New roles out ahead of community learning

Children in Bubango village, Busia County, return home on a bike after shopping from a nearby centre on August 14. [Stafford Ondego, Standard]

When teachers across the country start implementing community-based learning on Tuesday next week, the government and parents will wait to see how they handle the 11.9 million learners who have been at home since mid-March.

The learners will be taught life skills among other aspects of where they are living to stay engaged.

According to the community-based learning (CBL) guidelines released by the Ministry of Education, teachers have been scheduled to spend six hours with the learners in a day.

They are supposed to put learners in groups comprising those in Grades One to Four, Standard Five to Eight, Forms One and Two and Forms Three and Four.

Tuition for primary schools is to focus on life skills and values, health and fitness, educational activities and environment and sanitation.

For secondary school students, learning activities will be based on citizenship, environment, creative arts, languages, games and fitness, life skills, home science, mathematics and financial literacy.

According to the guidelines, learners in Grade One to Standard Eight will, under life skills and values, learn about facts and impact of Covid-19. They will also learn poems, stories, songs, singing games, passages on self-awareness and self-esteem and discuss the importance of values.

Other activities under this thematic area include those on a variety of pertinent and contemporary issues such as Covid-19, HIV and Aids, integrity, gender awareness, roles, appropriate behaviour between boys and girls and drug and substance abuse discussion on alcohol, smoking and glue sniffing.

The secondary education guidelines targets teachers who facilitate learners in secondary schools. The learners are to be divided into two cohorts: Form 1 and 2 and Form 3 and 4.

The two cohorts will have the same thematic areas but different approaches for learning is expected. All the approaches are activity-based to ensure learners are engaged and enjoy the learning process.

In each activity, the teacher is expected to create an opportunity to address the core competencies such as communication and collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and imagination, citizenship, digital literacy, learning to learn and self-efficacy.

Values such as love, responsibility, respect, integrity, social justice, peace, unity and patriotism are expected to be mainstreamed in every lesson or activity. The activities identified should be based on the age of the learner, their context and learning outcomes expected.

According to the guidelines, the goal of citizenship as a thematic area is to nurture values and build competencies in learners to develop them to be good individuals and responsible citizens.

These thematic areas should also inspire learners to be citizens of good character so that everyone has the moral resolve to withstand an uncertain future and create a strong sense of responsibility to contribute to the success and the well-being of humanity.

Suggested activities under citizenship include civic dialogue on challenges in the community and suggest possible solutions. These can be environmental conservation to solve environmental degradation such as tree planting, collecting non-organic waste and burning them or turning them into something useful.

The guidelines say all activities should be non-contact, allow for social distancing, be interesting and engaging and comprise short interval lessons.