camera, but he was more than happy to sit and read books all morning.

I also found some lovely Big Books which will go perfectly in the library with the easel I have asked to have made – and I can see myself being able to offer ‘modelled reading’ lessons to the students – discussing behaviours of a good reader, decoding strategies, attending to punctuation and fluency. These books open up new possibilities with my teaching and that is exciting. One type of book that was really sadly lacking at the Book Fair was Bhutanese children’s stories. While we were in Thimphu we did quite a bit of book shopping and bought at least twenty local children’s stories in English. Our boys have really enjoyed them, and I wanted to buy multiple copies for the school library. It makes sense that the children will enjoy reading stories about people like themselves, in local settings and local storylines. I found only five titles of which I bought multiple copies, but that was a disappointment.

It took most of the day to finally complete all purchases and then carry the items back to the bus. Receipts had to be tallied and we scraped in right on budget, so that was good. In all honesty I would love to have been given the opportunity to also buy books for the upper school too as I would like to have again purchased the type of books that perhaps only a native English speaker with a lifelong love for books might buy – favourite stories and authors that are bound to ignite the teenage students’ interest.

I found out that the other passengers on our bus from Bumthang – teachers and principals from a variety of schools – had completed their shopping and were ready to head home today. I felt really disappointed as with all the hard work done I was ready to have a day of RnR in Wangdue before heading home on Sunday as had been planned. We had arranged with our teaching friends who live within a two hour radius to meet us Saturday and it was an opportunity too good to miss, particularly as we had travelled eight hours to be here!

I was musing over our options when a man called out – ‘Are you from Chumey?’ – he was the principal from Jakar High School and straight away informed me that he would be driving back through Chumey on Sunday in his car and had seats free to take our family home! What a God-send! Travelling with the boys on public transport could be hard work – asking to stop for the toilet and no breaks to stretch legs and fresh air – whereas travelling in a private vehicle means we can stop if we need to, and hopefully the journey will also be a lot quicker.

And just when I was already feeling elated, my phone rang from our favourite monk – Thubten Senge-la – the English BCF teacher who is an ordained Buddhist Monk. He was finished work for Friday and had asked for a day off work Saturday so he could come and meet us for the evening and Saturday. We arranged to meet at a rumoured pizza restaurant – things were really looking up!

Heather and I walked back to Bajo and met up with Bob who had had a long day entertaining the boys. It was time for an ice-cream and a sit down on the curb, to rest our legs and get a bit of a sugar hit after a long, hot exhausting day. We then headed up to the pizza shop and settled in with a well earned beer, and in no time a mysterious knock on the window was all the boys needed to hear to run out and embrace Senge-la who they adore for his loving cuddles, silly games, dancing and singing.

 

Senge-la, Xavier, Bob, Remy and Heather as the pizza arrived.

 

The pizza, at a cafe called Coffee Affairs, was the best that we’ve had in Bhutan – mushroom and olive – and we ordered French fries as well and it’s a cliché but it didn’t feel like months since we’d all sat around together. How lovely to speak in rapid-fire English, empathising with each other’s stories of life in different but similar villages and schools. We came back to our hotel and had fun dancing and singing – Senge-la providing some varied music from his iphone: classical ballet, The Cure and everything in between – it was a late night for all but exactly what we needed, friendship, joy, fun, music, singing and dancing. What a great way to recharge!

Xavier having ballet dancing lessons from Senge-la - a former classical ballet dancer! Unfortunately I don't have a photo of when Bob joined in and learned the moves for 'Tomorrow', from Annie.

 

It will take a few days for the books to be catalogued at the school, but will post photos of them when I can.