Help more South African children achieve in Maths

“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.”

Bill Gates

One of the key aspects of our work is the “warmware” or the support we provide to teachers & school management. Our personalised training pathway & ongoing support (mainly virtual during COVID) from our team aims to enable all role players to gain the maximum value from Maths Curriculum Online (MCO) in their classroom or school.

Here is what two teachers shared with the team last term…

“We’ve been using Green Shoots since Term 1 in 2021 and so far, the experience has been great! We enjoy the fact that we’re able to observe our learner progress at any time and get very accurate results and the other thing that we really appreciate is the fact that it correlates so smoothly with the curriculum. Thanks for the good work, keep it up and we appreciate you guys.”

“I check the progress of my learners – how many Brain Quests each learner has done already and the really enjoy there’s a great improvement with their Maths since our learners are struggling with number sense. Thank you so much. Let’s go forward; let’s do this! We’ll see the change. Thank you so much.”

Your donations are helping us to support teachers to ensure their learners can achieve in Maths!!

Thank you so much!!

Links:

• Green Shoots Twitter updates

It is now two weeks until the end of Term 1. Again it has been a term where schools & learners have had to negotiate the challenges of learning under pandemic restrictions. Learners have been at school all term, but often schools need to rotate learner attendance during a week. This has made our online Maths even more valuable as it can be accessed by learners via a cell phone with just an internet browser.

For the rest of this report we are handing over to three learners for their feedback...

Thanks to your continuing donations, we are able to increase the number of learners who can be supported through this Project!

Links:

• Green Shoots Twitter

Although 2020 was not a year we could have expected, it was a year of significant growth!

We were able to:

• provide our learners with weekly learning activities & goals during lockdown. These activities were both online and offline (for those who did not have tech/internet access). We used WhatsApp, FaceBook, calls and even the sharing of photos between parents/carers to reach as many learners as possible!
• expand the resources we share with parents/carers, this included our new Learner Profile dashboard. Parents/carers were better able to provide informed support to their learners during our lengthy lockdown 
• work with the education department to provide amended lesson guides/activities for the COVID adjusted curriculum and support teachers as schools reopened
• provide additional Mastering Maths activities so learners could evaluate and celebrate what they understood and teachers identify where learners still needed help

Thank you so much for your continuing donations, that have allowed us to expand and grow during this challenging year. Thanks to your help we are starting 2021 supporting more learners and schools! 

Links:

• Green Shoots Twitter

Learners have been returning to school in phases over the last month after the Lockdown school closures, with all grades now being back at school.

Huge congratulations to the schools we support, who have smoothly put in place many new protocols to keep all safe from infection. Learners have quickly adapted to these changes and are keen to carry on with their online Maths lessons, as you can see from the pictures. 

For the few learners who are unable to return to class, they are still able to continue learning Maths at home. They are still finding a way to carry on completing their Maths, many use cell phones to access the online activities, 

Throughout this time, we have been supporting learners, parents/guardians & teachers by sending out targeted, weekly online Maths activities by email, using our Facebook page, Whats App to schools & school groups - in fact by whatever means that we can to get the support out! Now the majority of learners are back to school, we are continuing to support teachers to use the online Maths activities so that each learner can catch up with their learning. 

Whether learners are back to school or at home - our goal is that ALL learners can keep learning and achieving in Maths!

Links:

• Green Shoots Twitter
• Green Shoots Facebook page

Schools in South Africa have been closed for 7 weeks as part of our national Covid-19 lockdown. However our Team, working from home, have never been busier!

We are been supporting learners to access the online Maths from home using whatever devices they can find - laptops, tablets and mostly cell phones! We have opened our online Maths for free registration by parents/guardians from home and to date over 440 new learners have been registered in lockdown. 

Each week we are posting online activities via social media and sharing via WhatsApp groups so we can reach as many families as possible. These weekly activities contain an "I can" statement and specific online Maths exercises to help learners practise and master their Maths (supported by parents/guardians) from home.

From our data, we are very encouraged in seeing the number of exercises being completed at home every day. We have also been delighted with the positive feedback from learners/parents/guardians and even pictures they've  sent to us during this time - learning under lockdown is happening!!

Thank you for your donations that are allowing us to continue to support learners and families. Every donation is making a difference during these very challenging times.

For ongoing updates about "Learning in Lockdown" please see our Twitter feed.

Links:

• Green Shoots Twitter