Ladder to Literacy Session 2

15 August

Another warm winter’s day in Cape Town. Today I have Shelley in the car with me, she is a very good ex colleague of mine, and we worked together at a Montessori pre-school some three years ago. I had always remembered she was interested in outreach and here she is kindly volunteering her time to help with the Ladder to Literacy project.

I fill Shelley in about last week’s session as we are making our way to the Townships. I tell her about the disturbing discovery that only two out of the fifteen teachers read to the children in their care and they do not have any books. I also tell her that upon sharing this information with my colleagues at our ELF offices their response was “Not having books is no excuse not to read to children.” You could make up stories, use magazines, newspaper, and even draw. As I think about it, they are right; we live in a world where there is literacy all around us. The teachers need the right encouragement and understanding of the importance of this literacy in the child’s world.

I tell Shelley about the material making session, how the ladies struggled to rule straight lines, cut straight and paste straight. Shelley knows the importance of presenting beautiful attractive materials to the children. She offers to help in this area, much to my relief and gratitude. Patience is a virtue. We arrive; we unload the car and set up the materials. The ladies arrive and we start our session with a recap of last week. Here the ladies role play and practice the activities covered last week.

This week’s session focused on activities to prepare the child for handwriting, from working with sandpaper letters, how to hold a pencil, to making patterns using a pencil to name just a few. All of the activities are practical and most can be easily made. The teachers happily agree on this. Some of them share that they have black boards and paper and scissors but it never occurred to them to demonstrate to children how to cut lines or make patterns with a pencil or chalk board. They very easily understood the importance of helping the child develop good hand muscle and hand eye coordination.   They were very quick to link the activities to the practical life activities covered last year. It is heart warming to see such progress from the teachers.

As the demonstrations and practice continue, Shelley is busy in the background, cutting card with the guillotine and laminating the materials already done by the teachers. This was a huge time saver and the teachers looked forward to finishing off their materials to take to the children. I know our Ladder to Literacy project has just began, the teachers are slowly piecing all the information together and I’m thrilled but at the same time I am concerned about introducing Xhosa literacy. There are such limited resources for Xhosa.....guess it’s time to put on our creative hats!

Ladder to Literacy Project Begins!

Ladder to Literacy Blog

So many amazing moments has occurred since the day Niki walked through the ELF door in 2012. Niki is from an organisation called Ubomi and she approached us in her quest to find materials for the schools she provides aid to. These schools exist in townships on the fringe of Cape Town in two areas called Samora Machel and Kosovo. We partnered on the “Nurturing the Spirit of Learning in Kosovo” project last year. Our partnership has brought much inspiration, friendship, challenges, opportunities and development of human potential.

This year we embarked on the Ladder to Literacy project.  Our focus is to provide the teachers in "Nurturing the spirit of Learning in Kosovo" project with teaching skills in how to teach literacy to young children in their schools. The Literacy workshops will run over five sessions meeting once a week in Samora Machel.

Session One:

A warm sunny winter’s day in the townships. I approach the Tsonga environmental centre in Samora Machel, as I take the corner I see some school children making their way to school. I meet Mandisa, my co facilitator. We empty the boot of my car with all the equipment we’ll need and we head inside to set up. I was amazed at the beautiful architectural structure of the building and surprised I haven’t noticed it before as I’ve driven past it so many times on my way to Kosovo.

Once all the teachers had arrived we started our introduction to Literacy, what literacy is and why it is important. We spoke about the natural universal way children learn their native language, the teachers could relate to this, sharing experiences of their own children. We moved onto ways to help children develop literacy, with Mandisa translating as we went along. After our tea break we demonstrated pre literacy vocabulary enrichment activities which the teachers got to practice.

The activities were done in Xhosa and we had a hiccup when it came to the ‘I spy’ game,  as I’ve discovered that most of the Xhosa words begin with an ‘i’…..ihagu, ikama, ikati  and so forth.

After the practice session the teachers head off to the tables to make literacy materials for the children in their schools. This was a huge challenge for the teachers as their lines were skew; they struggled to cut strait and even paste straight. Many had to redo and needed close guidance to perfect their material making skills. Patience is virtue.

When asked who read every day, only two of the fifteen teachers raised their hands, I assumed that the others only read every now and then. When I asked why not, they replied that they did not know the importance of reading to children and they did not have any books. We ended our session with a word of encouragement to read to children every day.

