East Hoathly Church of England Primary School
Achievement for All, Learning Together, Learning for Life
Today we learned all about the idea of ‘perception’ and how people across the world might perceive different countries or cultures in different ways. We spoke about how we might perceive life in Malawi to be like, or imagine everybody in the country to live a similar lifestyle, and discussed how this is not entirely true.
Chris from Starfish Malawi visited Hedgehogs, Squirrels, Foxes and Owls. The children were fascinated by what Chris had to tell them. He shared stories with all the children and from this, we are going to be having an ‘Awe and Wonder’ day to continue on this theme.
This week we have heard lots from Mikute school.
Chris from Starfish Malawi is currently visiting Mikute. We had the following updates and images from their initial days:
Good afternoon ladies and gents
Just an update
Today, we had a very beautiful meeting with different stakeholders School officers. The meeting was led by Chris and his team.
We have been encouraged to work hard and base on communication as the back bone of the new whole relationship.
On behalf of Harry (The headteacher, who sent me to represent him) I want to thank so much for this development. Being in partnership with East Hoathly is a great opportunity for Mikute Primary School.
Thank you
Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
I hope each we are all well.
Once more, Mikute is filled with joy after being told by Chris that You (East Hoathly) have donated money to Mikute for the water project as one of the major areas of our lessons this year. This will be really helpful since our tap water from the water Board supply was disconnected last month for unsettled bills.
We recorded this video to send to Mikute school with some balls so our link school could learn our favourite game Foursquare.
We then got this message and video back – Mikute love foursquare as much as we do!
“Today we had exactly four minutes with a few learners playing the Four square game”
This week we heard Mikute received our USB stick, with instructions for how to play foursquare. They are hopefully going to learn how to play and let us know how much they enjoy it. Mrs Whythe has been Whatsapping Mr Buck Way from Mikute.
Mr Buck Way – Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen
We are very glad to receive a flash drive (memory stick), balls, pump, let-ter and instructions for the game.
When I handed over the materials to the headteacher, Harry was very thankful for the presents to Mikute. This has been a great surprise and he bid me say to the administration of East Hoathly a big thank you.
I hope each we are all well.
Once more, Mikute is filled with joy after being told by Chris that You (East Hoathly) have donated money to Mikute for the water project as one of the major areas of our lessons this year. This will be really helpful since our tap water from the water board supply was disconnected last month for unsettled bills.
East Hoathly
We are so glad you are pleased. It was the children who came up with the fundraising ideas and to send the video after we saw your fantastic one a while ago. We hope you enjoy playing foursquare and hope the water project continues.
We are in our last few days before our May holiday, which starts on Monday.
Tomorrow (Friday) is our sports day, where each child takes part in lots of fun races and families join together for a big picnic.
Our Year 5/6 pupils have just arrived home from their post SATS camp and activity holiday and our younger children have been enjoying forest school this week.
We have filmed a video to send to our link school, explaining how we play our favourite game Foursquare. We have also sent balls, pumps and letters to the children using the money we raised during our cake sale last term!
Chris from Starfish Malawi visited Foxes and Owls this week. He thanked us for our recent fundraising efforts and spent time discussing the charity further. The children were captivated by Chris’s stories about the school in Malawi. Foxes learnt the starfish Malawi song and were reminded about where the idea of the name starfish comes from. We looked at where Malawi is on the globe. We discussed why it is so much warmer there than Britain. It was noticed that Malawi is close to The Equator. The children were then able to link this to their previous learning about The Amazon Rainforest.”
A huge thank you to all who supported our Malawi day fundraiser last week.
We are pleased to say we have raised over £170, which surpassed our target and it will provide x3 water packs and the balls for four square.
We had a Malawi day to think more about the Mikute and our link school with a focus on ‘Water’.
