Help more South African children achieve in Maths

We are heading into the second half of the school year in South Africa and the three schools supported by the project, Help more South African learners achieve in Maths, are diligently completing their online maths exercises. Last week two Green Shoots team members visited one of the project schools, Zwelihle Primary. They offered additional support, observed and requested feedback from both teachers and learners on how Maths learning and teaching in the school is impacted.

We asked the grade 6 teacher at Zwelihle Primary how using the weekly online Maths exercises is helping her teach Maths.

“MCO helps me, because I first teach the learners, then when they go to Green Shoots everything that I taught them they will be able to do, then I will also see when the gaps are, they are now introduced to new concepts. When they go to the lab they understand the work better.” Grade 6  Teacher at Zwelihle Primary

We also asked some of the learners what they like about doing their Maths exercises online.

“When I finish my Brain Quest, I submit it then I see my marks and my total. Then I can go back to my Brain Quest so that I can do my corrections.” -  Grade 6 learner

“Green Shoots gives us knowledge about something we don’t know, it gives me knowledge to learn more about Mathematics” – Grade 5 learner

Thanks to your generous donations the learners in these three schools are loving their Maths lessons and teachers are more empowered to identify the “gaps” and offer the learners more targeted support.

We received some wonderful letters (see below) from the learners at one of the schools we are supporting through the project Help more South African children achieve in Maths. It is lovely to get feedback from the learners telling us how doing the weekly online maths exercises have really helped them with their Maths.

Thank you for your generous donations, they are really making a big impact in the lives of each of the learners supported by this project. Your donations are giving these children the chance to get access to a quality education that will help them achieve their dreams.

We are almost half way through the first term and the learners and teachers at Jamaica Way Primary, Mzamomhle Primary and Zwelihle Primary are hard at work doing their weekly online Maths lessons. A total of 1, 719 leaners and 38 teachers have been registered onto our online platform for 2019 and we will be supporting these schools in various ways to help them achieve in maths.

We are delighted to be able to report that Jamaica Way Primary and Mzamomhle Primary both achieved much improved Grade 6 Maths results in their 2018 external exams. Jamaica Way Primary improved by 17% and Mzamomhle Primary by 30%!! Zwelilhle Primary has also been getting on well and we are excited to see what the year will bring for the school and its learners. This would not have been possible without the dedication of the learners, teachers and school managements of these schools as well as your generous donations.

We love giving you feedback straight from the classroom. Here are some comments from the teachers explaining how the online maths lessons are helping their learners.

“One of the biggest benefits is that every child can participate in the maths lesson.” – Ms Jones, Grade 5 teacher at Mzamomhle Primary,

“It is amazing that teachers can have their results at the click of a button. Now we can work together to solve the problems that we find.” –Ms Williams, Grade 6 teacher at Jamaica Way Primary

Thanks to the donations we have received in 2018 we have decided to look at stretching the impact of the project by adding yet another school the project “Help more South African children achieve in maths.” But more on that later!

Thank you for your generous donations they are helping more and more children in South Africa achieve in Maths and reach their dreams.

In our previous report we handed it over to the learners to give us their feedback on what they like the most about online Maths. For this report we asked Ms Malako, a grade 6 teacher at Mzamomhle Primary to give us some feedback on how doing their Maths online and access to real-time feedback has helped her and her learners in the Maths classroom.

“I think it (Maths Curriculum Online) is a fantastic programme because it creates a safer learning environment for our learners and develops a sense of responsibility towards our learners in the sense that, it helps to develop good character traits. Learners show more interest when they work on computers even the ones whom we regard as “below average” and they think, grow and learn independently. Most of our learners has developed positive self-image because they can do calculations, set their own targets, operate on their own. Learners enjoy working on MCO.”

Ms Malako also gave feedback on how access to real-time feedback is helping her and her learners.

“Maths Curriculum Online is good for immediate feedback. It helps the teachers to identify and work on individual problems not generalising the problem. All in all, it is easy to track both the learners progress and teacher performance. It tells the teacher where he/she must put his focus on without being told by the Head of Department. Feedback inspire and encourages both learners and educators.”

Thank you for your donations, they are really helping support our teachers and helping our learners improve in Maths which inturn is setting them up for the bright futures they deserve.

For this report we thought we would hand over to the learners to give their feedback! Learners were asked "What about online Maths or Brain Quests do you like the most? "

Here are some of their answers below. Their answers have not been edited for spelling, content or punctuation, but are exactly as we received them.

“it helps me with math sums and gives me a better understanding of the work, i tell family about it and i enjoy it. thank you green shoots for making maths easy to understand and with you i will get a great mark in my green shoots assessment and class exams. i like it really much because maths was not my favouirite subject but now it is.”

“i like everything about this online Maths it makes everything easier to understand and you get to do it twice to improve your score, meaning you get a second chance in everything you do in this maths program it is awesome. i also like it because it gives corrections after checking your score so that next time we do it again or in the exam then we can get the answers correctly.”

“the thing I like about maths online is the hard work they make us do because it is pushing us to reach our limit and is helping us to do our best !!!!. some of us feel happy about ourself after doing our math because we can see that we improved a lot.SO THANK YOU ALOT MATH ONLINE FOR HELPING ME IMPROVE MY MATHS!!!!!!!!!!!”

“when i do the brain quest i try to get a high score and record it on my book so i can show my dad how i improve on maths. I am so proud of myself because i am doing much much great in maths and maths is now my second best but thanks to green shoots for my very big sucesses.”

 “it is fun but sometimes challenging amazing i always learn new things from you guys my maths marks are improving a lot since i started on green shoots thanks a lot”

 “i like maths because it helps me because when i grow up i could get a job have a house ,cars and money so i can buy things for my family and fix my granny house”

THANK YOU very much for your donations that makes each one of these "very big successes" possible.

Links:

• Green Shoots website