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Over de nieuwe banen van Ben en Dees. CAMBRIDGE GARDEN ACADEMY Crèche / Nursery / Kindergarten / Primary Motto of the school: Perfect transformation for development! Location: Kanvilli North. Admission form; admission fee and school fees per ward per term. School prospectus; under 3 years old: Dettol; Lifeboy soap; Ariel Omo; Toilet rolls; Cup and towel. The school hours are from 8.00 am to 4.30 pm from Monday to Friday. Plans are far advanced to provide Child Care Services also during the holidays to the entire public and children from other schools may enroll. Parents who wish to pick up their wards after the normal hours will need to negotiate with the school at a minimal fee. School uniform: On sale at school as well as P.E. attire. Foot wear for both boys and girls: Any decent foot wear. Re-opening day: Our re-opening days are quite unique and we have a good strategy to ease the frustrations of children on their first day at school and subsequently thereafter. In that regard, Parents/Guardians should be prepared to spend at least 40 minutes on this first day to help their wards integrate into the school community with joy. Learning environment: Objectives:
Teachers guide for a new teaching approach
Observations Ghanaian society Tribe Religion Community Chief National laws (extended) Family
Individual Figure 1. A consequence of the above-described society is that there is no need for making individual choices, because choices are predetermined by the social group. When someone doesn’t have the sense of making choices and has the feeling that everything is predetermined, he/she won’t feel that he/she can make a change or is responsible for the consequence. By making choices, one will automatically take and feel responsibility for the chosen direction, for he/she has influenced the process and the future outcome. As a result, development of own ideas is not encouraged and there is therefore little initiative taken to make things better. In this way, development is not supported, for the situation stays the way it always was. Educational system The educational system is a reflection of the above-described society. The same skills and knowledge that are valued in society are represented in schools. This means that children are expected to be quiet, patient and obeying. Which are good skills that enable children to properly do as they’re told. The focus of the matter being taught is on the content of facts. In other words, you can say that the children are being taught to answer the "what question". Children are demanded to memorize the knowledge and as a result they are very good reminders. Anyhow, the presentation of knowledge is fixed and children are not appealed to explore or be creative with it. In other words, children don’t need to make choices and have no experience in answering the "why question. As a consequence, knowledge in mind will stay fixed and cannot be generalized to other situations. Furthermore, curiosity or asking why is not encouraged or even discouraged, because this is seen as inappropriate. Even though thinking critical about what you have been taught, makes that one can implement the knowledge in a better way. By asking questions, a full understanding of connections between various constructs can be gained. It is by making connections that you can come up with new solutions and ideas, which imply creativity and innovation. By not dealing with the "why question" a child lacks an understanding of causality, which enables him or her to predict future outcomes and explain past events. This facilitates planning and reflection. When someone is able to see his mistakes and successes in the past, he can maintain or improve his performance in the future. Seeing causality, being creative, taking initiative, planning, and reflecting upon own actions are the key competences in working life. Good decisions are built upon these competences as illustrated by the example in the box below.
Box 1. For example, when a carpenter takes the initiative to produce a table a nicer one than his neighbor. After that he can make an inventory of the materials needed. This, he first needs to make a mental picture of a table, before drawing it. With his creativity he can make demands planning skills. In order to buy good quality materials at the lowest price, a comparison of several timber markets is needed before he decides where to buy. Therefore he has to think on an abstract level in order to weigh pros and cons and make a choice. After the purchase of the materials, he can actually start building. The last time he made a table, he might have encountered a construction error. Because this carpenter understands causality, he is able to reflect upon his actions. Therefore he can find out what went wrong, which prevents him of making the same mistake in the future. The understanding of causality allows the carpenter to improve his carpentry skills. Improving skills implicates development. This example is metaphoric to all professions or even to all daily life tasks. In all kind of tasks, the skills the carpenter needed are useful to make the right choices. The carpenter in the example learned through experience. The knowledge he gains in this way will be more deeply and widely rooted and better understood than when he had memorized an instruction given by a teacher. He can now bring his knowledge into practice and make improvements all by himself. In short, in school knowledge shouldn’t only be told, but should be practiced in all possible ways to build someone’s competences. For now, the children in Ghana have a lot of knowledge in mind, but the skills to implement this knowledge need focus and training.
