Stories from the classroom: 2nd Quarter 2016

Life orientation, for all South African school learners, is the only platform from which learners can acquire life skills, democracy skills and vital knowledge about our diverse country and the world.* It’s a safe and engaging place where leaners can be taught how to make motivated life choices.

Which is why the Domino Foundation has a whole programme dedicated to educating learners about themselves, their identity and their role in greater society. For the past few years the programme has worked into three schools in Amaoti and helped hundreds of learners navigate these tricky issues. At the recent AGM it became clear that these life skills lessons were making a difference in individuals lives – they were equipping learners with knowledge about themselves and empowering them with the skills to lead a successful life.

They say you have to see it to believe, well here is a video of some of our learners from the Life Skills Programme sharing their views on how the programme has changed their lives.

*http://www.ngopulse.org/article/2016/06/02/preparing-learners-future

 

Life Skills Effect 11/14

Throughout the year, some incredible happenings have taken place through our Life Skills Programme – awesome events, teachings and community outreaches. Once again, this month we want to make special mention of one of the ladies who works behind the scenes of this programme. Judy Carter, our Home Affairs Liason works hard every month to ensure that every child and adult has an identity: in the form of a birth certificate and ID book.

In the month of November, 5 ID books and 2 birth certificates were obtained – this is an amazing feat when you come to terms with the chaos that is Home Affairs and the ‘cloudy’ backgrounds of some of the people that Judy helps every day.

More and more adults come forward in need of birth certificates (as without one, you cannot obtain an ID) and this task of getting them one continues to get harder as Home Affairs changes their processes. Late registration for birth certificates of people over the age of 16 also ends for good at the end of next year, making many people come forward needing help, some even elderly.

There was one occasion where a young mother tried to get a birth certificate for her child only to be told that the was listed as “male” so could not have given birth. She had a letter from the hospital for the birth of the baby with her ID number on it. The ID number specifies gender. i.e. ID number starts with your birth date, year, month, day if the next number is a 5 it says you are a man. I took her to Amaoti Clinic and saw the Matron who saw us immediately, did a complete examination and issued us with the necessary certificate confirming she is a woman. Home Affairs have now accepted all the documents.

Judy also took two children to Joanne Kalil Opticians as they were having difficulty reading in class. They both needed glasses which have been provided. These kids will now be more equipped in their learning! A big “Thank you” to Joanne for her support in providing the consultations and glasses for free.

 

We’d like honour Judy for all the amazing work she does with the people in Amaoti and thank her once again for all of her efforts in impacting a community!

 

Read more from our November Domino Effects Newsletter:

Babies Home Effect

ECD Effect

Literacy Effect

Feeding Effect

General Overview

 

ECD Effect 10/14

Staff Training:

On the 7th and 8th of October eight of our crèche owners attended a business training at Entrepreneurial Support Services. They had attended a course last year and this was a follow-up on this. We are trusting that our crèches become small businesses and this means they have to be able to run simple books, keep records etc. This course was to check what they had done and to add to what they had learnt previously. A person from Social Development Services gave a talk on how to get crèches registered which was very helpful. The crèche owners loved it as it added to their knowledge on how to run a small business which in the long run helps the children.

Creche Lessons:

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already hit November! That means Grade 1 is in the near future for many of our kids, so we have set aside October and November  to start preparing the kids for ‘BIG school’. The field workers and crèche owners cover areas such as How to hold a pencil, how to count basic numbers, how to thread string/rope through various items and how to hold and cut with a pair of scissors. Having witnessed the lack of school readiness from previous grade 1 learners within Amaoti, we are confident that our learners are well prepared and we are very excited to see our 1st group of ECD learners head off into the ‘big pond’ that is primary school.

 

 

Read more from the October 14 Domino Effects Newsletter here:

Babies Home Effect

Life Skills Effect

Literacy Effect

Feeding Effect

General Overview

 

Literacy Effect 10/14

Over the next 2 months we’ll be taking a seat in one of the literacy lessons that happen weekly to see what goes down everyday and the various methods our literacy tutors use to teach English to predominantly Zulu children.

#2 SOUND BUTTONS

Sound buttons is a whole class activity. The educator works with the children to develop blending skills to read words.

How is this done in the classroom?

