Celebrating trees!

by Sharon Flint | Dec 6, 2021 | Addysg

As part of UK Tree Planting Week it was fantastic to host an online celebration event for schools in Wales and Lesotho. Over 40 of our link schools involved in the Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning Programme joined us to celebrate their work on Sustainable Development Goal 13. Over the past month schools have been busy finalising their global learning projects which included many collaborative activities including tree planting. 

Watch our Zoom recording to hear from our in-country manager Mr Manyanye – who sourced and distributed over 300 trees across Lesotho. Along with learners from The Alun School, Ysgol Gyfun Plasmawr, Moshoeshoe II High school, CoedCae High school and St Josephs High school in Maseru.

We hosted a wonderful quiz by Size of Wales and had a surprise pop in from Africa’s Gift Ken Dunn, who has just returned from Lesotho to visit Malealea teaching farm. He also flew the Lesotho flag at the recent COP26 event in Glasgow to spotlight the use of wonderbags as a solution for some Basotho communities to stay healthy and mitigate climate change.

If you’d like to partner with a school in Lesotho – fill in this online form ready for 2022 or join us in January for another online celebration to find out about all SDG projects this year – register here

School partnerships will be exploring SDG3 Health & Wellbeing in 2022.

Teacher Khosi

by Khosi Mofolisa | Sep 21, 2021 | Addysg

I am Khosi Mofolisa, known as Teacher Khosi. I am a qualified primary school teacher. My first teaching experience was at preschool; this is where my potential was unleashed. It came to my realization that teaching foundation phase is so close to mind, and I did whatever I could do to help the development of the young learners. The was a growing thirst in me to help children read and write from the early years of their lives. I found on google that the is a programme called Jolly Phonics, which is the effective approach to teaching children reading and writing.

Luckily I found an offer to do this course online, and before I could fully implement it to the school, I move to Thaba-Tseka district with my family. Now my new home had challenges as I knew no one to share my knowledge and skills with. Surprisingly I found a child of my neighbour doing some Jolly Phonics letter sounds and and actions. I was so curious to know how she got this, she told me about the Welsh teacher at their school who teaches them. I made arrangements to meet her.

From that time on, she has been inviting me to schools she visits, and introduced me to teachers. I started to volunteer at one school teaching grade 2 learners Jolly Phonics, that gave me an experience. Dolen Cymru Wales Lesotho link supported me with some materials and skills to carry on with my volunteering.

Eventually I signed a contract with Dolen to be a Literacy Officer, to liaise with Jolly Learning to support Jolly Phonics interventions in the country, including developing audio lessons and digital resources, support teachers with methods and strategies to teach English literacy in their schools. 42 letter sounds radio show were recorded and aired to reach teachers, parents and children in Lesotho.

What is Jolly Phonics?

Jolly Phonics is the medicine that cures illiteracy, and any child gone through this programme, excels, not only in English literacy but in other subjects. Jolly Phonics teaches the 42 letter sounds, and each sound is introduced with a story, an action, flash card, letter formation and a song. It is fun, child-centred approach and multisensory; children love it!

Radio shows

Jolly Phonics radio shows aired on Radio Lesotho and it had more listeners than we had anticipated. Vision Street, a local company that offers services in photography, video, audio recording, film and television pro has done a great job to help with the recordings and editing of Jolly Phonics radio shows.

Every week I made a summary of lessons played during that week, the summary was in the form of videos to reinforce what was learned. The videos were shared via Whatsapp, Facebook pages, Twitter, and on other platforms. They had more views. Almost everyone that knows me says when they meet me, “Teacher Khosi I heard you teaching on radio,” one would say, “Hi this is Teacher Khosi! Welcome to the Jolly Phonics show when you can learn the skills needed to read and write…”

My former English teacher said to me, “Khosi now you are a teacher! I saw you on Facebook teaching us. We struggle here, secondary students cry when they are asked to read a paragraph, they can’t decode words. I think this programme can be great for them. How can you help us?” I used to visit reception schools, and when I entered two schools respectively, teacher asks children, “who taught us Jolly Phonics on Radio Lesotho?” with all excitement and joy, they say “Teacher Khosi!” then teacher says, this is teacher Khosi. All their faces were full of joy and asked to read some letter sounds and do some actions. It was so impressive to see the impact of Jolly Phonics radio shows. We are getting radio shows surveys from people from different districts. We are expecting to receive more. And they are all positive. “Yes Jolly Phonics is the future; all learners should be taught Jolly Phonics.”

You can listen to the radio shows here

In the future I would like to do a lot of educational videos to help teachers with varies approaches to teach English literacy and recruit more teachers to become effective Jolly Phonics teachers .