Especially education can provide children with the above competences in order to make sure that they can utilize their knowledge properly. Therefore, we developed a training program for teachers to give them tools with which they are better able to let the children acquire before mentioned competences. If teachers are able to sustain in this new approach, there will be a structural change and so many children can be benefited.
Summarizing, one could say that children learn what happened but not why it happened. For a full understanding, one needs to deal with both questions. Since the focus is only on the "what question", the acquiring of certain skills, like reflection, caulality, planning, creativity and taking initiative are neglected.
Exercise Connect the tasks on the left side with the most appropriate skill on the right side by drawing a line between them.
Teacher:
Know how to handle this particular class Planning Improving lessons next year Initiative
Shoemaker: Improving shoes Creativity
Baker: Inventing another bread than neighbor Planning Deciding where to buy ingredients Causality
Starting bakery Creativity
Preparing Fufu: Adding a new ingredient to improve taste Initiative
Adjusting the amount of each ingredient Creativity Consider making Fufu Causality
Workshop Primary school teachers and youth group leaders
Goal Promoting a different way of teaching that focuses more on the acquiring of skills for better understanding, implementation and creation of knowledge in order to make good decisions/choices.
Objectives Train teachers/youth group leaders to:
Definitions Understanding causality and finding explanations: answering the why-question and gaining insight in causality. Being creative: generating new ideas or concepts or new associations between existing ideas or concepts. Taking initiative: undertaking self-directed action Planning actions: process of thinking about the activities (and in which order) required to create a desired future. Reflecting: gaining insight in own behavior, thoughts and emotions
Approach: coaching role of teacher: PAC-man! Don’t say teacher, say PAC-man! Positive approach to stimulate Activity in order to develop Creativity. When approached in this manner, children will gain confidence in their own capacities.
A positive approach will reward the efforts of children so they will have enough confidence to play an active role. Through an active role, a child can learn through experience by exploring and practicing newborn skills. Practicing promotes making associations between concepts, which gives the child ground for the development of his/her creativity.
Positivism
Activity
Creativity
Method: Exercises which promote
Day structuring
Description Day structuring is actually more directly an exercise for teachers, but stands as a model for the children. In day structuring the teacher has to structure its lessons or time schedule. At the beginning of the day the teacher has to inform the children about the timetable of that particular day or that particular lesson. The teacher also has to inform the children about certain changes in that plan.
Aimed objectives This exercise is not only an opportunity for the teacher to practice with planning, but also familiarizes the children with planning, in a way that the teacher stands as a model. A well-structured lesson or day also facilitates better learning. When a child knows what will come next, he or she can prepare him or herself for the things to come. A well prepared child is better enabled to receive or learn.
Implementation This exercise can be implemented in all subjects during the day.
Necessaries No extra necessaries are needed.
Evaluation (reflection and feedback)
Description An evaluation is looking back on the process and product that a child or a group has accomplished and noticing positive points and suggestions to improve. It starts with asking the actor to reflect on his own behavior. How did he/she feel about this task, is he/she satisfied or does he/she have own points for improvement? Hereby reflects the actor on his own behavior and result. After that, other students can give feedback, which means that they first mention all positive aspects of the assignment and after that they can suggest what can be done better next time. Every time the actor is asked for his opinion on the given points and there is space for discussion, but always in a constructive way. Now, the teacher can conclude by giving compliments and suggestions and a mark can be given for the performance.
Aimed objectives By evaluation, reflection upon own behavior is practiced. The person looks back to what he/she has done in order to compliment and correct him/herself. In this way, he/she has to come up with explanations for his/her own behavior which facilitates understanding causality and finding explanations. Planning skills are practiced by setting goals for the next performance.
