This week Omari and I were teaching at the Temple School. We were initially told we would be teaching grades 1-3 pupils. The first day felt slightly unorganised as there was no one there to meet us and direct us to the classrooms when we arrived. However we managed to find one class of each year and had fun teaching them nursery rhymes. The lessons were good, however we found that the children were a lot shyer than the children we had been teaching at the state schools in the Hill Country the previous week.
On our second day we were greeted by Gajana, a teacher of English at the school. He and Omari bonded immediately. He said he would prefer us to teach the eighteen and nineteen male students at the school which was a bit of a deviation from our original schedule, but we agreed and did this until the Thursday. I enjoyed teaching the older pupils; Omari and I took half the class each lesson and talked with them in English to try and improve their confidence with their communication skills. Even at this age, the language barrier was still a bit of a problem. We were also asked to do a special english class with a group of male prefects of various ages. This was also good and we gained a valuable insight into how they live through our discussions with them.
Overall my impression of the school was a positive one, and I was particularly impressed by the friendly manner displayed by the pupils
On the Friday we visited the pre-school at Palana. I thought this pre-school was lovely. We did some artwork with the pupils and also taught them some English songs.