Tutor For the Future

Sometimes a great thing happens, and you aren't even expecting it. About a month ago, the school that I work in got chosen to be the test pilot for a new program called Tutor For the Future. This program donates a handful of tablets, and a program to help teach rural students technology as well as get them up to pace with the maths curriculum. Many of the students in my school are far behind in their maths knowledge, and struggle to do simple adding and subtracting. The program helps teach the basics as well as try to get the students where they need to be so that they won't fall behind other schools.

This program was designed for grade 6 and grade 7 learners. Each class is broken into two groups and are taught on two different days. For example my first grade 7 class (also known as “The Star Guys”) is taught after school on Tuesdays, whereas my second group of grade 7 (also known as “The Super Heroes”) is taught after school on Thursdays.

The first 20 minutes of class is devoted to a maths program where the students learn their multiplication tables. The next 20 minutes of class is a small quiz that asks of level maths questions. For example:

Jane has R40,00. She buys three ice creams at R12,50 each.

How much money does she have left?

Then after they've completed the quiz, they watch a short movie on the tablet that shows the student how to find the correct answer. Each student corrects their answers appropriately. 

The last twenty minutes is to watch another video that goes with the lesson they are learning that week in school. So if they are learning about perimeters, they watch a video about perimeters, or if they are learning ratios, they watch a video about ratios. 

When class is finished the students receive food, and we call it a day. The program started about a month ago, and already I can see that students are able to navigate a tablet, and their multiplication tables are getting much better.