School for Life Lesson Topic, Structure, Selection and Sequence

Two types of literacy lesson are presented in the CEP primers and emphasized in the Facilitators Manual: picture lessons and non-picture lessons. The manual then proceeds to show how each of these lessons are to be taught in a participatory manner.

In picture lessons, facilitators are given step-by-step instructions or suggestions on how to lead discussions on pictures in the primers that form the basis of the reading lesson of the day. This constitutes the first element of a three-stage process that proceeds from picture discussion, to reading instruction, to writing exercises.

At the first stage, facilitators are required to ask probing questions to elicit responses to the picture and relate it to the real life experiences of the learners. The facilitator then helps them to identify keyword(s) written under the picture. Each keyword is then to be broken down into its constituent syllables, which are subsequently used to form other relevant words. The vocabulary thus generated is finally used to form sentences.

The second stage of the lesson consists of the identification of new words formed in the previous stage, writing them on the board, using flash cards to pronounce them for pupils to listen to, and then helping learners to read the words after the facilitator. Facilitators also engage in model reading of short sentences and help the children to do the same. In the third stage, learners draw pictures related to the lesson, discuss them, and then rearrange jumbled words.

The approach to teaching reading again is detailed for the facilitator. The approach described here thus seems to lean towards a look and say approach to reading which is linked with the syllabic method. The combination of these methods engages learners in the reading instruction and given that the lesson is in local language it may be easier for learners to participate and so learn to read easier. While the formal school curriculum also attempts to encourage teachers to use look and say, the syllabus on its own does not give such detailed

112 instruction on how to go about the process with the assumption that teachers are already trained in the approach. The School for Life facilitator’s manual is clearly scripted on the step by step approach to unravelling the lesson.

Facilitating non-picture lessons involves revising previous lessons; helping children to identify new words and writing them on the board; and drilling individuals and groups on the pronunciation of new words. This process also includes model reading by the facilitator and identification of word function by learners.

The Facilitator’s Manual also makes a point of stressing key processes or activities that are essential to the delivery of a lesson. Attention is paid to questioning skills, the use of flash cards, alphabet charts, and syllabic drilling. Finally, step-by-step instructions are given on how all these activities are to be conducted in lesson delivery (See excerpt below and appendix 2 for teaching instructions).

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Box 5.1: Lesson 1 of School for Life Instructional Manual

Source: School for Life Facilitator’s Instructional Manual Lesson 1: Cow

Objectives: To make learners know how to care for cattle better and the need to boil milk before drinking

it.

Picture Discussion

Ask learners some questions about the picture, e.g. 1. What do you see in this picture?

2. What is the cow doing? 3. What is happening to the cow? 4. What does grass give the cow?

5. Name some of the things that cattle give us?

6. What do we do with some of the things that cattle give us? 7. Is it good to keep cattle in wet and dirty kraals?

8. What can we do to keep our cattle neat and healthy? 9. How should we treat milk before drinking it? 10. Why is it good to boil milk before drinking it?

11. Why is it good for Veterinary Officers to visit our kraals?

During the discussion remember to talk about the following: 1. Traditional and modern ways of rearing cattle. 2. How to treat sick and/or dead cattle.

3. The need for Veterinary Services

Keyword(s)

This is the word through which the class is going to learn the skills of reading and writing. It has something to do with what the lesson is about e.g. cow .

1. Write down the keyword. 2. Say it many times.

3. Let individual learners say it after you. 4. Let the class say it after you

5. Let the class know that what you are pointing at is the keyword. 6. Introduce them to the vowels and consonants of the keyword.

I. Let the learners know that the sounds that vibrate in the throat are called vowels i.e. i e â a ô o u The remaining sounds are called consonants e.g. n h å b

II. Break down the keyword into syllables. A syllable has a consonant and a vowel e.g /na/ as in Dagbani and Ngbanyato. It can also be a consonant, vowel and another consonant (paê/nam as in Dagbani). A syllable may also be a nasal consonant (n/m/å).

III. Ask the learners to tell the number of syllables that are found in the keyword (cow ) IV. Use the syllables to drill learners.

V. Ask learners to combine the consonants of the keyword with the vowels of their language to form meaningful words.

VI. Treat the syllable and the syllabic family through drill. VII. Let the 1earners learn to write syl1ables.

VIII. Meaningful words formation:

IX. Ask the learners to make meaningful words with the syllables.

X. Guide the learners to use the first syllable of the keyword to form or build more words. Write each meaningful word they make on the chalkboard.

114 As can be seen from Lesson 1 (see Box 1 above), the Facilitator’s Manual, which also serves as the lesson plan, is prescriptive in giving a step-by-step approach to the lesson. However, no timing is provided for the overall lesson or its parts; the facilitator is expected to use his or her own judgement and pace the lesson based on the learning speed of the children. The prescriptive nature of the plans makes it easy for the facilitators, who are usually senior or junior secondary school leavers with no professional teacher training, and for whom this may be their first taste of life as a teacher.