• the educator writes a word to read on the board
• the educator puts a dot [sound button] under each sound / blend / digraph
• children say the sounds as the educator presses each button
• children squeeze the sounds together and read the word

Sound buttons help the children understand that the sounds a word is made up of can be blended together to read that word. Children can think they need to remember each word or think reading is all magic!  Sound buttons supports children in developing skills to read words. Children develop skills in blending to read words.

The benefits of sound buttons

• Supports children in developing skills to blend sounds together to read words
• Enables children to develop skills to read independently

We want the children to develop the necessary skills so when they come to an unknown word they can apply their knowledge of sounds, blends and digraphs to read the word.   As a project we seek to empower children so they can read independently.

Read more from the October 14 Domino Effects Newsletter here:

Babies Home Effect

Life Skills Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

General Overview

Life Skills Effect 10/14

Our Life Skills program is multi-faceted. We work into various spheres in the Amaoti community. From life skills lessons, to ‘Boys and Girls Club’ which offers positive after-school activities, to obtaining I.D. Books and birth certificates for desperate individuals through our Home Affairs Liaison, Judy Cater. Either way, we seek to empower the individual and help them path the way to a brighter future.

Life Skills Lessons:

“IF YOU ARE VALUABLE, THEN EVERYBODY ELSE IS VALUABLE TOO.”
The youth workers modeled a necklace to their classes and asked the question – “If we removed any one bead from this necklace, would it be how it was intended to by its Creator?”
One of the pupils answered profoundly: “Not one bead must be removed because as a person, that bead adds VALUE to the necklace.”

Our lessons impact hundreds weekly, reaching 3 schools in Amaoti and encouraging each pupil to make wise life choices that will prosper them and give them a hope and a future.

Girls Club:

After an amazing Pamper Day (read all about it here), Girls Club has officially ended for the year. So to pay tribute to all the amazing lessons and wisdom that was imparted this year, we’ve decided to dedicate every month to a value that was taught or a conversation that was had.

This month we focus on the teaching of teenage pregnancy.

Our youth workers discussed how it’s better to wait until marriage before having children. They informed the young teens as to how a happy family is the best environment for a baby and that in the current stage of their life their goals should be based on achieving academically.

Since the beginning of our Girls Club we’ve seen a drastic change in the amount of teenage pregnancies in the schools we work into. The change is evident, and we will continue to teach until we see an entire community impacted and a new generation rise up!

 

Read more from the October 14 Domino Effects Newsletter here:

Babies Home Effect

Literacy Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

General Overview

 

 

Literacy Effect 9/14

September the 8^th was International Literacy Day.

“Our words are powerful. The potency of a written word can arm a person with the wisdom and ability to make a difference… A literate person is empowered, strengthened and has a more hopeful future. But with approximately 860 million illiterate adults worldwide, the time is now – more than ever – to fight for every human’s right to be educated.”

During the course of the week, we released videos and posts about Literacy and Illiteracy in South Africa and the methods we utilize to teach literacy in the various schools we work alongside with.

LITERACY LESSONS:

We continue to teach close to 1000 children at 3 different schools in Amaoti. Our Literacy teachers work with children in grades 2 and 3 to develop phonic skills of the learners in order to equip them to read and write in English. We reinforce various sounds with the children, introduce them to new sounds and apply the knowledge of these sounds to the reading and spelling of simple words.

Our Literacy workers/tutors use various techniques to teach these sounds. Over the next 3 months we will be focusing on the individual techniques we use and take a closer look at how they work.

#1 SHARED READING

• Shared reading is done in grade 3 classes.
• The children sit in the front of the class and read together, in unison from a basic English reader.
• The teacher points to the words as they are reading.
• This type of learning encourages every child to participate and read aloud.
• It is an opportunity for learners to apply their knowledge to the reading of a text.
• It develops their reading AND comprehension skills.

 STAFF TRAINING:

Our staff have been through a process of peer mentoring, where they have observed each others’ lessons.

Peer mentoring:

• helps people to learn from one another
• is a way in which staff can support their colleagues by helping them to identify what they are doing well
• allows feedback to be given
• can help to promote good practice

Each tutor was also asked to identify a learning point, something they had observed in their peers lesson that they wanted to apply to their own teaching. This worked very well, each tutor took away with them something to implement to improve their own teaching.

DONATIONS:

We received incredible book donations during the Literacy Drive! Over 300 books have been sent out to various schools in Amaoti. We’d like to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts for everyone’s support during this month and their contribution to fighting illiteracy in our country.

