Blewbury school links up with India in lockdown

The pupils have been sharing class work, playing games and even organised a school Olympics while they were learning from home.

Nicky Galbraith, who teaches Year 3 and 4 at Blewbury Endowed CofE Primary School near Didcot, has been helping organise the Zoom video chats with the school in Chennai province.

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She helped pupils make paper dolls and share their ideas with the children in India.

They created a Powerpoint presentation explaining how to make the paper dolls and the children in Chennai also took part in the same craft and shared each other’s pictures.

The children at Blewbury have also been learning about the Olympics though home schooling and the class shared their information with the school in Chennai and created a Chennai-Blewbury School Olympics.

The activities were adapted to suit lockdown as both the children in the Chennai school and in Blewbury were stuck inside due to the pandemic.

The children took part in teddy throwing, a short timed run, a long timed run, a standing jump and an activity that involved aiming and throwing the teddy into a circle.

Certificates were awarded to all the school children for taking part and pupils from both schools connected and developed friendships.

The two schools have this connection because Alex Jacob, a teacher at Blewbury, used to teach in India and through her the schools have developed their relationship.

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Ms Jacob also helped set up the Batemans Trust, a charity which supports disadvantaged children in South India by providing them with an education and secure accommodation.

Mrs Galbraith said: “We have always been a school that has had international links for many years, and this is just another feather in our bow.

“It lets them make that connection with other children that are going through a similar thing but in a totally different area of the world.

"We are going to continue it through and build an even greater relationship so the children can email each other or send letters.”

She added: “I have had email contact with the teacher [in India] who said the children were very excited and really enjoyed seeing all the Blewbury children and the fact they were able to share something.”

Mrs Galbraith hopes the children will be able to stay in contact and grow their blossoming friendships.

She said: “Zoom has just come out of lockdown, there has been a lot of negative things to come out of lockdown, but I think one of the most positive things is that we’ve got this international connection through Zoom and the children have learnt this new technology.

“It was really lovely to see the children playing Pictionary together, the children in India put up the whiteboard screen on Zoom and drew pictures for our children to guess what they were, it was very nice couple of sessions we had.”