School chores....

At Nabwigulu, it is the children who are in charge of making sure that the school stays clean. We do things like sweeping the courtyard twice a day, we scrub the latrines, we clean ourclassrooms, we fetch water...and we collect firewood for cooking!

This is a picture of a boy in Primary 6 who has climbed a tree with an ax to cut down some extra branches to burn as firewood. Assiniboine students: can you imagine doing this?

(Note from Madame Amanda: Yes, I almost fainted in shock. And it wasn't a very small tree, either!)

Last school day of the year!

The end of the school year in Uganda is at the end of November. We have finished our exams and are very ready for Christmas break! To celebrate, here at Nabwigulu we are having Speech Day! We have been divided into four different teams: Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

These four teams have been hard at work for the past three months practising different traditional songs and dances, and of course, speeches!

We are going to perform them for the whole community--and can't wait to send you some pictures and a video!

Hello from Uganda!

Jebale! (Hello!) It's Mme. Amanda here, with Teacher Flossy, (our deputy headmistress) and some of the Nabwigulu students.

Nabwigulu is located in Eastern Uganda. We are 1500 students in our school, ranging in age from 6 years old (Primary One) to 13 years old (Primary Seven).

The language we speak in our village is Lusoga, but we speak English at school.

We study subjects like math, social studies, local language, and science. At the end of Primary Seven, we write a national exam. If we pass, that means that we can continue on to high school.

Our classes are very big--our biggest class has 170 children! We also wear blue uniforms to school

We also do a lot of activities at our school. For example, Wednesday afternoon is Arts and Crafts. The girls learn to weave baskets and mats, and the boys make brooms and carve stirring spoons. Both boys and girls learn to braid ropes. We have been helping Teacher Amanda learn to make a mat from banana fibres!

We are so excited to have friends in Canada and we are looking forward to learning about what your lives are like.

We have written letters and coloured pictures telling you about what it is like in our village of Nabwigulu. You can see a picture of some of us below with Teacher Amanda! Here we are working on our letters to Canada.

Writing letters to our friend in Canada with Mme Amanda (pupils from l-r: Christine, Allan, Steven, Joseph and Jackson)

Hello Friends!

Hello (Bonjour!) friends!

Here is a photo of some of our students who are helping me (Mme Boyko) with our project.

The students standing in the photo are in Grade Five and the two sitting are in Grade One. Mme Amanda worked with the two sitting last year while they were in Kindergarten!

We got together this morning to take a photo for you so that you can see who some of us are. We can't wait to see photos of you too!

We also talked about how different are lives are and we're hoping that you wouldn't mind answering a few questions for us:

Describe where do you live?

Do you eat lunch at school?

What type of games do you play at school?

What do you colour with?

Thank-you so much, Mme Amanda and your students for taking some time to share with us. We hope you are doing well and are looking forward to hearing back from you soon!

This is our school!

This is very exciting; the first posting on our shared blog!

We wanted to share some information about our school. This is a photo of Mme Hussey and Mme Boyko standing on the front steps of our school, École Assiniboine School.

Assiniboine School is located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It is a French Immersion elementary school with 220 students from Kindergarten to Grade Five. There are 10 classes with between 20 - 25 students per class.

In our school, French is the language of instruction for all subjects, except English. Both English and French are used in general, school-wide activities such as assemblies, concerts and sports.

Our students spend most of their day in one classroom with their homeroom teacher. Each classroom is equipped with desks for each student, a computer and desk for the teacher and a Smartboard for everyone.

Here is a photo of one of our teachers working in her classroom.

A Smartboard is a large screen that is connected to the teacher's computer and is used as a teaching tool. It's a bit like a large television, but students and teachers are able to manipulate objects on the screen, as well as learn about the many, many different things the Internet has to offer.

This is a photo of two of our teachers standing next to a Smartboard. The image on the Smartboard is of our Canadian Flag.

Besides the academic classrooms, students have access to music classes, gym classes, a computer lab, a science lab and a library. We also have many clubs that students can choose to participate in during lunch hour or after school. Some examples of the clubs include sports, music, homework and reading.

We are blessed and very, very excited about the opportunity to work with you, your students and your school. We are thrilled about what each of our respective schools can learn from each other!

We are also inspired by Mme Amanda's quest for hope and look forward to help connecting two very different worlds!