Tutoring | IkamvaYouth

IkamvaYouth Ivory Park Winter School Report

As is becoming a tradition at all IkamvaYouth branches around the country, the Ivory Park Winter School was once again a roaring success. Special thanks to African Bank for helping fund the winter school programme. Click on the image below to download the full report.

Makhaza Winter School

Learners are so excited about winter school. Please feel free to join this group on facebook: IkamvaYouth-makhaza winter school.

If you are interested in tutoring please contact me zukile@ikamvayouth.org

Exam Time

As Ikamvanites in grade 11 and grade 12 begin their mid-year exams, the “Each one Teaches one” campaign continues at the Makhaza branch today. Grade 11 learners (pictured below) are working together to improve their knowledge of life sciences as the exams rapidly approach.

Despite the fact that Friday is not one of our tutoring days, our grade 11s arrived in numbers to tutor themselves in the lab. We are expecting grade 12s to join them as their examinations commence as well. If you can come and help you more than welcome.

Big Up to them.

All the best Guys…

Preparing for Success

Tutoring
by Phillip Mcelu

This was the best holiday programme IkamvaYouth has ever had from how everything was organized to how the tutors managed their time. With the holiday programme we are able to perform the IkamvaYouth principles the learners ratio to tutors, because these kids in their schools the is one teacher with 40 to 50 learners in the class and due to that many learners get left behind; the thing that I found within many subject each chapter is a link to the next one therefore if they don’t get to understand the basics they are lost throughout the curriculum. We as the tutors of IkamvaYouth we try by all means to close that gap.

The first thing that we do is shrink the ratio into 5-6 learners per tutor. This allows the learner to be free to ask question to the tutors. In the holiday programme we had good number of tutors that were keen and hard working. What I found and works really well for IkamvaYouth tutors is that tutors get to tutor what they are knowledgeable in and that make it easier for a tutor to come up with better analogies and examples to explain complex problems.

During the holiday programme we were able to cover most of the subjects (Maths, Physical Science, Life Science, Geography, English, Accounting, Economics, business Studies and history) with grades 10 through 12; with grade 9, we came up with the idea to cover Maths, English, and Computer. We chose these subjects because they are the core foundation of the entire curriculum they do in school. English is the sole language that these learner get tested on, and we saw that most of the learners who do not understand their work is due to the fact they do not understand English entirely. Mathematics is one of the subjects that are compulsory for them to do until grade 12.

With the other grades (10 -12), we use the national curriculum from the South African Department of Education. We downloaded previous papers, worksheets, and exams for them to work through with the tutors. On the holiday programme, exceptional rooms were provided to tutors by TSiBA education who also allowed us to do some teaching on subjects where we saw the need (i.e. re-teaching a chapter that you see that the whole class does not understand).

Gearing up for World Cup Holiday programmes

This year, IkamvaYouth will be running FIVE holiday programmes from June 14 – 26th.

In the Western Cape:

For 120 learners from Nyanga at the University of the Western Cape

For 120 learners from Khayelitsha at TSiBA

For 50 learners from Masiphumelele at the Masi library

In Kwa-Zulu Natal:

For 120 learners from Cato Crest at the Durban University of Technology

In Gauteng:

For 80 learners from Ebony and Ivory Park at the Siyakhula Centre

Morning tutoring sessions will start at 9h00 and run until 17h00, with an hour lunch break in between sessions. There will also be two shorter tea breaks throughout the day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Learners will be organized in groups by their subject streams and grade. All our programs offered free of charge to learners in grades 9 through 12. We work with the same learners for two to four years to ensure that they get the grades and the support needed to access tertiary education.

To improve the educational outcomes, we ensure that learners work on school studies for a minimum of two hours (often four hours) daily on school materials, working through past papers, or having key concepts and processes re-explained to them by our volunteers. Most of the tutoring is conducted by ex-learners who have returned to IkamvaYouth as volunteers while they pursue their tertiary studies. Last year, science-stream learners were able to witness their science experiments at St. George Grammar School, while other learners went for excursions such as visiting the National Gallery and Two Oceans Aquarium a week after the holiday programme. Career Planet also brought an online Mobile Kiosk with twenty computers to TSiBA to help our learners with ways of accessing online careers.

Due the lab accessibility, learners gain valuable computer literacy skills. Computer literacy is a critical skill for entering tertiary studies, learnerships, or the job market as society has become technology oriented. Most of our learners have not had any formal computer literacy classes at their schools, so these lessons are the only opportunity the learners have in acquiring such skills. Learners are engaged in discussion covering a plethora of topics from peer-to-peer relationships to waste management, creating art journals to HIV/AIDS. These discussions provided lively debate, and not only taught learners how to voice their opinions but built their confidence in speaking English.

The Media, Image and Expression programme was formally initiated during this programme. Learners were taught basic recording and filming skills and briefed to interview each other about issues that are important to them. These interviews spanned a range of topics.

Learners were also taught basic digital photography skills and given digital cameras for 2-3 days. The photographs were of an amazing standard and have already been exhibited at the Nazeema Isaacs library when IkamvaYouth had its Talent Show. The photographs provided a valuable source of revenue to continue this project, as well as, fund learner registration and application fees for their tertiary studies.