Guest Blog by the maths geeks

Yesterday we took part in holiday training and ran a session for secondary maths teachers. Amy had warned us that the school was rural and the roads dusty, but we weren't quite prepared! After we left Kibungo, we were on our motos for about 45 minutes, all on dirt tracks - the views were spectacular and we passed through many small villages and banana groves. As I got off my moto at the school, Amy had total hysterics; I had left my visor up and my face was covered in a browny red dust. The rest of the dust was beaten off us by our moto drivers, but my face still has an orange hue!

 

9 maths teachers, a technology teacher and a biology teacher gave up a day of their holiday to spend with us. Having planned the day before, we hoped we had chosen the correct topics and methods to share with them, we chose topics we felt were important and had checked were on their curricula. We delivered learning through discovery, teaching kinaesthetically and the use of plenaries. The highlights included: hearing the teachers say they liked a technique and would use it in their classroom, their willingness to particiate even when we spoke too fast and it was difficult to understand, followed by the light bulb moment when they did understand and singing the circle song about 100 times.

 

 The teachers particularly liked doing graph aerobics, so much so that they kept giving us really silly graphs to represent (for the mathematicians amongst you try using your arms and legs to create y = 1/x).

Their positive attitude was evident in the feedback we received, all of them talking about learners enjoying techniques and their intention to share what they had done today with other teachers at their schools.

Whilst Rwandan schools often have 60 students in a class and much of the teaching is very traditional, it was great to see how quickly they caught onto new ideas. We were particularly impressed that they were able to identify techniques that are good for identifying the progress the students had made and where they need more help (AFL). 

We enjoyed the day so much that I am hoping to run the session again for teachers from a different area later in the week.