The public school opened on 15th February, one month later than planned due to COVID 19. On that day our Afterschool programs as well as our two preschools opened. Due to the declining numbers of COVID 19 infections this was possible. Although there are rumours going round that the next wave of infections is around the corner.
Immediately after the South African president announced the easing of lockdown we took the decision to run the postponed workshop before the schools opened. Our intention was as many childcare workers as possible should take part in this training for literacy workshop which we had started already last year and could not accomplish due to COVID. From the 9th – 13th of February we went to Magaliesburg for our workshop which was a mixture of learning literacy concepts, practising them in small groups and teaching each other.
We learned that literacy teaching should be based on the spoken language of the child, therefore we used the Alphabet poster in which each letter of the Tswana language is depicted with a well known object each child knows. On top of that there are posters of 50 phonograms also depicting well known words.Many children lack an awareness of their spoken language and the posters with the pictures help them to become aware of the sounds of words. This is the basis for the reading and writing program. Once the letters are introduced, the children learn writing and reading. We as their teachers had to practise how to introduce the letters and phonograms step by step. We did this in small groups teaching each other and giving each other feed back on this.
The second big topic we learned and also practised teaching was COVID 19. Dr. Hermann had developed some lessons for the primary schools . We realized that the concepts taught in these lessons are quite complicated. The highlight of the workshop was the hike to the mountain which was a big physical challenge for some.
In the meantime all Afterschool programs have finished assessing the children to find out who needs help. It is clear already that this is a mammoth task to teach children of Grade 4, 5, & 6 who are not able to read. This is our main objective to help them being able to read and write at the end of the year. Will we be able to achieve this?
Christel and Wolfgang Hermann