While the topic for Lesson 1 is ‘The cow’, it is anticipated that this session will cover all aspects of cattle rearing, which is a major source of income and wealth in the Northern Region of Ghana. Yet, again, no reason is given for starting the Complementary Education Programme cycle with a lesson on the cow; one can only speculate that perhaps it is because of the importance of cattle in the economic and social life of the people. It may also be as a result of what this study found that a lot of the boys are out of the formal school because they have to tend to cattle for their families. Thus cattle rearing become critical in the social, cultural, economic life of the children as well as well the community served by School for Life.

As the cattle rearing process is discussed, the exercise is also used as an opportunity to learn how to read using the syllabic approach. Thus, key words from the lesson are discussed and broken down into syllables, and new words formed. This is graduated into a writing lesson. Being the first lesson of the cycle and assuming that the children will not have had any previous writing experience, it would be interesting to see how a first composition session goes. However, the manual does not give any specific instructions on how the writing part of the lesson is envisioned.The pupils are simply expected to draw what they see, that is, a cow! Nevertheless, beginning the lesson with such a picture seems to be an effective way of getting the children to talk about something they are familiar with. A look at other lessons presents a similar trend with detailed scripted lesson plans that enjoin facilitators to engage children in learning to read and write. See box 2 below for a list of some topics and their objectives.

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Box 5.2: List of Literacy Primer Topics and Lesson Objectives

Source: School for Life facilitator’s Instructional Manual

In box 2 above, the list of lesson topics and their treatment in the manual to some extent confirms the findings of other studies of the Complementary Education Programme: the contents of each lesson include familiar topics such as livestock, hygiene, sanitation and local geography; textbooks are expected to be used to facilitate classroom activities that combine practice with theory; School for Life encourages pupils to reflect on lessons after school and draw on their home experiences in their studies; everyday objects such as seeds, pebbles, farming implements, and basket-making materials – which are familiar and easy to obtain – form teaching and learning aids; local or community practices such as stories, traditional games, plays and songs are used as instructional techniques in the classroom; and School for Life classes are action-oriented with learner participation, the major focus being pupils’ community experiences and knowledge base (Hartwell, 2008; Casely-Hayford and Ghartey, 2007; DeStefano et al., 2007).

The above conclusions were corroborated by the present study in discussions with Mr Abu, a lead person in the development of the Complementary Education Programme curriculum. He affirmed that the curriculum was developed to take account of the concerns, needs and interests of learners: “Children need to read about their own activities; farming, animal rearing domestic work and their environment and the topics should be of immediate use to the learners (13/05/2011). This is essential in ensuring that children are involved in the learning process. Effective teaching and learning is premised on the learning content fitting into the culture and reality of the learners (Pritchard, 2009; Alexander, 2000; Gadotti, 1994;

Lesson 2: Net

Objective for lesson 2: To enable learners to identify different uses of the fishing net and how to

take care of it.

Lesson 3: Eyes

Objective for lesson 3: Learners will be able to discuss how to take care of their eyes. Lesson 4: Trees

Objective for lesson 4: To enable learners to identify the uses of trees and the need to plant and

care for trees.

Lesson 5: Grandfather

116 Sutherland, 1992). Writing on Freire, Gadotti affirms that “one of first laws of learning is that of interest” (p 25). This could be interpreted as the learners being interested in the topic or liking it or having an interest or stake in the topic and process. Thus when the teaching and learning process is situated in the interest of the learners, there is the guarantee that they participate and learn effectively. School for Life thus seems to be following this theory and principle by identifying topics and content combined with a methodology that engages the interest of learners. This also crucial especially because the Complementary Education Programme learners are more or less voluntary learners with other socio economic priorities. However, in reviewing the lessons and their sequence, it is important to note that the order is both confusing and interesting at the same time. While the treatment of individual lessons is detailed, and can lead to fruitful discussion and the acquisition of new knowledge, there does not seem to be any logical thematic sequence. On the other hand, the sequence could be considered in purely functional terms and it might be argued that the developers of the curriculum have only identified those topics or functions that are relevant to the everyday lives of the children and put these together to make up the curriculum.

While all the topics – with the exception of HIV/AIDS – will be familiar to the children, and they should thus find it easy to participate in lesson discussions, one would expect a curriculum to have some logic to the arrangement of its topics. Such an approach, however, is to apply the lens of the formal school curriculum, which is intended to gradually take learners from easy to understand to more difficult topics, that is, a progression from the known to the unknown. In the case of the HIV (AIDS) topic, whilst they might not understand (indeed there may be a degree of taboo and/or denial of its true nature amongst the population in general) or be directly affected by it, they may be aware of it in some way and have observed its effects on loved ones. As with sex education in general, one would expect any education curriculum to treat the subject of HIV/AIDS in a way that is appropriate to the age of the learners.