Implementation Evaluation, reflection and feedback can be practiced every time a child performs in every course. Beside that, a evaluation can be held for a lesson or activity. For example: What are your thoughts about this lesson? Was it difficult or easy? How was your participation? What can be done better next time?
Necessaries
Cooperative learning
Description Working together in small groups to discuss and find solutions to all kinds of tasks. For example finding answers to questions or making a presentation/essay together. Because a group will generate more possible solutions than a single individual, this will more likely result in a better outcome. Besides that, the children will experience more explanations, which can help them to better understand the matter. The result of the assignment can be either a small presentation or output on paper. The process and product of the group has to be evaluated as described above.
Aimed objectives By this assignment all objectives of this program are trained. Children have to take initiative to contribute to the group process by giving their ideas. To make up these ideas, they need creativity. Because children have to discuss, they practice finding explanations to convince each other of the best idea. After making a decision, they have to plan their actions to accomplish the task in time. After accomplishing the task, evaluation will encourage reflection.
Implementation Group work can be implemented for assignments in all courses. Children are encouraged in groups to come up with ideas and appealed to think themselves in order to achieve tasks.
Necessaries
Correcting others work
Description This is not really an exercise in itself, but can be implemented in all kinds of exercises. When an assignment or exercise is done and the answers need to be corrected, the answers of one child have to be passed to an other child, for the other child has to correct the answers.
Aimed objectives By correcting others work, children are forced to look at the answers of others critically, in order to judge if an answer is correct or incorrect. Implicitly, they’ll consider their own answers too and compare it to the answers of the other person. This gives them a chance to think of their own answer critically again. This facilitates reflection.
Implementation This exercise can be implemented in all subjects.
Necessaries - a pen or pencil per child and made work.
Story telling
Description In storytelling a child has to tell or write down a story. Depending on the instruction, it could be a story based on the fantasy of the child or an already existing story. For example, the teacher could ask the children to tell something about their weekend or holidays.
Aimed objectives In the case of fantasizing about a story, a child has to come up with imagined connections and is not hindered by any given course of events. The child now has an opportunity to be creative. In order to come up with a logical story, the child has to critically think of explanations for the course of events in the imagined story. In the case of an already existing story, a child practices with recalling the events and telling them in a logical and understandable way. In both cases the child practices it’s language skills and the child practices its understanding of causes and consequences.
Implementation Story telling can be implemented in most of the subjects. Especially the different languages can facilitate this exercise. But it can also be implemented in subjects discussing history.
Necessaries If the story has to written down, pen and paper is needed.
Story finishing/cause finding
Description In this exercise children have to either fantasize about the ending or the beginning of a story. In story finishing the teacher presents the beginning of the story and asks the children to come up with their own ending. In cause finding, the teacher will present the ending of a story or event, after which the children have to think about how this particular story or event started or began. Both tasks have to be done in such a way that it can be perceived as a coherent story.
Aimed objectives The aimed objective of this exercise is to practice with causality, in which the children have to either think of logical causes or logical consequences. This will enhance their understanding of causality. Besides, they have to come up with explanations for the events that are about to occur or just have occurred. They need to use their creativity to create the causes and consequences.
Implementation This exercise can be implemented in all kinds of subjects. It can be used as a tool to practice with a particular language. It can also be used as a tool in the explaining of historical events.
Necessaries The teacher will need a story ending or beginning. He can either fantasize about a story or he can use historical events, newspapers, books etc. For the children, the necessary tools are a pen and paper, so that children can write down their stories. When these are not at hand, they can also just present their stories orally.
Drawing
Description Making a drawing is using pencils and paper to create a picture. The teacher can either encourage the child to choose him/herself what to draw or can give an assignment with a specific theme.
Aimed objectives The skill that is mostly trained is being creative. The child will create a picture all by him/herself, with or without an assignment. If he/she has in mind to draw for example a cat, planning skills are necessary to make sure that the body of the cat will fit on the paper when starting by drawing the head. After the drawing is finished, he/she will look at it and can tell what he/she likes about how he/she drew and how the drawing looks. This practices reflection.
