Skills Builder

This content was written by

D.E.B Kailutha Primary

Context

D.E.B Kailutha Primary school is a public mixed day school located in Meru County, Kenya. We teach learners aged 4 to 16 years old. We have already started teaching core competences in our curriculum, including collaboration, communication and creativity in listening, speaking and problem solving. Students are showing these skills in their day to day lives.

Overall impact

There has been positive improvement in performance from the students in their skills, which has in turn boosted their other learning areas - giving learners wide scope of their abilities. Learners were engaged through the programme by teachers and other school stakeholders by explaining to them what was required for them to attain the different essential skills from Skills Builder. Learners were motivated to use the skills learnt where teachers and pupils councils came up with specific days for Speaking in English,debates at class levels and later Houses levels as school culture. The programme lets us support learners to engage with real-life challenges, including class elections and campaigning. Learners were encouraged to choose their leaders - where they were also given time to do actual campaigns and later secret ballot vote casting. During these exercises among others teachers would be keen monitoring how learners applied and developed their Listening, Speaking, Problem Solving, Creativity, Teamwork, and Leadership.

Keep it simple

We ran training with teachers delivering the competences curriculum, introducing them to the Universal Framework and essential skills. From this, teachers were able to give short and precise explanations to learners about the skills and demonstrate where they need to be. Focusing on skills became a part of the school routine and culture and this was supported by the school administration, as they allocated it time in the school programme of activities. Teachers now regularly have weekly follow-ups including monitoring through assessments and positive reinforcement. Teachers also monitor their use of verbal praise to reward students for application of the skills.

Start early, keep going

Learners across the school, aged 4 years to 16 years old, took part in the programme. Learners were grouped mostly in order of their levels according to the step from the Universal Framework and sometimes in ages depending on activities involved. This helped us to differentiate tasks and make sure they were appropriate. However, mixed ability grouping was highly encouraged to enhance peer learning among others.

Measure it

To measure, teachers regularly observed students using skills during indoor and outdoor activities. Also during sessions, oral questions were asked by teachers to check understanding, as well using written essays and debates to check development. Using the framework supported the planning and teaching of skills and by preparing teaching documents provided by school administration alongside our professional documents we were able to merge Skills Builders teaching into our lesson activities.

Focus tightly

Teachers outlined activities in their timetables to facilitate active group work and application of skills. Each subject area highlights how skills will be applied and taught in that session. Teachers have been instilling these skills according to different levels and steps of their students during lessons. Assessment has supported this by enabling teachers to identify gaps and provide support to learners who need simpler tasks. We further differentiate skills teaching for different students, by reviewing our assessments and regrouping learners into mixed ability groups.

Keep practising

We reinforce learning for students by having merged these skills in our normal, routine school activities and giving learners follow up activities. We enforce the skills through other areas of curriculum by integrating and monitoring the skills in any activity during the lessons.

Bring it to life

We link these skills to the wider school and community. By incorporating teaching with how the learners can apply the skills learnt in their day to day activities and even after school (for example, when learners are involved in choosing their school council). We saw a lot of creativity in the way the students collaborated in making posters and other campaign materials during their manifesto and election run, also speaking with others and listening to others.

What's next

As a school we believe in learning to learn or unlearn. We are confident enough as staff as we seek to instill these skills in our learners. We want to produce an all round citizen who can add a positive input globally. Moving forward, we want to focus on incorporating the skills to be part and parcel of the wider school community, not only limited to learners and teachers but also to our community. We look forward to the Skills Builder Global Accelerator+.

Kenya