Chris from Starfish Malawi joined us for the day and we had a great video call with Mikute School, where we talked about different water sources, shared images of how we each get water and how we can have access to it during the day. We at East Hoathly were shown the borehole and pump tap where the students in Mikute collect their water from. It got us thinking about how we are fortunate to have clear and safe drinking water.
We asked the pupils of Mikute school why they liked connecting with us at East Hoathly. They shared “it is good” “it makes me happy”.
We then asked the children of East Hoathly why they felt connecting with Mikute was important and why we did it.
“It helps us to think about others” “Learning about new places, cultures and experiences” “helping others and making a difference”
Foxes played a game to help us think about life without taps. We worked in ‘families’ to create buckets. These were exchanged at the store.
Owls created their own posters about water around the world for children.
Squirrels learnt about how to keep your hands clean. They made their own hand washing posters.
We have updated our Church School and Mawali School Link displays to become more interactive. We share our termly Christian value, which we learn about in collective worship and each week we have a big question to encourage our children to think creatively and about others. We also update any news we get from our link school in Malawi.
Good morning good people. We are within the fourth week. Last time I report on the roof that was blown away by strong winds. Using a deficit budget, the school management committee has managed to sum up little contributions made by learners. Each learner was asked to pay the user fee of K1000 almost the British Pound. Not all the learners paid. Today the rehabilitation work is in progress. See photos below.
These kids live nearby, their guardians did not send them to school for learning, instead, the guardians sent these young girls to fetch water from the school’s manual water pump.
This week Owls class took part in a video call with our friends in Malawi.
India and Logan did some excellent writing about our call!
We learnt:
In standard 8 today, there was a lesson basing on fashionable dressing. In the lesson, learners were asked to present themselves in the best accoutre that would display the disparity between indigenous and reinvigorate this new age’s dress codes. See the photos that we captured today…
One of the things I just learnt today is that, when the learners present themselves at school in the dress code that is not allowed, it boosts their self-esteem and it’s really sweet to see them happy. You know it’s a strong challenge teaching someone who is not happy.
We have learnt the Malawi National anthem in English and in Chichewa languages.
Miss Lewis is in WhatsApp contact with the headteacher of our link school, Mikute, other school leaders in Malawi and the leaders of Starfish.
We have sent over the recording of East Hoathly School singing the Malawi National anthem and our friends in Malawi thought the children were fantastic.
Here are their messages…
WE DID IT!!!
We travelled from East Hoathly to Malawi!
It took us 12 weeks to make the 6,555 mile journey virtually from East Hoathly to Malawi! As of Tuesday 30th March, we have travelled 6,862 miles! Well done to everyone for taking part and getting active!
We are so happy to announce our link school in Malawi! We would like to introduce you to…
Mikute LEA School
“Mikute LEA School was established in 1964 under the Local Authority. Our school is in Mikute I Village—it is 7 km away from the lake and 15 km from the Salima district centre.
Our school used to have a very large catchment area until recently when another school was introduced 5 km away. This has dropped the numbers of learners to 1,975! Of those learners, 986 are boys and 989 are girls.
The age range of our school is 6-16. This is so due to starting school at a later age or resulting from pupils repeating classes. Our school has 30 teachers; 6 are male teachers while 24 are female.
We used to have high dropout rates in pupils because the lake is so close, pupils tend to go fishing. As fish numbers in the lake are decreasing, many people do not get what they expected. There used to be early marriages in girls after they reached adolescent stages. Parents used to get their children in homes of other civil servants as soldiers who are very close to our school catchment. By introducing mother groups in schools as well as other organisations engaging talks with the communities, it has resulted in reducing dropouts.
Since the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, our school has been managed in streams and shifts to decongest high numbers of learners in classes.
As a school we are trying our best to follow best practices that will help both teachers and learners to wash hands and use face masks during classes. We have football and netball teams that are currently not allowed to play due to preventive measures for Covid-19 that were set by government. This also applies to all extra curricular activities in school.
We look forward to a partnership that will enhance teaching and learning in our schools!”
