New Education Materials

This year we have a lot of new educational materials in the library. The children love them and show a lot of interest, which is what we want – more interest and engagement!

We were able to purchase wooden materials that provide a richer sensory experience and will last longer than the cardboard materials we’ve had to work with so far. We bought a can of spray varnish, and our new young assistant varnished the wood, to give it extra protection and a longer life. Hands on!

Geoboards

Something we were able to do for the first time is to purchase 30 identical sets of the same activity (geoboards), so that our librarian can take the box to the classroom and have all the students in the group work on them at the same time. As I have explained in previous reports, the teachers are not always accustomed to using teaching materials, which is sad. The geoboard is also something totally new for them and the kids! So, it is something that the students enjoy tremendously and that helps them to focus. The end result is that they learn and progress.

“They focus so much that you don’t hear a peep, they practically hold their breath when they are working on the geoboards! They are very effective.”

Our Librarian

Dionisia has used them also to motivate several students that are truly unmanageable. She tells them they can only have the geoboard if they pay attention to the flashcards and exercises, and it has helped!

DOMAN-FILADELFIA Program

This year we prepared and printed 800 beautiful big-size cards with words in red to help the children see them clearly and learn to read. (Up until now we had prepared and used handwritten cards.)

We also researched, prepared and printed several sets of illustrated bits of information about animals from the Colombian Caribbean coast: mammals, reptiles, birds and aquatic creatures.

The children love the big-size pictures. They motivate them to focus in class. Eber Davian, 2nd grader, was kind of distracted one day, but when Dionisia finished showing the Aquatic Creatures cards, he said, “Show them again, miss!” Of course she didn’t show them again right away, but he now was paying much more attention in the activity they did before the next showing of cards.

Our librarian works closely with 3 teachers in their classrooms; preschool, 1st, and 2nd grades.

Dionisia (preschool teacher) spends the most time with her students, almost every day. She shows them word cards, videos and sets of bits of intelligence. (This semester they learned to recognize and learned a few facts about farm animals, wild creatures in the region, modes of transportation and geometrical figures.) She also leads them in educational games and activities.

She has been able to strengthen their reading programs, and they all say they have seen good results. So much so that the new principal asked her if she can help reinforce the teaching of the 6th graders, who are very behind in every respect. The plan is for Dionisia to work personally with them and their teacher for a period of time every day using the flashcards and doing other cognitive exercises in the second semester that has just started. Exciting!

First grade teacher Jeniseri, who is new at the school, also wants to learn about the Doman-Filadelfia method and use it with her students, because she can see the good fruit in the students that received this kind of instruction the year before: they remember some of the words and concepts better than the others. She said she’d like to get training, so we registered her for a course. (We will report on that in the second semester.)

Her class is huge (38 students), and several of them are very disruptive. They even leave the classroom and then come back in, and they distract the other students. We are working to find a solution, together with the teacher and the principal.

“This library is the best place in the whole school. … And in all of Ararca!”

Security Guard and Parent