In the case of the Complementary Education Programme, it is assumed that the known is the topic for discussion, for example, ‘the cow’ or ‘the farm’. Children are already familiar with these topics but they are only a means to an end, which is the ability to read and write in their local language. Mr Abu asserted that, “The curriculum was designed to teach reading, writing and numeracy; and in selecting the topics, the idea was to generate interest for

117 children to see the need for learning and use [this] as a basis for formal school entry.” (13/05/2011).

This is a critical observation as it seeks to place the Complementary Education Programme learning process in the social constructivist milieu, in that effective teaching and learning takes place when the interest of the child is utilized in that process. In social constructivist theory, the teacher must help the child reach his or her zone of proximal development, which is conceived as the meeting point between the experiences and interests of the pupil, and those of the teacher or the education process (Pound, 2008; Sefa Dei, 2004; Glassman, 2001; Davydov, 1995; Sutherland, 1992).

Thus, while relevant, the Complementary Education Programme topics in themselves are only the conduit through which pupils learn to read and write. Indeed, there is no mention of the formal school curriculum in the Facilitator’s Manual and their training course content does not mention the fact that the programme is merely a means to an end (School for Life, 2009).

In interview, Mr Abu indicated that, “In developing the curriculum materials, we looked at the language syllabus of the formal school and came to the realization that the contents were alien, and so they were not used.”(13/05/2011) This acknowledgement of non-linkage between School for Life materials and the formal school curriculum is a little surprising to say the least, given that the aim of the Complementary Education Programme is to help learners enter the formal school. However, Mr Abu contended that the most important thing was for pupils to learn to read, write and calculate; and the best way of achieving this was to use materials and topics that were of significance to the learners. Whilst the above argument may be true to some extent especially given the duration of the Complementary Education Programme cycle, it is also important for pupils to be always conversant with not only what they are studying at a given time but also how the studies link up with other subjects in their future studies (Shulman, 2004).

It is also important to mention that Complementary Education Programme lessons are not arranged in any particular logical or incremental order. This is a problem because learning theory tells us that we learn by acquiring new information incrementally, based on what we know. Outside school, children gain knowledge in a range of environments. In the formal school, learning is typically organized according to subject areas — Science, Mathematics, Language, and so forth. What children learn in Maths today should follow on from what they

118 learned yesterday so that they build up an understanding through the academic year (Pritchard, 2009; Shulman, 2004; Bigge and Shermis, 2004). In School for Life, pupils learn life skills and literacy; in both areas, their knowledge and abilities should build incrementally. It would therefore make sense to cluster the units into related topics, such as family, food (farming, fishing, herding, hunting), animals (domestic, wild), health (doctors and nurses, traditional healing, HIV, drugs), and community (chiefs, celebrations, religions, the role of women).

A related point is the lack of coherence across parts of a lesson: there is little connection between picture discussion and reading. What follows discussion is attention to keywords rather than reading of the passage. Reading and understanding the key words in advance, may however, support the longer reading of the passage with the unfamiliar words already decoded. Thus, again, knowledge and skills are not being built sequentially. If the aim of education is to provide an opportunity for the acquisition of new knowledge, one wonders whether the Complementary Education Programme is not defective in teaching reading and writing only through existing knowledge. One also questions whether the acquisition of reading and writing via the Complementary Education Programme will enable pupils to read other materials for new knowledge. Again, given the duration of the cycle, it might well be argued that the most judicious, purposeful and effective use of the time is to ensure that children learn to read and write independently.

Nevertheless, given that Complementary Education Programme topic materials may already be known to the children, the learning would seem to come in the acquisition of literacy skills. The introduction to the manual states that the contents of lessons are provided in the primers. There is an expectation that facilitators will teach from their own experience. In some of the lessons, there are instructions to emphasize certain kinds of information. While some of this is contained in the primers, there is an assumption that both learners and facilitator are familiar with all the necessary information. There is also the assumption that pupils are supposed to learn new knowledge from trips such as that to a cattle kraal. If there is no source of new knowledge other than what is presented in the primers, a good deal of responsibility lies with the facilitator. However, Mr Abu claimed that:

The CEP class is a learning community and the topics were selected to help the facilitator and learners think, form and share ideas. Facilitators are encouraged to consult local management committees and other community leaders to serve as resource persons for the classes where necessary. (13/05/2011)

119 The conclusion that can be drawn in all this is that the lesson content and acquisition of knowledge is intended to derive from a combination of information provided in the written materials, the facilitator's knowledge, and experiences gained through field trips, elements that interact together and complement each other. This process engenders critical teaching