ABDF

The Government of Sri Lanka has released the results of the national 5th Grade Scholarship Exam. Our efforts to increase the results at the school in Navatkadu, which seemed so successful last year, have yielded a decidedly mixed result in 2011. While there were no losses when compared to last year, 2011 has not been the resounding success we had hoped. The following are my thoughts on what is going on, and what we have decided to do about it.

Last year we threw together this project, and winged our way through it in a very short time. The kids only had two months to absorb a lot of material, and the pressure on them was accordingly increased, and in a way they are not normally accustomed. However, as you can see here, the results were rather impressive, with a record year in terms of 100+ point scorers. Of course there was the ominous 33% of very low scorers to worry about as well.

This year we repeated last years’ project, but rather than cramming Read the rest of this entry »

Update - May 20, 2011

Meet our Fifth Grade teachers!

Pathinatham and Thiruchelvam, our two teachers.

These two gentlemen are carrying out our 5th Grade Tutoring project.

To your left is K. Pathinathan (Pa-dee-na-dan). Twenty eight years old, Pathin (for short) was born in raised in Navatkadu, and thus is a truly local teacher. He has been teaching since 2007, and at Navatkadu for 2 years. He created the pilot project for this program last year with excellent results. Hence this project is his project.

On the right is K. Thiruchelvam (Tee-ru-chel-vam), who ha also been teaching at Navatkadu for two years, having been a teacher since 2008. Thirty one years old, he hails from Mangikadu, a village some 2 kilometers from Navatkadu, and site of one of our water tanks, and a fence project.

The tutoring program started on May 1st. The 5th grade class is now receiving extra instruction Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 3 to 4:30 PM. This extra tutoring will continue for the next 2 ½ months, until the island-wide 5th Grade Scholar ship exam takes place in mid-August (the government has yet to announce the exact dates).

Despite being rather rushed, with a total of two months extra instruction almost daily, our pilot project last year yielded excellent results. This year we are taking longer, in an effort to take some of the pressure off the kids and allow them more time to digest what they learn.

For a more complete description of this project, click on this link.

So good luck to Pathin, Thiruchelvam, and especial to the 5th graders of Navatkadu!

The following are photos that local friends in Batticaloa have taken of the floods. I'm posting them here so you get an idea of the problem. Please note that information is very slow in getting out; the District is about 75% underwater, and cut off from the rest of the country. I'm going to continue to post new pics here; I'll try and be fancy and post the newest pictures at the top.