Afghan primary school materials—description, orientation and use
Description
The basic competency materials for Afghan primary education were designed with support from UNICEF and Save the Children to address conditions found inside Afghanistan. These conditions include a variety of formal and non-formal schooling programs, remote schools, poorly qualified or barely-literate teachers, difficulty in collecting teachers for training, sporadic or non-existent supervision, and an exam system oriented to testing rote learning and not academic skills. In Afghanistan a critical issue was the difficulty of delivering schooling programs.
Afghan educators addressed these conditions by developing stand-alone textbooks that required few of the usual supports. Under the supervision of an international consultant, the educators created books with the following characteristics:
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Every lesson focused on a specific learning objective or competency from a comprehensive primary curriculum matrix
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Every lesson followed the same format with simple instructions for teachers
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Training required only a short orientation in the use of the lesson format
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Competency-based tests (not displayed her) that if successfully completed could lead to equivalency credit for class level and subject regardless of the schooling program.
Orientation (plan devised by Afghan developers of the materials)
Orientation in the use of the materials was designed to take only a half day if one teacher was involved, and somewhat longer if more teachers were trained at the same time. The instructor was asked to:
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Describe the program and show how all the parts were linked to one another from learning objectives to lesson steps to final testing. The teachers were told that as long as they followed the lesson steps most students would learn the skills and subsequently pass exams.
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Demonstrate the way a teacher would follow the steps in the lesson format.
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Have each trainee demonstrate a lesson to show understanding of the format.
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Summarize the information above at the end of the training
Use of the basic competency materials
There are two ways to use the materials, 1) as basic learning materials in the core subjects of math and language arts, or 2) as supplementary materials to reinforce and extend skills learned in the classroom.
The steps for using them as core instructional materials include the following (all steps are included in the lesson formats):
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Write the lesson topic/ learning objective on the blackboard
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Read the objective with the students and make sure they understand it
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Introduce the information about the objective/skill found in the “presentation box”, using locally available resources as needed to clarify
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Guide student practice of the skill using exercises in the “guided practice” section. Students do the exercises not the teacher (e.g. on the blackboard) but she makes sure they do them correctly before moving to the next step
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Students work the problems in the “application” section independently without the help of the teacher.
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The teacher checks their work or asks them to check one another’s work. They can also use the answer key to check their work.
Teachers are encouraged to group students in pairs or in small groups of varying ability and discuss how they came to the answers. The teacher begins the next day’s lesson by reviewing the previous lesson. Every few lessons she gives them a test to ensure they have learned the objectives.
Primary Education Support 