During my teaching in these past two years I have had a very enriching experience related to the way English is taught. English is our second language and I believe it is important to make sure that as educators we help our students to learn it properly and in a fruitful way.

My experience started two years ago. Most activities were being held online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. One good thing that came out of this was our participation as a school in the Erasmus – Tell Us a story project which is co-funded by the European Union. Different sessions were held where our class students listened to different interesting story telling sessions held by different teachers in other partner schools who participated as well in this project.

I was happy to also deliver a story telling session myself related to Carnival. During these sessions the students did not only listen to wonderful stories read to them but also participated in follow up activities. In my experience, the students in my class used to really enjoy these sessions and looked forward to do the activities. These sessions helped them to further instil the love for books, reading and practice understanding. I was very happy to see other sessions that other teachers prepared as I totally believe in sharing of good practice.

Recently, together with two of my colleagues, Ms. Louise and Ms. Melania, we have visited a school abroad to conclude this wonderful project. It was a wonderful experience to spend time at St. George’s Primary school in Wirral, Liverpool. During our visit there not only were we given further insight to the RWI programme that has been helping so many students in their English, but we were also welcomed in all the different age group classes and observed different lessons taking place. It was lovely to be able to see a different culture school with so many hardworking teachers and students participating in the various educational activities taking place.

As we do in our own school practices, reading and learning English is given a lot of importance at St. George’s Primary School. The teachers put in a lot of hard work and the students enjoying their learning was evident all the way. We have learned more ways and further widened our ideas and approaches of possible different learning styles that can be followed and further achieve.

During our visits we could observe the how one year group links to the other and each teacher works on the next step of achievement. We were invited to see all the different learning stages, starting from the very early years of learning letter sounds onto slowly advancing to comprehension and writing skills in older years. We admired the dedication and spirit shown in the colourful fun classes. One cannot not mention how good pair work is practiced in so many different ways!

On the final day of our visit at this lovely school, each partner school, including our school, presented their own good practice to the rest. It was enriching to listen and hear what everyone is doing. We have shared a lot of ideas with one another and even plan to join and possibly work together on other projects for the better of our schools.

I believe that as a school we are already doing a fine job especially with the help of the RWI programme itself and our own dedicated teachers. However, as an educator my belief is that there is always room to change, amend and improve in what we all do and I definitely look forward to pass on and even make use of so many new ideas and approaches to learning the English language.

Amanda Borg,

Primary Assistant Head,

Our Lady Immaculate School Hamrun