Economic and Management Sciences: General Education & Training (EMS GET) curriculum advisers and selected Intermediate Phase teachers spent the July holidays at Elsies River High School developing grade 4-6 work schedules.

The teachers in the Grade 4 team comprised Sharon Salie and Howard February, the Grade 5 teachers comprised Loelie Stone and Collen Julis and the Grade 6 teachers comprised Andrew Nortji and Enrique Pietersen. The district officials helping facilitate the process and/or acting as editors were: Yolisa Ngodi, James Davids, Seymor Bothman, Lorraine Hendricks, Audrey Jacobs and Melanie Lewis. Jerome Gordon co-ordinated the process.

Andrew Nortje Rosendal Primary School	Collen Julius Riebeeck West Primary	Enrique Pietersen Colridge Primary

What follow are snapshots of what happened.

Day #1

On Sunday the 27 July 2008 the team arrived from all corners of the province to start with the development of work schedules and teachers guides. Their brief: ‘Work Schedules that inform teachers what to teach” and “Teacher Guides that inform teachers how to teach”. Our first task was to develop an EMS phase plan (Learning Programme). Once the phase plan had been developed the teams were able to work in their respective grades developing the work schedule. With their focus on the LO’s and AS’s the team carefully plotted the year plan in quarters and weeks.

Howard February Vanguard Primary	James Davids North District Office	Loelie Stone Klein Karnmelkvlei Primer

 The Visitor

On Tuesday we had a visitor from the Northern Cape Province. Sharon Thynsma – Planner for EMS at the provincial office. Sharon joined our team and could share here expertise and learned from our process.

The Presentation

At the end of the week we presented our work schedules to the director for Curriculum GET: Genevieve Koopman. The following week was spent on incorporating the comments received from the editors and developing the teacher guides.

The final day (that’s what we all thaught)

On Friday the 11 July 2008 the first draft of the work schedules and teacher guides were completed, but we realize that we did not have enough time to ‘quality-assure’ the documents. We decided to come back the weekend of 25 July 2008 to do the final editing.

Lorraine Hendricks Overberg District Office	Seymour Bothman Cape Winelands District Office	Sharon Salie Vanguard Primary

 The final edit

At 08:00 on Saturday we resumed the process.  The following criteria were use to evaluate the schedules and teacher guides.

Work schedule:

• Has to be uncluttered
• Has to be clear to teachers WHAT to teach
• Has to give teachers a theme/context
• Has to indicate Learning Outcomes & Assessment Standards
• Has to indicate the specific week for every lesson
• Each new lesson to be indicated with a bullet
• Has to include references to the Teacher Guide

Teacher Guide:

• Has to provide methodology
• Has to show opportunity for integration (one or max 2)
• Has to provide ideas for informal assessment
• Has to give ideas for formal assessment: including tools on how to assess
• Has to indicate resources required
• Has to identify new vocabulary

At 12:00 on Sunday when the final whistle blew we had not managed to get to everything. Grades 4 & 6 were not on the level where we feel comfortable. It was therefore decided to give more time to the team to work on these documents before submitting for final evaluation.

Enquiries:

Jerome Gordon, Senior Curriculum Planner:  Economic and Management Sciences - jgordon@pgwc.gov.za 29 July 2008