.png)
Building the capacity of local publishers/writers on developing Supplementary Reading Materials (SRMs) aligned to the New Mother Tongue Curricula (for grade 1-8)
No. CON/0006/2015
Background: Save the Children (SC) is the world’s leading independent non-profit making organization working in diversified areas to improve lives of children. One of the many recent undertakings of the Save the Children in Ethiopia is implementing the USAID Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Community Outreach /READ-CO Project /aiming to improve the reading and writing skills of children through reviewing existing as well as developing new and availing supplementary reading materials so as to create opportunities of children to practice reading and writing skills at school, home and community levels.
The READ-CO is a USAID funded four-year/2015-2018/ project to improve the reading skills of children in seven languages- Amharic, Tigrigna, Afaan Oromo, Wolayttatto, Sidaamu Afuu, Hadiyyissa and Af-Somali. In order to effectively realize the project’s objective, Save the Children works closely with the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Regional State Education Bureaus (RSEBs-Amhara, Oromia, Tigray, SNNPR and Somali)and READ-CO’s project’s implementing partners TDA, ADA, OWDA and ANFEAE to ensure the following three Intermediate Results obtained; IR 1: Access to supplementary reading materials in vernacular languages increased, IR 2: Opportunities for children to practice reading and writing created and IR 3: School community engagement to support learning in reading strengthened. READ-CO will implement the project using the following three-part strategies:
Support the development of SRMs aligned to the newly developed curriculum for the 7 MT languages and MoE’s national guideline for selection/development of SRMs and adapted to their regional /local contexts; Support development of school, community and home-based activities to provide opportunities for students to practice the skills of reading and writing; andPromote parental and community engagement in support of students learning how to read and write, including raising awareness about the importance of reading.
The strategies are designed to help increase access to quality, curriculum-aligned and culturally-appropriate supplementary reading materials while increasing the number and quality of opportunities that primary-school children at all grade levels need in order to develop the skills of reading and writing. To this end, local writers and publishers will have an opportunity to build their capacity to produce mother tongue curriculum aligned SRMs for school children. The major focus of the capacity building workshop is to assist local publishers/writers illustrators, designers etc. to develop SRMs for primary school children in 7 mother tongue languages for grades 1-8. These materials will be developed in alignment with the mother tongue curriculum for the 7 languages and help school children develop the five core language skills: namely, phonemic awareness, grapho-phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. As a result of this workshop local publishers/writers will be able to produce need based quality supplementary reading materials for the market in the coming years after the project is phased-out.
Specific Objectives
At the end of the workshop, participants will:
be acquainted with the new mother tongue curriculum in the 7 mother tongue languages with particular focus on scope and sequences and essentials of the new curriculum in developing the SRMs as part of the training exercise;
be able to build their capacities and skills on evaluating and developing standard of SRMs (through the introduction of the MOE’s draft SRMs guideline.); acquire skills and techniques which will enable them to develop, adapt and review SRMs for grades 1-4 in 7 vernacular languages (Amharic, Affan-Oromo, Af-Somali, Tigrigna, Sidamu Afuu, Wolayttatto and Hadiyysa;be able to follow and understand the scope and sequence documents, including the specific languages curricular materials (minimum learning competencies, flow chart, student textbook, teachers’ guides) and use them in developing grade-level supplementary reading materials;develop supplementary reading materials in 7 mother tongue languages aligned with the new curriculum for Grades 1&2, including decodable texts and leveled readers; andidentify the learning support needs of Ethiopia’s primary school children to further guide the development, review and adoption of priority SRMs.
Approaches and Processes for the capacity building workshop:
READ CO SC will work throughout the project to build the capacity of local language content creators and publishers to develop high quality children’s literature that is aligned with the new mother tongue curriculum.
As part of the READ-CO project’s capacity building plan, first the selected publishers/writers will get hands-on training on how to develop SRMs aligned to the Mother tongue languages and develop new SRMs on given titles for grades 1&2. The publishers/writers will also get orientation on the new mother tongue curriculum’s scope and sequence and MoE’s SRMs guideline in order to develop quality SRMs with the required titles. In addition, they will be given a brief orientation on how to consider gender and disability inclusion in the development of materials to ensure the materials are free from gender and disability bias and promote equal representation. To ensure the publishers/writers understand and meet the expectations, they will be required to develop some sample SRMs during the training. Following the training, the publishers/writers will develop SRMs with the required titles for each grade and language level based on the agreed up on scope of work and timeline.
The newly developed SRMs for the grade levels (1&2) will be internally reviewed with standard checklists by the READ CO project team and will then be submitted to the MoE first for a review before being submitted to RSEBs/ZEDs for approval and printing and distribution to schools. The publishers/writers will be responsible to incorporate comments and feedbacks provided by SCI/MoE/RSEBs/ZEDs on the SRMs they developed in timely fashion. The final revised SRMs will be checked by MoE and RSEBs/ZEDs to ensure comments are incorporated. The publishers/writers will submit grade 1&2 Camera Ready SRMs to READ-CO/SC in soft and hard copies for the language/s and grade/s level they agreed to develop. SC/READ-CO will check the materials and officially communicate in writing with publishers/writers for their acceptance. SC/READ-CO in turn will submit the documents to MoE and USAID as part of project deliverables. Payments will be effected whenever the development materials are accepted by MoE and RSEBs/ZEDs.
Supplementary Reading Materials required
Development of SRMs: The supplementary reading materials will be prepared in alignment with the new mother tongue curriculum developed for the 7 MT languages (for Grades 1-2) with the required number of titles and pages for each grade level/for details specification of SRMs, please see the attached MoE’s Guideline for your reference/. In addition, the following details shall also be taken in to account during the development of SRMs:
a. Culture and religion;
b. Gender and disability;
c. Language specific considerations
The local consultant is expected to have a PhD or Masters Degree in linguistics, mother tongue, reading/early grade reading/language/ or curriculum and instruction and possess extensive experience in:
supplementary reading materials development (i.e. “decodable” and other grade-level texts, Read aloud for grades 1and 2); providing training on development of mother tongue materials (textbooks, supplementary reading materials etc.) development , implementation and evaluation;supporting children who have reading difficulties (hands on techniques for children with reading difficulties);involving parents and the community in enhancing their children’s reading skills and interest;translation and developing and adaptation of mother tongue curriculum;providing training on materials development and evaluation;working with multinational groups on language materials development, implementation and evaluation;participatory techniques to engage participants to produce materials at workshop;mother tongue reading materials evaluation; andpreparing brief notes to distribute to participants(in soft or hard copies for participants for further use)
The detailed Terms of Reference (TOR) for the consultancy work can be found from Reception at Save the Children Ethiopia Country Office in Addis Ababa, situated around Bisrate Gabriel Church Dire Complex Building. From the TOR; applicants can get full information on what to incorporate in the proposal.
Interested applicants should submit two separate sealed documents in which one document should include the technical proposal including curriculum vitae of the proposed professional(s) with supporting document that shows previous work experience. The second document should include professional fee on the bases of daily rates, VAT and per diem costs, as well as transport costs separately for the stated work along with copy of renewed Consultancy License to Save the Children Ethiopia Country Office in Addis Ababa, situated around Bisrate Gabriel Church, Dire Complex Building, before Monday July 27, 2015, at 4:30 P.M in person.
Only proposals from individuals will be accepted. Proposal from firms will not be accepted.
“Save the Children aims to be a child safe organization”.
No comments:
Post a Comment