COVID-19: Kampala International School of Uganda adopts online teaching to ensure uninterrupted learning

By Terry Garbett

Kampala International School Uganda (KISU) is moving into its third month of online learning. Our aim has been to ensure that all our students from our Early Years (2/3 years old) to our International Baccalaureate students (18 years old) continue with their learning as uninterrupted as possible.

We are using a variety of platforms, as the needs of different age groups are better catered for by some more than others. For our older students Managebac, Google Classroom, Google Meet and Zoom are all put to good use. In Primary, Google Classroom, Google Meet and Loom are most commonly used and a tailor made Early Years programme call Tapestry is used in Early Years.

One of the features of education at KISU is our wide variety of approaches and this is no different whether the teaching is online or in a classroom. Online teachers will meet whole classes in a virtual classroom, they will share PowerPoint presentations and other documents with screen share, post work for students to do in their online exercise books or they can turn it in Google Classroom.

Teachers reach out to small groups of students who might need extra support or an extra challenge. Videos are posted, particularly for students who have returned to their home country who cannot be present for streamed lessons or Google or Zoom meetings. For our younger students we have small group meetings of maybe 2 to 4 children so that everybody gets a turn to say what they want and show what they have been doing.

We would not expect our students to spend a whole day looking at a screen. Our secondary students have the use of a wide range of text books that will support their online learning and learning packs have been created for our younger ones. Teachers set project work, cooking tasks and we even have online PE lessons. Our music department is offering online music lessons and we even calibrated Earth Day online and had an online Spirit week!

Many of the extra services that KISU offers have also gone online. Our Learning Support team reach out to students who might find some subjects difficult or struggle with the English language. Our councillors are also available to students who might find these times stressful and difficult.

For our examination classes, unfortunately Cambridge IGCSE and IB examinations have been cancelled. We quickly looked at how we could support our students and introduced courses that start to prepare our IGCSE students for the IB Diploma programme and for our pre-university students we offer teaching in areas that they feel might be useful to them when they start their universities across the globe in October.

We have given our students the best possible learning in the current situation but every single student, teacher and I suspect most parents want us to get back into school and become a real, rather than, a virtual school.

Terry Garbett is the School Director and Head of Secondary at Kampala International School of Uganda (KISU)