Feed A Hungry Mind

Thank you for all the donations received during the April challenge; we were so successful we came second and won an additional £500 from Global Giving.

We have recently held a three-day training workshop for pre-primary Teachers from 19 schools in Kilimanjaro. Pre- primary teachers are essential as they teach 5- and 6-year olds the basics in maths, Swahili and English.

Jane Firth, a specialist pre-primary teacher/trainer from the UK, taught the teachers new techniques in:

· a practical multi-sensory approach to learning numbers up to 10, and the establishment of number bonds, · the mechanics of learning to write and the preliminary stages that pupils should go through. The most important development for teachers was learning that letters should be taught in ‘families’ and not straight through from A to Z.

Jane also showed the teachers how to make teaching aids from materials found in Tanzania. The teachers transformed old cardboard boxes, corn cobs, beans and plastic bottles into counting games, literacy aids and finger- puppets. Each teacher left with a box of materials to introduce into the schools the following week.

Jane will return to Tanzania in July to work with individual teachers to help them how further to apply their new skills in the classroom.

As well as the pre-primary workshop, we are continuing to run weekly teacher- training sessions in three primary schools and we are planning a number of seminars with other primary schools. The present focus is on the teaching of English.