Global Schools

Our Zambian Friends Visit DCPS 2015

This year we were very lucky to welcome Michael and Charity to our school; they were able to observe and share lots of examples of fantastic teaching and learning in every classroom! 

During the weekend prior to being in school, some of the teachers took Michael, Charity and some of their Zambian colleagues out on day trips around Sheffield. We went mini-golfing, ice-skating and shopping in Meadowhall. Our Zambian friends had never been mini-golfing or ice-skating before, however they all gave it a good go, and some were naturals! 

While in school, Michael and Charity observed Guided Reading and SPaG sessions in every classroom. They also lead a Zambian singing session to one of our Y5 classes and visited the Rawmarsh CLC to have a hands on experience using a range of different technologies! On top of all this learning we also had some fun hosting a tea-time, take-away treat for staff from all of the Rotherham and Kalulushi partnership schools along with a British Bonanza to raise funds for a solar panel project to provide reliable electricity for our partnered Chembe school!

After the British Bonanza, staff from the UK and Zambian schools all met and went out for a lovely farewell meal where we took lots of photos and share stories from the week. Then we took our Zambian friends to watch the Rotherham Utd vs Burnley FC match at the New York Stadium. We were lucky enough to go onto the pitch and have an official photograph taken!

Miss Kirby and Miss Ellison's Zambian Visit 2015

Hello everyone! We hope you are all okay, we are having a fantastic time so far out here in Zambia. Everyone is very welcoming and are very excited that we are out here. The internet is not great and it only comes on for short bursts so we are desperately trying to keep this updated, keep a look out for anything new as we are trying to upload some pictures for you to see!

Wednesday 24th and Thursday 25th June

To get all the way from Rotherham to Kalalushi where we are teaching we had to go to Manchester airport and then get three flights! Our first flight was from Manchester to Amsterdam where we landed at 4:30pm and waited two hours for our next flight to Nairobi. Our flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi was our longest and most tiring flight which took over nine hours and was over night so a lot of people had to sleep on the plane! We landed in Nairobi in the morning on Thursday and waited six hours for our last flight to Ndola... we were getting very tired and grumpy by this point!

Eventually we landed in Ndola at around 5:00pm on Thursday and all the Zambian teachers were there to greet and welcome us. We were both so excited to see them all and they welcomed us onto their minibus to take us to Affs guest house where we are staying in Kalalushi. On the way to the guest house where we were staying the Zambian teachers pointed out the Ndola football stadium which can hold up to 40,000 fans! We all arrived at the guest house at about 7:00pm and the staff were very friendly and started cooking us all our dinner on a barbeque as the electricity had gone completely! Their barbeque was made out of a metal cylinder from a car... very clever and resourceful of them! The food was delicious but we were all super tired so we had an early night ready for the next day.

Friday 26th and Saturday 27th June

We had a fantastic day today! We had the opportunity to go and visit all of the different schools involved in the partnership. We visited our school first, Chembe...WOW the children and teachers were so welcoming, all shaking our hands and greeting us with huge smiley faces! It made us so excited to begin teaching there on Monday. It was a rather long day, however, lovely to see all the different schools- some prepared welcome songs and dances, which we videoed and will upload as soon as we can.

On Saturday we had a lovely breakfast before meeting all the Zambian teachers and making our way to a game park. We were able to see lots of different animals in their natural habitat. We saw: many different types of deer and birds, giraffes (which we were able to walk up to!) and zebra, although they were quite far away. On top of this, we saw lots of different breeds of snakes and a baby crocodile (which was bigger than we expected it to be). We then both held a huuuuuuge python, around our necks!!! It was almost, if not, as big as Miss Ellison....and possibly Miss Kirby also!! After that we enjoyed a wonderful  steak meal.

