E-NOTEBOOKS

These are 4 families out of 12 that received e-notebooks from us.

STUDENTS’ FEEDBACK

We asked our students to tell us what they thought about summer school. Here are some quotes from various students:

‘’Now is pandemic, So I have lots of time on home, I want to learn English. and there will have some classmate talk with me.’’

‘’I liked conversation with my classmates. I live alone.’’

‘’Tablet is better from my mobile, my girls liked lessons with stories’’

‘’Teachers are very good, I not bored in house, I learned many vocabulary and grammar and speaking.’’

‘’We enjoyed story time with children with Chris and I had a structure for our day.’’

‘’it was useful to learn about other cultures and have fun with quiz.’’

‘’Lessons helps me to understand more., I feel not so stressed. It is good for meet people and not be alone in coronavirus’’

‘’Practicing English was good to not forget’’

‘’Talking with others was the best, I don’t see many people during lockdown so classes were good to keep up with my English and be ready to start school again.’’

‘’ The adequacy of the tutor’s explanations to the needs and level of each participant was valuable. She was preparing extra materials. The quiz was good too. Our class will continue to zoom once a week to talk. We are a little family.’’

‘’I want lessons not to finish’’

‘’ Everything was good, but 4 weeks is short’’

‘’ I liked meet with my friends and make me smile and happy.’’

‘’ Speaking English every day is good because I speak Arabic with my children’’

‘’ All was good, good teachers, tablets, new grammar and classes with my children.’’

‘’Talking to people was helpful, I’m home all day and lessons helped me not to feel alone. I learnt new words and grammar, teachers were good and funny.’’

TUTORS’s FEEDBACK

We asked our tutors to tell us about their time with the summer school. Here are some quotes:

 ‘’It is interesting to meet the students and to hear about their experiences. During lockdown it also gave me focus and worthwhile work to do which made me feel I was making a positive contribution.

Teaching students from other countries makes me aware of the importance of welcoming others into our community and an appreciation of the issues they face.’’

‘’I definitely feel way more motivated to keep teaching, it’s kept me focused on current personal projects and has helped me balance my time effectively. It’s given me an opportunity to meet new friends and feel less isolated during lockdown.

It’s given me a huge positive impact in the community, and has made me want to get more involved with other community programs.’’

‘’ The 4 weeks of teaching ESL to my class led me to re-develop and deepen my teaching pedagogy and receive an offer from the University of Aberdeen to do PGDE Secondary English. I received immense support from the manager. She has been extremely supportive and encouraging throughout the 4 weeks and setting up various of online activities and meetings to help her staff further and expand their teaching competencies.’’

‘’ It was amazing to get to bond with my students, they were all refugees, and seeing their perspective on lockdown and on life in general was really enlightening to me.

In my community, everybody was really interested in what I was doing, and expressed a lot of admiration towards the School and its deeds and dedication to help people learn English. I got a lot of questions about teaching, especially since I was involved with refugees, everybody around me found the Summer School initiative a fantastic one, and I got to spread the word around.’’

‘’ It gives me something to be busy with during this time of lockdown and helping students increase in confidence and meeting lovely new people is very rewarding.’’

‘’I appreciated a really good opportunity to communicate with other experienced teachers. It helped me not to focus on COVID, not to worry.’’

‘’My IT skills have increased from learning how to use zoom in a fun and interacting way. I’m so glad I decided to volunteer with this organisation. Everyone involved and the students were great’’

SUMMER VOLUNTEER TUTOR

STORY-TELLING CLASSES FOR CHILDREN

When we were delivering e-notebooks to students, families with children asked if there would be any classes for their children as there was no summer school creche and fewer opportunities for children to speak English. We asked Chris, a tutor who taught with us last year if he could deliver those classes via zoom as the children were already familiar with him. He did a brilliant job with the help of children’s parents reading stories to and/or with children, asking them questions and teaching new words. The children also had opportunities to work in groups on little projects in break-out rooms, for example drawing and talking about their daily routines, the food they eat or designing an animal that can do imaginary things. Here is the full list of topics they have covered:

THE JOURNEY OF ONE OF OUR STUDENTS

This is Shyma. She’s from Bangladesh and arrived in Scotland 2 years ago and shortly after started attending our classes at the elementary level. She is married and very motivated to go to college here and then to university. Her English has improved a lot and she joined our summer IELTS preparation classes (they prepare students to sit the English exam needed to start university in the UK). It has been a pleasure seeing how Shyma’s English and confidence has improved. In the beginning, she was very quiet and reluctant to speak. Now, she talks with confidence and makes longer sentences, like this one on the Facebook feedback video: ‘’during the lockdown, we only stay at home and can’t meet with our friends so in this class we can meet with our friends because lockdown is very boring’’