Description of project:
In partnership with the Department of Education, this project aims to capacitate teachers in teaching Natural Science while developing a teaching resource (and possibly a textbook as well) for grades 4 to 6. The project will be run this year with the subject advisors for Natural Science and through the National Environmental Education Project (NEEP). The resource will therefore be directly pinned into the National Curriculum Statement (NCS). S.E.E.D has also been approached by a publisher to develop a textbook from these resources.
The Shuttleworth Foundation?s involvement:
The Shuttleworth Foundation will fund the workshops, the facilitation of the workshops and the design and DTP (desk top publishing) of the material.
Aims and objectives:
The project aims to develop comprehensive materials to equip teachers in teaching Natural Science. The materials development process will give teachers a firm grip on the subject matter. 78 Western Cape teachers will be targeted through materials development workshops, which will be followed-up with a demonstration lesson and a follow-up workshop.
Timeline and deliverables:
The project is currently underway and they have begun phase 1 of the materials development workshops.
Current Status (November 2003):
The first phase of Grades 4 - 6 teachers workshops took place in May 2003. The workshops were a success with teachers verifying that they gained valuable hands-on knowledge on integrating Environmental Education into their Natural Science teaching. Activities that evolved during this phase of workshops produced the skeleton for future textbooks, more specially for four activities per topic per grade.The second phase of workshops are currently taking place and the Grade 3 text book is successfully underway.