Dr Lydia Abel, Director of ORT-Tech was invited to attend the World ORT conference in London on ICT in Education.
 |
| Grade R learners who have benefitted from the ORT Grade R teacher training programme. |
“It was such an eyeopener to see just how ICT [Information and Communications Technology] can be used and the effects of properly trained teachers in fantastically well-equipped classrooms!” said Lydia about the conference.
This only serves to throw into relief the situation for the majority of schools in South Africa. One is forced to ask the question: Without a solid foundation, how can learners succeed?
As written in African Education Week in January: “We need to examine why our learners are struggling to achieve the results necessary to catapult them into higher education. The first five years at school are a ‘make or break’ watershed in a learner’s development and there has been an under-emphasis on education in basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic.”
ORT-Tech believes that children’s natural curiosity and creativity are critical qualities to envisioning possibilities and solutions. By encouraging children to develop these qualities in an activity, they learn a positive perception of science and technology.
For disadvantaged children, this provides a window into a world they might never otherwise access and gives them the opportunity to acquire necessary cognitive and comprehension skills.
Grade R practitioners or teachers are themselves in need of this vital insight and support to enable them to do this essential job. ORT-Tech has trained more than 300 teachers in disadvantaged schools over the last 3 years. Feedback indicates that the ORT-Tech Grade R course in Science and Technology impacted positively on teachers’ subject knowledge and classroom practice.
The courses were commended for making complex topics more understandable and thus more easily taught. Lessons became more focused as learners were seen to be able to engage with scientific and concepts through fun activities, and learner behaviour changed for the better.
We are very proud that from our 2011 cohort, Dawn Cozette from Sentinel Primary in Hout Bay, was given the National Grade R Teacher of the Year Award; and two teachers from Heideveld Primary (Dale Wyngaard and Lynette Davids) won the Provincial Teacher’s Award for Grade R. Dawn Cozette and Anthea Elliott now run a programme called Home School Partnership, sponsored by Word Works and featured on eTV.
