By Nikki Matthews | Chief Operating Officer
The Atlas Digibus launched on the 25 January at Thembani Primary School.It was met with overwhelming excitement and the term started really well with 4 of the five schools receiving laptop training and baseline assessments as planned.Schools were not completely ready to proceed in January as they were still working on their admissions process and schedules.VUSA accommodated this by working around their timetables which meant the bus often visited more than one school in a day to ensure that all children received a lesson each week.Mokone Primary School joined the programme in Week 3.
In week 2 schools abolished rotational learning and the timetable was again adapted to meet the needs of each school.
In mid-March we experienced some electrical and mechanical issues with the bus. The bus was sent to Scania and all faulty items were repaired. This took some time as many parts had to be imported.
Despite this, the programmes resumed at the schools and each topic was gamified in order to maintain the standard of the lesson the children would have received on the bus on laptops whilst continuing to give the children the individual attention they required.
The teachers identified topics that the children required the most support in and lessons were focused around these themes.
The Maths lessons covered;
The English lessons covered:
Some of the children have poor fine motor skills. It makes it difficult for them to complete simple tasks on the laptops. As a result, each lesson begins with fine motor exercises to help the children improve their dexterity.
Later in the term time pressures and competitive elements were added to the games to to prepare learners for assessments.
The project currently supports 804 children and 10 teachers. The next programme will be a coding programme which will support participatns aged 8-18.
Thank you for your support of this project. Whilst there have been some initial teething problems the success of this programme over the first couple of months leaves us confident that the Atlas Digibus bus will provide immense support to children and youth in Langa.
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