Read more from the September Domino Effects Newsletter here:

General Overview

Babies Home Effect

Life Skills Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

Life Skills Effect 9/14

Our vision in the Life Skills Programme is to empower learners to make wise life choices, instilling in them a sense of self worth and purpose and offering them hope for the future.

BOYS AND GIRLS’ CLUB:

Members of the girls’ club in an aerobics class.

As the term winds down, we officially ended Boys and Girls Club for 2014. This year has been an awesome one for both clubs. 122 girls from grades 7,8 and 9 have participated in the Girls’ Club. They’ve had incredible times of teaching, aerobics classes and awesome connect times and look forward to ending off the year with an excursion/ pamper day! The boys club has engaged with all things soccer – from tournaments against Northwood and Vopak, to friendly matches and guidance from Amazulu Coaches. 92 boys have been a part of the club this year and we look forward to an even greater response next year.

Members of the boys club ready to play some soccer!

 

LIFE SKILLS LESSONS:

Grade 4 Learners at Ekuthuleni and Zwakele are all busy with the assignments set by the life skills team.

At Zwakele they are busy with a project on their family.  They have to talk about who is in their family, what they do for fun, what occasions they celebrate together, what religion they are and what they love about their family.  We are looking forward to seeing what the children produce.

At Ekuthuleni, the learners are learning how to work in groups.  Each group has to decide what they are going to do together to make their school a better place.  They then have 1 week to put their plan into practice and present their “mission” on Taking Responsibility in the form of a project.  The project brief asks them to individually create a cover page, to talk about what their group did for their mission, who did what, when they did it and what they learnt from the mission.  We are excited to hear back from these projects and empower these kids to ‘be the change’ they’d like to see in their school.

STAFF TRAINING:

On the 25^th of September our youth workers attended a workshop by Soul Action on “well being.”  The focus of this will be on looking at developing a feeling of well being personally as well as for the children they work with. These workshops are beneficial for not only our staff but also the hundreds of kids they work with and impact daily.

DONATIONS:

Following on from last month’s multiple soccer events, we received an AWESOME donation of soccer boots. kits and soccer balls for our sporting enthusiasts in Amaoti. The donations were generously given to us by Vopak – the same company who organised the matches in August. These boys love playing soccer and it is an incredible way to get them involved in positive activity. They were very overjoyed with their new boots and balls – and there is no doubt that they will be put to good use!

Edusolution donated a number of textbooks and posters. Our team are in the process of liaising with the schools that we work with to distribute valuable English, Maths and Science resources.

We’d like to extend a HUGE THANK YOU to both Vopak and Edusolution for their generous donations!

 

Read more from the September Domino Effects Newsletter here:

General Overview

Babies Home Effect

Literacy Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

International Literacy Day 8/9/14

Our words are powerful. The potency of a written word can arm a person with the wisdom and ability to make a difference.. A literate person is empowered, strengthened and has a more hopeful future. But with approximately 860 million illiterate adults worldwide, the time is now – more than ever – to fight for every human’s right to be educated.
Today, the 8th of September is International Literacy Day – a day celebrated annually to highlight the importance of literacy in individuals, communities and societies

SO WHAT DO THE STATS SAY?:

• Globally, 1 in 5 people are the world are illiterate.
                              ↓
• Of these people, 2/3rds are females.
                              ↓
• Africa, as a whole continent, has less than a 60% literacy rate.
                              ↓
• 7.1% of South Africans are illiterate

                              BUT

Is this statistic an accurate representation of our country’s literacy rate?

Statistics at the end of 2013, displayed that in total, 92.9% of of South Africans can read and write. However, the way that literacy has been defined and measured in South Africa seems to be problematic. Just because a child is receiving an education, it does not mean that this is a GOOD education.
There is an evident issue that in an ever-evolving technological world, we tend to forget how vital it is to lay the appropriate foundations of literacy to allow ALL children the tools they need to be independent and empowered.

DOMINO IS ON THE FORE-FRONT OF CHANGE:

At the Domino Foundation we recognise how profound ONE literate individual is. We rest strongly on the fact that literacy opens up the doors to a future that is immeasurably brighter.

We make sure that well educated teachers and tutors are raised up to bring about a change and to impart a GOOD education on these learners.

Every day, we have the privilege of impacting close to one thousand through our Literacy Project that works into 3 schools in the Amaoti Township. That’s 998 minds that are being equipped to change our nation and make the right choices. 998 children that will grow up to be literate adults who will play a part in a Domino Effect that will affect an entire community.

