Imagining change with limited resources

In this video, teachers show how they imagined new learning possibilities through the use of everyday materials.

The video features Marner Paw, a teacher from a Karen refugee camp, and Nwet Nwet, a senior teacher trainer at TeacherFOCUS, sharing how recycled materials can be used as teaching aids to bring learning to life and give their students hands-on experiences.

In the video, we see that clocks made from paper boxes can provide a hands-on, practical learning experience for children learning to read the time. Creating learners’ name tags from ice-cream sticks can help a teacher learn names and make the children feel they have a place in the class. Filling plastic bottles with coloured water gives the learners a concrete example to help them learn colours. Using rice bags to create alphabet posters helps learners recognise letters and become familiar with their shapes and sounds.

Nwet Nwet shows us how to create a maths learning game with dice made from the cardboard tube in a toilet roll. She explains how you can create games that help learners to recognise numbers and count dots. The games are fun to play so they help learners to gain experience and confidence, and learn to communicate with other people.

It is very simple to make the cardboard dice – you can learn how from this video on YouTube:

No matter what physical resources you have, you can make the learning environment more engaging by creatively using simple materials.

Exercise: share your own solutions

You may be facing similar circumstances to the teachers in the video, or maybe you needed to create your own resources for other reasons. Add a post to the Teaching and Learning Aids Padlet to share a teaching and learning aid that you have created, and tell us about the educational problem it solved, and why it worked. Comment on each others’ suggestions for resources to support particular kinds of learning, and say if you could use them in your own environment.

Over to you

• Could you tackle any of your teaching and learning challenges by making similar resources at your school?
• Do you have examples of making your own resources for students? Please share your stories in the comments.