January 2023 - Tumaini Students Develop Skills Through Project Based Learning
TEC introduced project-based learning courses into Tumaini Senior’s curriculum to supplement the exam-heavy national curriculum. This has been a rewarding endeavor for students as they feel a stronger sense of autonomy over their learning and are able to explore topics of interest, engage in community service, and, most importantly, have fun! At the end of their course, the students share their work at a school and community-wide presentation. Three students shared a bit about their course and their feelings on the presentation.
Godliving, Form 4 - Journalism
“PBL is special because we have the chance to actually do stuff ourselves; not just watch our teacher. We are free to investigate and design our own projects. For our Journalism class, we all thought that previous groups had been writing about other stuff and that it wasn’t very useful. PBL also teaches us skills of investigation. Skills most people don’t have. We want our school to be known to future generations, so they can learn our school history. Our focus was on the school legacy. I chose to write about the school library because I spend most of my time reading books. I felt fear presenting in front of people. However, I wanted our class to do the best, so I overcame the fear for my class. The presentation teaches us confidence, so now I am capable of public speaking.”
Augustino, Form 4 - Service Learning
“I enjoy PBL classes because it helps us solve community and school problems. The course I participated in was Service Learning. For us to start the project, we asked students and teachers which problems they are facing. Teachers spent a lot of time taking attendance and we were losing valuable lesson time. We chose this issue to solve as it suited the time limits we had and involved everyone. First, we wanted students to take attendance using fingerprints, but limited time was the challenge with that. We then decided to develop barcodes with student identification numbers, so that they could also keep the information for the future. The database helps teachers to take accurate attendance of students in a much faster time. I felt confident presenting even though it was my first time. We practiced for one week before the date. I am never scared of public speaking now!”
Imelda, Form 4 - Live Specimens
We saw that there was a scarcity of specimens which are helpful for students taking science subjects. Our PBL project of keeping live specimens is really important because it reduces the cost for the school and teaches how to care for animals used in science. We have a lot of practical experiments within our science subjects so it is easier if we can produce our own specimens. We built wooden cases to keep them safe in the lab office. This was my first PBL presentation! It was a great thing to present in front of parents and guests of honor. It took a long time to prepare the presentation. First, we divided up the speaking parts within our group. Then we practiced our individual parts alone and then later presented together in front of others. PBL courses make us proud to be Tumaini students!