Strawberry Fields

Our children have loved the Bhutanese children's story Membar Tsho - The Flaming Lake, by Kunzang Choden. It tells the story of Pema Lingpa, a revered saint from our region, Bumthang, who lived 500 years ago. He was a 'terton' or discoverer of hidden treasures, and his most famous discovery was at Membar Tsho where he leaped into the lake with a flaming torch in his hand, and emerged with the torch still lit, having recovered a Buddha statue and a skull.

For those visiting Membar Tsho it is said that those 'pure of heart and with unwavering faith' will see images of prayer flags, chortens, temples or Buddhas deep in the water of the lake. Of course, when we visit, Xavier and Remy exclaim loudly about all the Buddhist images they see in the water! But being children, they are pure of heart, so who knows?!

We visited Membar Tsho for the second time yesterday, taking along our friends from Thimphu, one of only a couple of other foreign families we know of that live in Bhutan. We met them a few months ago, and it was so nice to hear they were heading out our way for a holiday. Our boys were definitely in need for a play with some English-speaking kids and it was really lovely to listen to their conversations.

We recently hid a geocache here in Chumey, and when I was on the geocaching website (www.geocaching.com) I found out that there was a geocache (which is a modern-day hidden treasure!) hidden at Membar Tsho. It was fun to introduce our friends to this new passtime, especially as I know there are now a few more hidden around the country to find.

Carefully peering down into the lake.

 

Tiny 'tsa tsas' - little chortens - are made by piglrims and placed in all the caves and crevices in and around Membartsho.

Kids on the bridge - the black spots on the photo are flies - they were swarming around the whole area - unbelievable!

This is around where we found the geocache.

 

We had a lovely picnic high on the hill above the lake, under hundreds of prayer flags. After lunch the kids played with sticks and leaves and made a 'house' while the grown-ups chatted.

Our next stop was at a 'Recreation Reserve' that we had heard about but not been before. We had no expectations, and it was surprising that on a Sunday afternoon there were no other people in sight. We drove down towards the river and stopped in an open field - full of wild strawberries! The ground was covered in them, and you can imagine how wonderous this was for five little children!

 

We spent hours there, discovering new patches of the ripe and plump strawberries and explored in and around the trees. We ate and ate and ate the strawberries and then picked enough to fill a few containers full to bring home! The adults took turns going for a short hike down to the river - the way was very steep and over large rocks at the bottom - but the feeling of being down at the river was so lovely - it was my first 'wilderness' experience in Bhutan - wild beautiful nature, quiet and alone.

We returned to Chamkar and I raced about buying our two weeks worth of fruit, vegetables and groceries while Bob took everyone to check out the new cafe in town, Cafe Perks. I was very skeptical of the sign that said 'Real Coffee' , but when I finally caught up with them, it was like being in the Ambient Cafe in Thimphu, almost! It is very exciting that we have a little bit of city cafe culture right here on our doorstep and I am really looking forward to return and try out some things on the menu. Between us we tried the smoothies, coffee and tea and all were great!

The taxi driver showed me a new veg shop - the closest thing to a supermarket out in this neck of the woods!

We're hoping to see our friends as they return to Thimphu later in the week, and we all felt like it had been a wonderful day. Xavier cried and blew a kiss to the girls out the taxi window as we drove away and yelled 'Love Ya!'.

When we got home, our neighbour had picked us a huge bowl full of lettuce from her garden - I made the first salad that we've had in Bhutan for dinner - delicious!

 

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.