Implementation This assignment can be practiced in any course. For example in a language course the child can be asked to draw a cat and write the word on the same paper to better remember this word. In environmental studies, a child can be asked to draw about the dealt subject to see if he/she understood what it was about. Beside the existing courses, a free drawing assignment can be given to encourage children to be creative and express ideas. After finishing the drawing, the child can tell something about it and it can be evaluated as described above.
Necessaries
Analogies and relationships
Description In analogies a child has to think of the way two constructs are connected or how the two constructs resemble each other. The resemblance can either be at a lower level. For example, a dog and a cat resemble each other, in that they are both animals and pets. But the resemblance can also be at a higher level. For example, the number 33 and 21 resemble each other because they are both products of a number of times 3. Beside analogies, children can be asked to look for relationships between two constructs for example a dog and a bone. The child can answer that a dog chases a bone. An other example is a barber and a pair of scissors. A barber uses a pair of scissors to cut hair. The nature of the relationships is that the first uses the second as a tool to play or work with.
Aimed objectives Analogies are aimed to let the child explain the resemblance of two constructs or the relationship between them. It also lets the child think creatively about connections between two constructs that didn’t seem to exist at first sight.
Implementation Analogies and relationships can be implemented in language subjects, because it lets the child practice with words and descriptions. It can also be implemented in subjects discussing history. For example, Hitler and Mussolini resemble each other, in that they were both totalitarian leaders. Or, in more local history, Idi Amin and Mugabe resemble each other, in that they were both totalitarian leaders.
Necessaries No necessaries are needed unless the children have to write it down, than paper and pen are appropriate.
Summary
Description Writing or telling a summary is extracting the main points out of a larger text. In this way, the essentials will be separated from the matter of secondary importance.
Aimed objectives Initiative is encouraged when starting to summarize. To be able to do so, the child needs to understand causality in order to capture the main points. Creativity is demanded for arranging the information in a new manner and using other words to represent it.
Implementation Summarizing can be practiced in all courses to rehearse the most important points and explanations that are learned.
Necessaries
Essay
Description Writing an essay means that a child writes a text on what he knows about a subject in an understandable and readable manner. Initially, this can be done on a determined subject and of a short length (for example, ten sentences). Later on, the child can choose his own subject and write a longer text. When finished, the teacher reads the text and evaluates as described above. He can choose to give a mark for the essay.
Aimed objectives By this assignment all objectives of this program are trained. The child needs to take initiative to start with the work. He/she has to use creativity to make up a subject and to arrange the content. He/she needs to find explanations to make a meaningful story of the gathered information. Planning actions is necessary to accomplish the task in time. After finishing he/she will read the result and can reflect on the work he/she has done.
Implementation Writing an essay can be valuable for English, Dagbani, French, Science, Environmental studies and Physical education, depending on the language in which it is written and the subject.
Necessaries
Presentation
Description Giving a presentation means that the child stands in front of the class and explains something to his classmates and the teacher. This can be built up gradually. Every time the child has accomplished a step, he can continue with a larger presentation. For example the first step is that a child explains his answer to his classmates. The next step can be teaching known matter in his or her own words to the rest of the class. After that a child can write a story and read it aloud for the group. In the end a child will be able to present an informative lesson for which he/she has gathered information before. The last step is the largest assignment, which needs some preparation and is therefore described in more detail now. The children are asked to make a presentation about a subject that they like; either alone or in couples. Keep a planning list where each child writes his name and subject down at a certain date. For example two presentations per week. Each subject may only be presented once. Encourage the children to seek information on the chosen subject, by asking family, reading newspaper and books. After writing a report on the chosen subject, they write the main points down as reminders and tell (not read) all what they know to the group. Hereby, they can use the blackboard. The classmates can ask questions and after the presentation, there will be an evaluation, as described above. In the end a mark can be given. The more the children practice, the better they will become.