To help, SMS the word DOMINO to 48716 to donate R10 to our Literacy Programme!

 

Want to see our Literacy programme in action here:

 

Read more from the September Domino Effects Newsletter here:

General Overview

Babies Home Effect

Literacy Effect

Life Skills Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

Literacy Effect 4/14

This month we feature another interview with one of our awesome Literacy teachers and we take a look at what’s been going down in the lessons.

At The Schools:

Our literacy lessons are jam-packed with learning of new sounds and words. For our grade Grade 2 learners this month we focussed on the reinforcement of sound s, a t, i, p, n and blends st, sp, sn, sc. We also did an introduction of the sound c, hearing of sound c and blend sn.

For the Grade 3 learners, the reinforcement of vowel digraphs oo, ee, ai and igh was taught as well as the hearing of sound v. Also looked at were the reading and spelling of words with vowel digraphs.  Activities were also done to help develop skills in distinguishing between vowel digraphs.

We also gave the opportunity for learners to apply their knowledge to the reading of a text.  This month we also focussed on the development of comprehension skills.

Meet Ntombi:

Once a month, we like to feature one of our Literacy teachers and give you a greater insight as to who they are and what they do. This month, we interviewed Ntombi, a 22 year old with a passion for children. Currently studying education through UNISA, Ntombi works part time 4 days a week tutoring children in their understanding of the English language. Ntombi was encouraged to start teaching when she looked at the community around her and realised that every child deserves to be educated. She loves the experience that being a literacy teacher has given her and loves seeing children begin to grasp something new and finds it exciting to watch them progress over time. Ntombi is passionate about God and delights in getting to bring some of that joy and care to these children.

Read more from our April Newsletter here:

General Overview

Feeding Effect

Life Skills Effect

Babies Home Effect

ECD Effect

Literacy Effects – 11/13

Literacy Assessments:

One of the key components of our Literacy programme is our ongoing assessment of our each of or learners. From the results, we are able to review the programme, assess teaching techniques and consider any necessary changes moving forward. We believe it is vitally important to reflect on the results from our assessments which we carry out 3 times a year.

As we approach the end of the school year our literacy team have been busy carefully assessing each of our 950 learners across grades 1 to 3. From this process we have identified that spelling in English is an area of concern facing the foundation phase learners. The learners are struggling to hear vowel sounds, specifically finding it difficult to distinguish between vowel sounds ‘a’ and ‘e’. Our team are busy ‘tweaking’ the programme to address this need in 2014.

Amongst the positive results from the learner assessment we can see that the learners have an increased understanding of texts with an increased ability to read sentences and short stories. As you can see from the accompanying graphs, the Grade 2 learners have deepened their Knowledge of sounds as they progressed through each assessment period. (March, June, November). The pink group illustrates children who are performing above average, the blue group illustrates the children who are performing at an average level and the yellow group illustrates the learners who are struggling. From these assessments our literacy workers are able to identify which learners need 1-on-1 tutoring for further development. Our multi-purpose training huts provide a safe learning environment not only for our life skills learners, but also for literacy students who need special attention.

These assessments were carried out in early November, allowing our teams to meet with school management and discuss the results and ways forward. We received some positive feedback from grade 4 educators as they are finding it easier to complete their syllabus as a result of the Domino Foundation Literacy Programme. As a governmental requirement, foundation phase learning (pre-school & pre-primary school years) is taught in the learner’s respective mother tongue. When learners reach grade 4 however, educators are required to teach all syllabuses in 1st language English. In a community environment, where students do not receive effective ECD English training before grade 4, primary school teachers are needing to teach English, before teaching their own subject, resulting in an incomplete syllabus. Teachers reflected and compared situations before our literacy programme was implemented to now in 2013, having had their 1st set of pre-primary learners complete our programme. Our team was deeply encouraged and motivated to improve wherever possible.

Literacy Lessons:

After reviewing the results of the assessments, our literacy team continued their final 2 weeks of literacy lessons based on area of improvement. We focused on reinforcing the vowel sounds ‘a’ and ‘e’ and specifically applied these to the spelling of words. We also focused on distinguishing between the vowel sounds ‘I’, ‘o’, ‘e’ and ‘a’ when reading and spelling.

Read more of our November Domino Effects Newsletter here:
– Monthly General Overview
– Babies Effects
– Feeding Effects
– Life Skills Effects
– ECD Effects
– Literacy Effects