Tag: Uganda

Completing our African Keyhole Garden

This morning, Year 3 pupils with the assistance of Mr Stanley and Mr Haycock completed the building of our African keyhole garden. The first task was to complete the second course of bricks so we moved them down to the garden site so Mr Haycok could lay them in the correct place. After that, we had the task of adding compost to the garden. Mr Haycock has been piling up leaf litter for the past couple of years and much of it has broken down into excellent compost. Half the pupils went with Mr Stanley armed with forks, trowels and wheelbarrows to collect the compost, while the others remained with Mr Haycock to spread and stamp down the compost when it arrived.

By the end of the morning, we had moved most of one of the big piles of compost into the garden. We now need to leave it to rot down further before adding more in the spring. Mr Haycock and Mr Stanley just need to put a bit of render around some of the bricks to keep them secure.

In the Spring we will also create a willow basket that we will place in the keyhole garden. Food waste will be placed in the basket which will then rot and provide nutrients for the soil.

We aim to plant vegetables in late May/beginning of June and then Year 2 will be responsible for growing and maintaining the crops. We are very excited to see what the Kafuro pupils decide to grow when they build their keyhole garden hopefully in the New Year.

  • The garden is now going to be left until the spring before we add more compost

Great news from Kafuro

Congratulations to everyone in P7 at Kafuro Primary School who took their PLE (Primary Leaving Examinations) at the beginning of the summer. Mr Thembo contacted me to say that there was a 100% pass rate this year. Despite the challenges of lockdown due to Covid, when the P7 pupils were able to return to school, they were able to access small focused group teaching as they were the only year group allowed back into the school at the time. Congratulations to all of the pupils and to the staff.

Results from Kafuro

Unfortunately, all schools in Uganda are still closed at the moment due to lockdown. The news I have been given suggests that schools will not reopen until such a time as all teachers are fully vaccinated. The UK is doing its bit to help with this.

https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/special-reports/how-uganda-neighbours-compare-in-jabs-for-covid-3528298

Mr Thembo has sent photos of a very quiet school campus

We will keep readers up to date with news from Kafuro over the coming weeks.

Young Carers work at Liss

The final unit of the Connecting Classrooms work was carried out at Liss just before we finished for the end of the academic year. Our theme was young carers and we started off by examining who the people who care for us are and what they do.

We drew a heart shape and inside we wrote down all the people who care for us and outside the types of thngs they did.

After this, we discussed what the definition of a young carer might be before unveiling the following definition:

You’re a young carer if you’re under 18 and help to look after a relative with a disability, illness, mental health condition, or drug or alcohol problem. If you’re a young carer, you probably look after one of your parents or care for a brother or sister.

Our next step was to play a game of charades where the children mimed some household tasks and we had to say whether they were a job for a parent, a child or should be shared.

After this we considered how the jobs might change if a parent became seriously ill

This is the list we came up with:

We then considered how much free time they nmight have when they go to secondary school in September. Most of the class came to the conclusion that it would be around two hours. When asked to consider how they might fit in all the jobs that needed doing, the children became quite agitated. There wasn’t enough time to do all the chores.

At this point the children compared their lives with pupils in Kafuro who alreday do far more jobs around the house and in the fields. We tried to imagine what it would be like if the pupils lived in Uganda and had to look after a parent as well. It was then that the children really realised how lucky they are to have the free time that they do and understood what amazing work young carers do both in the UK and Uganda.

Summarising our learning from the Fairtrade unit

This week, pupils from Liss had their final lesson on Fairtrade. We looked to summarise our learning over the unit, therefore the pupils carried out the same activity as the first lesson of putting beans in pots according to what they thought causes poverty. The children were given 3 beans each and were asked to investigate nine statements. When they found a statement that they felt was most accurate they could place one of their beans in a cup next to the statement. If they wished, they could place all their beans in a particular cup. 

The results were as follows:

A quick analysis of the results shows that the children’s thinking had changed dramatically over the course of the unit. There was a strong recognition that while climate change and war were causes of poverty, international trade was a massive factor in ensuring that people stayed in poverty, and that people in richer countries help ensure this is the case by wanting to pay less for goods from poorer countries. The pupils were also angered by the fact that many big companies avoid paying tax to countries in the developing world. They saw this as fundamentally unfair.

Over the course of the unit, the teachers at Liss were really pleased at how our pupils developed their understanding of Fairtrade and how important it is to people living in the developing world. Ultimately, it is down to us to ensure that we buy Fairtrade products when we have a choice. We can choose to be part of the problem or do something about it.