Going home to my three children this very afternoon, I pondered on how fortunate they have been to have such a sure start in life to literacy. And I realized the ever more importance of this Ladder to Literacy project for the children in Samora Machel and Kosovo.

Long Walk to the Playground

The day starts with toddlers being dropped off by their parents for the day - fifteen little ones in one room. The teacher is creative; with little resources she has them singing, dancing and moving. Then comes story-time, nappy changing. Snack time follows. There is little else. These fifteen children are confined to this 2 x 4 meter room for the day. The teacher is afraid to let them out onto the playground for fear that they will be trampled by the older children.

Today, however is a landmark day! The children are visiting the playground for the first time this year. They will have exclusive use of the playground, before the older children come outside!

On the other end, in the classroom with the 4-5 year olds, things are abuzz. After the morning group circle, children are invited to choose “work”/activities from the shelves. The Practical Life activities were prepared the week before by the Ubomi teachers.

The Ubomi teachers are encouraged to invite the children and introduce them to the “new work!” The children look animated and willingly engage with the adults. Their concentration and interest is apparent from their facial expressions.  They are so eager to choose activities. 

Soon however, chaos reigns!  The activities on the shelves are incomplete and/or returned to incorrect places. To add to the chaos the teachers over-mediate and direct the children, sometimes to the extent of doing the activity themselves without offering the children the option to try.

Overall, the morning work time is busy with a flurry of activity and energy in the classroom. The debriefing session encourages reflection on behaviours, attitudes, skills and feelings around the morning events.  Consensus was reached around preparation of environment, the importance of modeling the grace and courtesies and body management required from the children and adults alike in the environment.

While the teachers were at tea, we quickly set up the environment with the help of Tosh the class teacher. Tosh’s energy and enthusiasm to share her resources with us enabled us to set up a Practical Life, Language, Sensorial and Art area with sufficient activities for approximately children!

Exhausted but satisfied we left Kosovo with the firm conviction that tomorrow will be a new day full of concentrated activity for the children of Kosovo!

Thursdays in Kosovo

Thursdays in KOSOVO

7 March 2013

We arrived in Kosovo at 08h30. Even though we’d been there before, the squalor, refuse and general uncleanliness, always shocks you as you veer off Vanguard drive through Samora Machel, heading bumpily into Kosovo. At this hour the neighbourhood dogs are already scrounging in the piles of garbage on the roadside for their morning breakfasts, while residents are creatively propping up their shacks in the hope that they will provide protection for yet another day.

The practitioners greet us warmly as they file into Zolekha’s crèche for our first session after the long summer holidays. The session goes smoothly, with the teachers excitedly showing off their knowledge and skills to the group as they recall all the Practical Life activities learned in the workshops. The enthusiasm and energy in the room shade us from the gloomy heat that is slowly being trapped into the zinc structure of Zolekha’s school. Careful explanations of the skills children learn with the activities are gently presented by the practitioners in slow English or Xhosa where need be.

After tea, unperturbed by the trapped heat, we all head back in for the second session. My colleague and I, puzzled by the amazing knowledge captured by the group with little evidence of it being transferred to the children, opened the session with a discussion around implementation and sharing skills and knowledge with the children. The concerns raised were space (shacks being too small), no materials to set up activities, lack of funds to purchase materials etc.

At the end of the session, after designing activities with the empty bottles of all sizes, Tuna cans, yogurt tubs etc, and identifying skills children learn with these tools as play or work every practitioner committed to setting up a minimum of five activities for their classrooms by next week Thursday!

Follow the ELF team and share our obstacles and wonder … as we journey to Kosovo on the 14^th March.

Our first visit to Kosovo

On visiting a few of the schools of the ladies who participated in the workshop, I was taken aback by the level of poverty the two communities were in. Some shacks were very small, dark and had very little evidence of a school or place for children to play and learn.

The children were all asleep and the adults were watching over them. In one of the more established shacks the Ubomi team had put in a concrete floor as well as proper windows and doors. This school had a kitchen where all of the Ubomi schools would come and collect food for the children. There were little children as young as three years old, wondering about on their own with no adult supervision and who did not attend any of the schools. These children would come every day to the kitchen to have a plate of food. They sat at a child size plastic table and chairs and ate.

We walked into the school, it was quiet with the children sleeping. We were warmly greeted by Lungi, one of the ladies who attended the workshop. In one of the rooms were shelves and on the shelves were some Practical Life activities. It was heart warming to see the implementation. We left with a clearer understanding of the Ubomi vision to uplift the community and our own idea to nurture the spirit of learning in Kosovo.