Sunday 28th and Monday 29th June

Sunday morning, we were invited to visit a Pentecostal church with Shelly and some of the other teachers from Rotherham. It was an interesting experience which we will never forget... there was lots of singing and dancing. They kindly prayed for us all and gave us a lovely local cuisine which was a sweet, chestnut tasting potato. After that we then went for a scrumptious meal in Kitwe with all of the Zambian teachers (who kindly paid for us all as a gift), it was really nice to sit with and get to know the heads of the Zambian schools and some of the people who work for the Department of Education.

Monday was our first day at Chembe and Michael the headteacher picked us up at 7:30am in the morning to take us to school. We spent the day in different classes in different year groups to see how they teach and what we can help with whilst we are out here. One of the teachers, called Christine, is brilliant and she has really tried hard to take on board phonics advice from visiting the year before. Her classroom was beautiful and she has spent lots of time making resources and posters by hand on cardboard and bits of scrap paper! It was an amazing experience and we are so looking forward to our teaching starting tomorrow!!

Tuesday 30th June and Wednesday 1st July

On Tuesday and Wednesday we both led different subjects across grades 2 - 7 (ages 8-14 years old). In Zambia children do not start school until they are 7 years old as a lot of children walk a very long distance to school, some children even walk up to 2 hours to get to school for 8 o'clock in the morning. Miss Kirby taught a variety of phonics sessions and incorporated some outdoor learning into the phonics to make use of the beach ball, the parachute and the fantastic weather! Miss Ellison taught reading comprehension as the school really want to help the children gain a deeper understanding of a variety of texts.

Chembe school where we taught starts at 8 o'clock in the morning and finishes at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Because some children have a long way to walk, they finish early and only have one short 20 minute break, so that they can get back home to their families by the evening.

Thursday 2nd July

On Thursday we taught in the morning as it was our last day in school teaching. We taught grade 4 (aged 9 and 10 year olds) a SPaG lesson based on word classes. When we were discussing adjectives we asked the children to think of some examples in sentences about Miss Kirby or Miss Ellison... they described Miss Kirby as very tall, beautiful and brown hair and they described Miss Ellison as short and beautiful!

After the SPaG lesson we took them all outside for a fun game with bubbles. They had worked super hard and they were really excited when they saw what a bubble was. We asked the children to see how many they could pop by jumping, running or with their head!

Just before we left for the farewell party back at the guest house, the teachers got all the children to come together for an assembly where the choir sung 3 songs to us. One of the teachers translated some of the songs and they were saying thanks to all the things we have done while we have been there. Then one of the classes read a poem that they had written about what they were proud of in Zambia. It was an overwhelming goodbye and it did not feel like we had been there long enough!

At lunchtime we went back to the guest house to get ready for the farewell party with all of the Zambia teachers and Rotherham teachers in the handmade dresses that the headteacher's had made to measure. They were made out of gorgeous material and Michael made sure we were both the same material to show the Dinnington and Chembe team. Speeches were given in thanks and cake was cut to share, followed by dancing and goodbyes to everyone that had been involved.

It was an emotional day and we were all very thankful for the amazingly welcome atmosphere that was around the whole time we were there. Michael is looking forward to coming over to visit us later in the year along with another teacher from Chembe school!

Friday 3rd July

On our last day in Zambia they took us for a day out to the Zambian National Trade Show in Ndola. We travelled by minibus and while we were there we got to see items for sale from all over Africa and we also got see what other types of trade there is within Zambia. Different trades included: railway companies, banks, local mobile companies and people cooking traditional foods like nshima. Nshima is made out of maize that they grow all over the local area, then boiled with water and stirred until it looks a lot more like mash potato. At our guest house we were shown how to cook nshima and in return Mrs Cadieu fro Whiston Worrygoose taught the cook how to make Yorkshire puddings which she took home to feed her children!

Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th July

Over the two days we travelled back to Manchester airport, we set off from where we were staying at 9:30am on the Saturday and arrived at Manchester airport 24hours later! We had lots of amazing but emotional experiences throughout the week and we wouldn't change anything we did, we only now look forward to seeing some of the Zambian teachers later on in the year to share more excellent practise!