Writing and Delivering Training about the updated Malawian ECD Curriculum

Monday was a fairly uneventful day. I continued my struggle to understand and explain the structure of the new (2017) Malawian ECD Curriculum but fortunately the penny dropped and I was able to see how it all fits together and which would be the right markers to anchor our system for recording children’s progress to. It is my opinion that the Early Learning Development Standards and the Indicators of development at different ages with respect to each ELDS are the way to go. I put together a,rather uninteresting, presentation to explain how the curriculum is constructed, how it relates to the previous version to which the CC is still working, and to define all the different parts of the curriculum. There are 6 Domains of learning. Domains are subdivided into Sub-domains and then Aspects. Each Aspect has from 1-3 ELDSs associated with it and each age group, Under 2s, 3-4s and 5 year-olds, has a number of Indicators which tell Care Givers how the children are progressing. In addition to this there are 7 Themes which run through the whole curriculum, and 8 Objectives of the curriculum which are the same as the `Themes with the addition of Physical Development, which is also a Domain! There are also Aims of the curriculum. Now do you see why I have been confused and almost literally tearing my hair out! All I have to do now is invent some more indicators to ensure that we maintain the enrichment to the Malawian Curriculum that I introduced 12 years ago and the job will be done! That will keep me busy once I get home on 3 August! If we are to introduce the new record system in September; it makes sense to change at the beginning of the academic year, I will have to get a wriggle on! As I was making a PowerPoint presentation out of all this I realised that we I would have to liven up the training somehow to prevent everyone from falling asleep, so I introduced six games, one for each Domain. On Wednesday I delivered the training to the usual two groups of students and having played each game I invited the participants to tell me what the children would be learning as they played each game. We played ‘ In God’s beautiful world you can find….’ after the manner of ‘My Aunt went to Paris and she bought….’ for the Moral and Spiritual domain; Pass the Face’ for Social and Emotional; ‘Ladders’ for Cognition and General Knowledge; ‘Robots’ for Approaches to Learning; ‘Chinese Whispers’ for Language and Communication and ‘Little finger to eyelash’ for Physical Development. In my experience the average Malawian is much more willing to play games than the average Brit and much more uninhibited; this leads to much laughter and enjoyment and we all learn better if we are happy and entertained. I also offered lollipops in the middle of the confusing and potentially boring bits. There is nothing like a bit of sugar for keeping one awake and aiding concentration!!! The observant amongst you will have noticed that I have missed out Tuesday! That is because Monday and Wednesday were related to each other, as are Tuesday and Thursday, so you will have to wait for the next entry to learn about Tuesday.