Perivoli Schools Trust

Modules

Our Trainers deliver the 16 Modules over a two year period to Groups of up to 25 nursery school teachers at a time. The sessions are held every four to eight weeks usually in community halls. In between Module sessions the Trainers run support groups and undertake class visits.

The Modules are designed to last 90 minutes and be interactive and good fun. They explain how play activities enhance a child’s development – and how to make educational aids and toys from locally-available waste materials.

The first eight Modules show teachers how to structure their week, organise their classrooms and how to make play the centre of everything they do. The goal is to help children to develop social skills, audio and visual perception, fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, language and simple arithmetic.

The second set of eight Modules reinforce these key teaching messages but also address the importance of activity centres, personal hygiene, nature, safety and wellness, gender and inclusion and preparation for school.

Modules 1 to 8

The first eight Modules focus on helping the teachers organise and stimulate the children in their classrooms.

Introduction and making books

Making books from shop posters to start a reading corner.
Planning - classroom and curriculum

Programme planning and developing a visual timetable.
Communication and working with parents

Communication with children and parents and introducing the parent workshops.
Language and communication

Developing language and communication through play activities.
Perceptual skills - auditory

Developing auditory perception and auditory memory.
Perceptual skills - visual

Developing visual perception and visual memory.
Body image, space and movement

Parts of the body, gross and fine motor skill development and movement activities.
Inclusion and classroom management

Being an inclusive nursery school and classroom management including behaviour management.

Modules 9 to 16

The second eight Modules reinforce key messages in particular the importance of the activity centres, advice on age appropriate learning, hygiene, and environmental education.

Our latest Modules are aimed at the Teacher Development – looking at Safety and Wellness and Gender and Inclusion issues.

In addition we have two Modules that are addressing the needs of the older children in nursery schools who proceed directly to formal schooling.

Activity areas in the classroom

Further development of activity learning areas.
Developmentally appropriate learning

Matching the activities and learning opportunities to the age and development of each child.
Hygiene

Developing hygienic hand washing techniques and the use of a “tippy tappy” system where appropriate.
Environmental education

Helping children to develop an understanding and love of the environment, through stories and practical activities.
Safety and Wellness

Keeping staff and children safe. Ideas surrounding nurturing and teaching children to know their rights, be heard, and stay safe.
Gender and Inclusion

To help children understand their bodies and the rights that they have over them. To become a safe space for children to share vulnerable information.
Preparation for School 1

To develop more complex activities for the older children who will go to Pre-Primary, or even straight into Grade 1, through fostering a love of play, exploration and learning and by developing essential physical, social and cognitive skills through imaginative play and activities.
Preparation for School 2

To develop thinking skills. To provide activities and tools for the teacher to use to monitor Children's progress towards essential skills.

Maintenance Programme – Super Sema

We encourage teachers upon graduation to stay with the programme by joining a Maintenance Group which will be run usually by a Regional Coordinator. It will entail a Support Group each term to provide a catch-up reminder of the key messages of the programme and answer any on-going queries.

Videos of the Super Sema character will be shown on the Trainers tablets and discussed so that teachers will be able to develop story telling opportunities in their class rooms. The Regional Coordinator will then visit each Teacher in her/his Maintenance Group once per term and show the Super Sema YouTube videos to the children in small groups using their tablet computers.

We like to use Super Sema because the stories are about a twelve year old girl from an Africa country who uses technology to tackle the challenges of life. So Super Sema reinforces some of our core messages, particularly about girl empowerment, the meaning of aspiration but also of kindness.
super sema youtube - Bing video

The creators of the Super Sema character are a Kenyan based business called Kukua https://kukua.me/ which happens to have Perivoli Innovation Perivoli Innovations as a shareholder. Kukua have kindly provided poster templates of Super Sema images which we have printed up for the class rooms of the teachers that our Trainers visit under the Maintenance programme.

Videos

We ask our Trainers to make short videos of the activities that our teachers make out of waste materials. These are posted on the Perivoli Schools YouTube channel. This is a way of sharing ideas and stimulating creativity.

Facebook

We have a Perivoli Schools Facebook page in each of the countries where we operate. It’s the Country Director’s job to curate these.

We encourage the use of various WhatsApp Groups including ones:
○ for a Trainer to communicate with the Teachers in her/his Group;
○ for a Regional Coordinator to communicate with her/his team of Trainers;
○ for a Senior Regional Coordinator to communicate with each of the Regional Coordinators and Trainers under her/his charge; and
○ for the Joint CEOs to communicate with the Super Regional Coordinators.
We also have a WhatsApp Group for all Perivoli Trainers across all countries to provide a platform to share ideas and experiences and to help foster a sense of Perivoli community. It seems to be used a great deal.