Aisha Mohamed (ELF Montessori Facilitator)

October 2012

The start of our project in Kosovo

I was called upon to do a Montessori Practical Life Workshop with a group of ladies coming from various ECD centres in Samora Machel and Kosovo. I was thrilled to be part of this outreach programme and excited to meet the ladies who would be attending. I was given a short briefing of the basic services being provided for the children in their care and got to know a little bit about the organisation supporting these centres. Niki from the Ubomi Organisation is our link to our new project and a start to what is now unfolding to be a wonderful relationship and journey of reaching children in communities who are in great need of quality education.

The workshop ran for a period of four Saturdays covering the Practical Life area of the Montessori Curriculum. We were expecting fifteen ladies, each would be given module with lessons plans and expected to add notes and drawings as we went through all the lessons.

During orientation as the ladies introduced themselves I was overwhelmed by the dedication and pride they displayed when talking about their schools. I also noticed the diversity in ages and all of them being mothers and quite a few were grandmothers. Some ladies were able to speak English fluently and others struggled, at this point I introduced the translation procedures which meant ladies could freely express themselves in their mother tongue and I would get the translation. It also meant that my lessons would have to be translated too.

Our first lessons of Grace and Courtesy was phenomenal, here in front of me was a room full of women of all ages.  I had already experienced their warmth in the way they were respectful and gracious towards each other and towards me, however I noticed some women chatting while their peers were introducing themselves, this laid the perfect platform for introducing ground rules. The first being “when our friends are sharing in a group we all listen to them, we are respectful”. The lesson for greeting a guest was quite interesting as we discussed the different cultural greetings and I learnt the traditional Xhosa handshake.

The exercise of opening and closing the door drew their attention to the analysis of movement, seeing things from the child’s point of view and modelling grace and courtesy.

Other exercises of grace and courtesy were introduced focusing on respect for others, self, the environment and all materials within the environment. Emphasis was on the child wanting to be shown how to carry out actions correctly and gaining social etiquette.

Lessons were followed by practice sessions and it was wonderful seeing the ladies practice in their groups with such graciousness, using their mother tongue as they would speak to the children in their schools. It also doubled as reinforcement of understanding for the ladies who were not fluent in English.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first Saturday and learnt a new Xhosa word “intlonipho” meaning respect.  The rest of the workshops went well. The ladies were punctual, came prepared and packed with enthusiasm. We worked through Body Management activities where the ladies were demonstrated how to show a child how to carry a chair, how to carry a bucket and how to walk on the line, to name just to name a few. 

During presentations they were encouraged to make notes and sketches in the module files given to them. Their hand written notes were personalized in their own language for the benefit of their own understanding for future use. I was amazed at the detail in some of the sketches. As they practiced the activities amongst themselves, they moved about with caution and grace, taking into consideration the analysis of movement, breaking down the steps to help the child internalize each movement. 

Preliminary activities were quite interesting and we added a twist to practice time. After demonstrating and practicing all of the pouring, spooning, transferring, squeezing, twisting and stringing activities, the ladies were given a few boxes of various items that could be used in the Practical Life area and they had to invent their own activities.One group decided to use pegs instead of tongs for transferring.  This I thought was brilliant because finding resources for their schools is a major challenge for township pre-schools. Others spooned colourful bottle tops instead of beans. They were surprised to find glass items amongst the materials to be used for children, however after taking them back to the importance of body management and the child’s need for real work; they became open to the concept of children handling glass.  The emphases of the activities were to allow the child to manipulate materials that would assist in developing muscle control and hand eye co-ordination in preparation for reading and writing as well as order and independence.

The workshop included Care of Self, Care of the Environment and Food Preparation. Here we really explored the child’s independence and their want to do things for themselves.

We ended our four week journey speaking about the importance of Practical Life activities and its role in preparing the child for their next educational stage, the grade school. Amongst the list were preparing their physical and mental development for reading and writing. My personal view is if there is one thing the child should take along to grade school; it is self-esteem and a belief in self, “I can do it.”  This can only come from the adults respect and belief in the child.

Thus ended our wonderful 4 week journey, leaving the ladies with enough to start implementing a Practical Life area in their schools and a promise of an onsite visit from the ELF team.

Aisha Mohammed.  ELF Facilitator
September 2012