Saint James Primary School
After testing our water curriculum at the Busawuula Primary School, we visited the Saint James Primary School where we found out that we would be teaching P1 through P7. Saint James is located only 1 km further down the road in the Katale area from the first school. Upon arriving, we were enthusiastically welcomed to the school by the entire student body and teaching staff. We first met with the teachers and headmistress to discuss how we would group the students since we only had 6 teachers for 7 classes of students. Initially it was determined that we would teach the students in three groups, P1-P3, P4-P5, and P6-P7. However, the P1-P3 group would then be very large with 67 students. The large group size was definitely a concern for us, so after futher discussion we divided this large group into its three individual classrooms. Additionally, we were also nervous about teaching the younger students in P1 and P2 since we had only previously taught the curriculum to P3-P7 students. This means that we needed to futher adapt and simplify our curriculum for the youngest students.
On the first day of teaching at Saint James we met with a group of six students from Makerere University who are also a part of a group called Ideas for Uganda. Ideas for Uganda is a youth led movement working on issues of environmental sustainability. This group of students would observe us teach and help us in the classroom, as their organization will be taking on the teaching of this curriculum in the future. We found teaching P1 and P2 to be a challenging experience due to a greater language barrier. However, the university students and the teachers from the school helped us both with translation and teaching of the content. As a result, the students definitely understood the content better. After finishing teaching for the day we had an opportunity to debrief the lesson with Billy and Lauren from SPOUTS as well as the Ideas for Uganda students. We received a lot of helpful feedback about how we can futher improve the curriculum to provide the best possible experience for students. This curriculm has already gone through a lot of revision. For example, when we first designed the curriculum we were unaware of how frequently songs and games were used in the Ugandan classroom for instruction. But, we have really tried to incorporate more activities, songs, and games so that the lesson is more interactive. These revisions really seemed to be successful in helping students better understand the information about clean water and hygiene.
The second day of teaching the students at this school went more smoothly. We all felt more comfortable with the students and the grade level we were teaching. The students eagerly participated and engaged with the lesson. We taught students about how to properly wash their hands, how to clean dirty water, and we also introduced the SPOUTS filter. It was important to teach the children about the benefits of filters versus boiling water since there are a number of distinct benefits both for the family using the filter and the environment. At the end of class, the students were able to understand the basics about how a filter worked and how it could be an alternative to boiling water. Overall, testing this water curriculm at two different schools has helped us gain insight about what we need to improve in the curriculum when we retun to the US. The biggest element that we need to consider is how to make the curriculum applicable and adaptable across multiple grade levels since a P1 classroom is dramatically different than a P7 classroom.
After testing our water curriculum at the Busawuula Primary School, we visited the Saint James Primary School where we found out that we would be teaching P1 through P7. Saint James is located only 1 km further down the road in the Katale area from the first school. Upon arriving, we were enthusiastically welcomed to the school by the entire student body and teaching staff. We first met with the teachers and headmistress to discuss how we would group the students since we only had 6 teachers for 7 classes of students. Initially it was determined that we would teach the students in three groups, P1-P3, P4-P5, and P6-P7. However, the P1-P3 group would then be very large with 67 students. The large group size was definitely a concern for us, so after futher discussion we divided this large group into its three individual classrooms. Additionally, we were also nervous about teaching the younger students in P1 and P2 since we had only previously taught the curriculum to P3-P7 students. This means that we needed to futher adapt and simplify our curriculum for the youngest students.
On the first day of teaching at Saint James we met with a group of six students from Makerere University who are also a part of a group called Ideas for Uganda. Ideas for Uganda is a youth led movement working on issues of environmental sustainability. This group of students would observe us teach and help us in the classroom, as their organization will be taking on the teaching of this curriculum in the future. We found teaching P1 and P2 to be a challenging experience due to a greater language barrier. However, the university students and the teachers from the school helped us both with translation and teaching of the content. As a result, the students definitely understood the content better. After finishing teaching for the day we had an opportunity to debrief the lesson with Billy and Lauren from SPOUTS as well as the Ideas for Uganda students. We received a lot of helpful feedback about how we can futher improve the curriculum to provide the best possible experience for students. This curriculm has already gone through a lot of revision. For example, when we first designed the curriculum we were unaware of how frequently songs and games were used in the Ugandan classroom for instruction. But, we have really tried to incorporate more activities, songs, and games so that the lesson is more interactive. These revisions really seemed to be successful in helping students better understand the information about clean water and hygiene.
The second day of teaching the students at this school went more smoothly. We all felt more comfortable with the students and the grade level we were teaching. The students eagerly participated and engaged with the lesson. We taught students about how to properly wash their hands, how to clean dirty water, and we also introduced the SPOUTS filter. It was important to teach the children about the benefits of filters versus boiling water since there are a number of distinct benefits both for the family using the filter and the environment. At the end of class, the students were able to understand the basics about how a filter worked and how it could be an alternative to boiling water. Overall, testing this water curriculm at two different schools has helped us gain insight about what we need to improve in the curriculum when we retun to the US. The biggest element that we need to consider is how to make the curriculum applicable and adaptable across multiple grade levels since a P1 classroom is dramatically different than a P7 classroom.