Aimed objectives By this assignment all objectives of this program are trained. The child has to take initiative to gather the information. Next he/she has to think of explanations for the knowledge he gained in order to make a logical story out of it. This also practices creativity, because the gathered information has to be ordered in a new way. He/she needs planning skills to order the steps that have to be taken before the appointed date: choosing subject, gathering information, reading information, writing down story, practicing presentation and performing. After the performance, reflection skills are practiced to evaluate what went well and what can be done better.
Implementation The assignment of giving a presentation can be practiced in English, Dagbani, French, Science, Environmental studies and Physical education depending on the chosen subject and the language in which the presentation will be given. If appropriate, the children can be scheduled to a particular course and give a presentation on a subject relevant to this course. Explaining answers in own words can also be adopted in math and ICT courses.
Necessaries
Expectancies, challenges and limitations
Limitations:
How to measure: - Attendance and motivation.
Limitations:
How to measure:
Limitations:
Limitations:
SUPERVISIE INHOLLAND SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK HAARLEM SOCIAAL PEDAGOGISCHE HULPVERLENING MAATSCHAPPELIJK WERK EN DIENSTVERLENING Supervisie is een leermethode voor (beginnende) beoefenaars van beroepen, waarin het doelgericht hanteren van de interactie tussen de werker en anderen een grote rol speelt. Het doel van supervisie: Ondersteuning bieden bij het zelfstandig en op een persoonlijke manier uitoefenen van het beroep. Om dat doel te bereiken richt de supervisie zich op twee aspecten: Vergroting van het integratievermogen en vergroting van het reflectievermogen. Onder integratievermogen verstaan we het vermogen om de samenhang in denken, voelen en handelen te onderkennen en aan te brengen. Integratie is niet alleen gericht op de persoonsdimensie; het gaat tevens om de samenhang tussen je persoon, je concrete werksituatie en het beroep, waarvoor je wordt opgeleid. Dit wordt ook wel beroepsdimensie genoemd. In supervisie gaat het dus om het leren in samenhang, waarbij de twee dimensies van beroep en persoon worden samengevoegd en opgenomen in het geheel van de beroepsuitoefening. Onder reflectievermogen verstaan we het vermogen om ervaringen, opgedaan in de beroepspraktijk, zodanig te overdenken en doorzien dat dit leidt tot een nieuwe betekenisgeving en tot alternatieven op handelingsniveau. Het leren reflecteren vóór, tijdens en na het handelen leidt tot een betere beroepsuitoefening. Reflecteren bestaat uit drie nauw met elkaar samenhangende activiteiten: · opdoen van ervaringen; · expliciet maken van ervaringen door concretiseren, expliciteren, problematiseren en generaliseren; · ervaringen vanuit een breder kader bekijken, belichten en beleven. Supervisortaken: De supervisor richt zich in de begeleiding primair op het leren integreren op twee niveaus en het leren reflecteren op ervaringen opgedaan in de beroepspraktijk. De supervisor geeft geen directieven en adviezen met betrekking tot de werkuitvoering in de beroepspraktijk. De supervisor houdt de grenzen van de supervisie in de gaten en signaleert overlappingen met andere begeleidingsvormen, met name praktijkbegeleiding en hulpverlening. De supervisor begeleidt een geïndividualiseerd leerproces en geeft hulp bij eventuele leerbelemmeringen die samenhangen met de leerstijl van de supervisant of die ontstaan in het supervisieproces. De supervisor beoogt daarbij, dat de supervisant in staat is de volledige leercyclus te doorlopen, met het oog op zelfstandig en blijvend leren aan en van het beroep.
CTSP/Workshops/Docententrainingen Voor meer achtergrond informatie
aangaande de workshops/docententrainingen, die Ben geeft in een dorpje 45 km.
verwijderd van Tamale, zie de website van dit Children to School Project,
namelijk:
NEESIM COMMUNITY CHILDREN'S EDUCATION AND LIBRARY PROJECT (NCCELP) Description Background Aims
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