Last month saw the start of a Dinka literacy class for women from the church in my village, Parot. This is a pilot class; as we see how it goes, we will do some tweaking and hopefully expand to another church early next year, and more later in the year.
Fifteen women attend the class. It meets in the church four afternoons a week, from 3:00-5:00 p.m., and is taught by Peter Lual. Lual is a pastor-in-training and a teaching assistant at Cush Christian School (the primary school started last year in Parot by one of my teammates). Lual enjoys teaching the women and is impressed by how eager they are to learn.
Lual uses a primer and other materials that we obtained from the SIL International South Sudan branch. The materials use a number of different teaching strategies and methods, both "top-down" and "bottom-up." The top-down strategy is illustrated in the picture above: students learn to "read" a text by first listening as the teacher reads it while pointing to the words, then the teacher points and the students read it with him, and then individual students take turns reading it. They are basically memorizing the text, and their brain learns to associate the oral and the written words. In addition to reading stories from the primer, the class has been learning to read Bible verses and worship songs, which they really enjoy. They have learned what it's like to read a text fluently and that reading is meaningful and fun, and they can recognize many whole words.
The class takes a break mid-way through each lesson, but the women don't really take a break, they spend all the break time reviewing the stories they've been learning. It's encouraging to see how the stronger ones help the weaker, and how motivated they are to understand everything.
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