“Home learning can be a time for children to share their learning with family members, follow their own interests, work at their own pace and consolidate activities and learning from school”
The global pandemic caused by the coronavirus has had a significant impact on children’s education over the last 6 months. Since mid-July, schools have been closed in about 160 countries affecting more than 1 billion students (New Scientist). In Myanmar, the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 were announced on the 23rd of March 2020. During the week prior to the announcement, the Ministry of Education began to call for the closing of all schools and trainings as a precautionary measure. The opening of schools for the new academic year has been delayed and there is continued uncertainty as to whether schools will be able to remain open for the remainder of the academic year, due to the unpredictable nature of the coronavirus.
The support of children’s learning at home has always been an important part of children’s education but never more so than in these uncertain times. Home learning can be a time for children to share their learning with family members, follow their own interests, work at their own pace and consolidate activities and learning from school. Learning at home can help to develop a range of positive attributes within children, such as self-esteem, confidence and resilience.
Bearing in mind the challenges with printing, distribution, and online distance learning, MEC has created some examples of resources to support primary-aged children attending non-government schools within Myanmar. The resources are intended to guide teachers towards possible activities to use for home learning if children are not able to attend school. They are all designed to be low resource in terms of what is needed for delivery, as well as what is needed for the completion of tasks. They could be scaled up with very limited printing, or a photograph could be taken of the tasks and sent to parents and caregivers to access on mobile phones, if this is possible.
If radio is also a potential means of communication, recordings could be made of the activities and broadcast in this way. This could prove advantageous to parents and children that can access spoken instructions more readily than those that are written. Short recorded instructions of the activities could also be disseminated through mobile phone groups to both parents and children.
Please have a look at the Home Learning Resources by Myanmar Education Consortium in below.
myanmareducationconsortium.org 