About Kath

Kath went to Sri Lanka with VESL in 2009. She was meant to go for a three month project. But loved it so much, she stayed for a year! And she's been back twice since then. Kath has also visited VESL projects in India. She has helped volunteers in Sri Lanka and India to get settled in to their projects. And she can been seen at VESL selection and training days, frequently throwing balls (or sunglasses) at people (in a nice way). Kath is currently studying a PGDE in Secondary maths at Edinburgh University and is looking forward to seeing how Scottish schools are similar to and different from those in England, Australia, Sri Lanka and India. When she's not being enthusiastic about education, Kath can be found hunched over her laptop doing funky things with Excel or Access.
Author Archive | Kath
Drawing

Using Art to help teach English

Here is a story of some primary students at a school India from a volunteer who had success using art projects in the classroom.  “The students were quite disruptive and could be a handful at times. The school was in a poor fishing community in Kerala and many of the students came from very difficult […]

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Visual Aids for ESL Teaching

When I arrived at my new school, many classrooms didn’t have any visual aids on the walls.  I thought it would great to create a few engaging, colourful displays to help stimulate the kids and it proved to be a get way to get them all interacting with me. Here are some ideas for visual […]

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My Volunteer English Teaching Kit

There are two parts to my volunteer teaching kit: what I take to class everyday and what I have at my homestay placement. I buy as many of these things from the village closest to my homestay placement as I can. Sometimes I need to make a trip to a nearby big town or city […]

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My First Lesson

The first lesson with any group can be a bit scary. Here’s an activity that I’ve found useful when dealing with students from about Grade 3 (Sri Lanka) or 3rd Standard (India) all the way through primary and secondary and on to working with adults. It lasts for about 30 mins but you can make […]

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