Continuing our look at Fairtrade chocolate

To begin today’s lesson, Mr Stanley drew two chocolate bars on the whiteboard and asked the class to deliberate on what factors would lead to them buying one bar or the other. The children came up with the following considerations:

  • Taste/texture
  • Price
  • Size
  • Special offers/promotions
  • Fairtrade mark
  • Advertising
  • Brand
  • Type (dark, milk or white)
  • Quality
  • Condition

We then looked at what the Fairtrade mark actually means and identified the four key components of this:

  • It means farmers and workers get better wages and working conditions
  • It guarantees a fair price for the producers
  • It provides extra money to go to the community
  • Allows small farmers to join together in cooperatives to sell their products.

We discussed how community money might be used to improve sanitation, provide teachers for a school,improve medical care or to build housing. Next, we looked closely at the different stages of the journey from producer to consumer and arranged them in the correct order.

  1. After he has scraped the cocoa beans out of the cocoa pod, the farmer leaves them to dry.
  2. The dried cocoa beans are weighed.
  3. The sacks of cocoa beans are loaded onto a ship, ready to be brought from Africa to Europe
  4. The cocoa beans are ground. Milk and sugar are added to make chocolate – yummy!
  5. Chocolate bars are formed, wrapped and packed. Then they are delivered to the shops.

Mr Stanley then outlined one final task before we evaluate the learning unit. The children have been set the task of writing to Tesco persuading them to stock a new Ugandan Fairtrade product – Crested Crane Chocolate. They have also been asked to design the chocolate bar and a new Fairtrade Mark. The results of this will be seen in the next blog post.

Message from Mr Thembo

Hello to everyone at Liss Junior and Liss Infant School. Every time I think about Liss I go and read the goodbye messages you wrote for me when I left the school to come back to Uganda. You all have my love and good wishes.

Uganda is still in a case of partial lockdown due to Covid – 19. Although we can move during the day, there is a curfew at night and we must stay indoors. However, things are starting to get better. Shops are open and boda bodas are available to use for transport. However, airports, schools and places of worship are still closed.

While Kafuro Primary School has been closed, work has begun on constructing a small accommodation block for members of staff. As Kafuro is a long way from the homes of some staff members, they have to stay in the village during the week and only travel home at the weekend. The new block, which is situated below the cob oven, will provide accommodation for three members of staff. We had to clear a lot of bushes to make space for the new building. We now need to plaster the building and fit doors and shutters.

My best wishes to all pupils in UK and I hope you enjoy your summer holidays.

Which is the real Uganda?

Year 6 have been looking at pictorial evidence to gain a sense of what Uganda is like. Mr Stanley divided each class into two teams and gave each team twenty photos. The team had to write down everything they could see in the photo, give it a title and then write a paragraph stating what they had learned from that photo.

Once the team had finished, they had to write a brief summary explaining what sort of country they thought Uganda was. As you can see below, the answers varied dramatically between each team as Mr Stanley had given 20 rural photos to one team and 20 urban photos to the other.

The answer to the question is that Uganda is both an urban and a rural country with extremely diverse habitats.

[gview file=”https://kafuroliss.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/168c8-i-can-use-pictorial-evidence-to-draw-conclusions-year-6-rowan.docx”]

[gview file=”https://kafuroliss.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/303e2-i-can-use-pictorial-evidence-to-draw-conclusions-year-6-rowan-2.docx”]

[gview file=”https://kafuroliss.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bda5b-i-can-use-pictorial-evidence-to-draw-conclusions-year-6-maple.docx”]

[gview file=”https://kafuroliss.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/724fa-i-can-use-pictorial-evidence-to-draw-conclusions-year-6-maple-2.docx”]

Ugandan – style food tasting

At Liss, as we approach the end of our Uganda topic, we set the children a design technology task – to plan and make a Ugandan – style meal. Before the children can do this, they have to taste Ugandan food. Mr Stanley was very busy in the Liss kitchen making the following:

Roast IRISH potatoes

Roast Sweet potatoes

Chapatis

Muchomos

Banana chips

Salad

Katchembali

The children tasted the food and had to complete an evaluation. The next step will be to plan and create their own Ugandan meals. We will report to you on their progress!

African – themed bags

In Year 6 at Liss Junior School, the children have been creating African – themed bags. The children have researched African art and patterns before creating their own print template. This was then rolled onto the bag to produce the final print. We would like to share our designs with the our friends in Uganda.

Here are the photos of some of the bag designs.