Kids excel by making a game out of learning

22 January 2017 - 02:00 By TASCHICA PILLAY
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The Grade 1 classroom of St Christopher's Primary School in KwaDukuza looks and sounds like a games arcade as the pupils giggle when their electronic tablets emit a cacophony of musical pings.

It's a school where motivation is high and absenteeism is almost unheard of - and to which parents from surrounding areas want to send their children.

That's because, under the supervision of their teacher, the children are using smart devices to play games - literacy and numeracy games - thanks to an innovative, international programme driven by Tufts University in the US.

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The MRP Foundation, funded by the Mr Price Group, has partnered with the global literacy project Curious Learning to implement the programme in South Africa.

Curious Learning, based in the US, aims to bring literacy to 170 million of the one billion illiterate people globally and ultimately reduce global poverty by 12%.

Tablets and computers were introduced at St Christopher's, a semi-rural school on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast with 1,200 pupils, in 2014.

Since then pupils have shown academic excellence in numeracy, literacy and maths.

Grade 6 pupil Zama Mthembu said working on the maths programme on a tablet had helped her to improve her results in the subject.

"Last year I received two certificates for doing well in maths," she said proudly.

Her friend, Nelisiwa Dube, 12, who wants to become a doctor, said she gets excited about using the tablet. "My parents say I am clever."

Senior teacher Lorraine Kaunda said the school was initially sceptical about using technological devices to teach.

"The young children have curious minds and have been the driving force. Using the tablets and the different apps to assist in teaching in all grades has had a positive impact on them," she said.

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Creesen Naicker, the MRP Foundation's technical education project manager and a Washington Mandela Fellow, said the impact the programme was making was reflected in the pupils' results and assessments.

"Also, [in] seeing the way the child is flourishing and wanting to engage."

He said pupils from the school had gone on to fee-paying schools and been top of their class in maths, which was "unprecedented".

"They would not have performed as well if they had not been given the opportunity," said Naicker.

Stephanie Gottwald, co-founder and director of content for Curious Learning, said the St Christopher's pupils had achieved much improved results since the introduction of the technology.

All the content was aligned to the syllabus and apps allowed pupils to learn in Zulu, she said.

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