Tegan's teacher training

I felt teacher training morning was a success. We started the day with Zip, Zap, Boing which worked well as an ice breaker and brought the energy of the room up. It was lovely to see women of all ages in their sari's 'zip', 'zapping' and 'boinging' with such enthusiasm! I based my session on developing the imagination and active learning. I started the session by taking the ladies on a Gruffalo walk and getting the group to react the story as we met up with the creatures in the deep dark woods,although one group had not read the Gruffalo so I had to think on my feet and alter the activity to meeting some animals in the woods and creating our own story. For the second half of my session I drew a large box in the sand and asked each of the 'children' to tell me what the box represented eg house, school, mini van, hospital. I then asked them to describe their imaginary surrounding; what colour the walls were, who was there, were they were going, what they were doing. This activity worked really well and the teachers were very responsive and each group came up with some completely different scenarios. It was lovely to hear one of the teachers say she had loved being a child for the morning and did not want to go back into the real world as she would have to behave like an adult again. I feel similarly about leaving Sri Lanka, I would much rather stay and do the hokey cokey every day than return to England. Hey Ho back to Colombo we go. Our drive was broken up by a surprise elephant ride through the jungle. Then further down the road some wild elephants crossed the road in front of our mini van which was a lovely magical end to a magical trip.