“With poor command of the language, kids experience difficulties expressing themselves”

Gulnara Myrzagalievna has the same approach with children, whom she teaches literacy using a specially designed course with the Akelius platform. She has 15 children in her group. Two children from Karaganda study online, the others have been coming to her offline classes on Thursdays and Saturdays for the past year.

“I have children of different ages and levels. There are six boys and nine girls,” says Gulnara Myrzagaliyevna about her unusual group, admitting that she is happy to work with the children on such a “well-composed” course.

Gulnara Rakhimgazina has been selected to participate in the project for a good reason. First, she has worked with school children migrating to the capital from the southern regions of Kazakhstan for over ten years. Secondly, she has experience in teaching Russian for adult immigrants from other countries. “A lot of families moved to the Ayagoz District of East Kazakhstan, and we had to support them, our oralmans from China. They would come [to school] in the evening, I would teach them. Back then I had to start with the alphabet,” recalls the teacher.

She thinks about that year with gratitude and is confident that it helped her avoid many mistakes in her current work with children. Gulnara Myrzagaliyevna emphasizes the importance of the individual approach and gives us details about her students: some came to her with zero knowledge of the language, others knew only the alphabet.

“A kid in the senior grade knew nothing but the letters. He could copy a text, but he didn’t know the language. He had no idea what the words meant, what the text was about,” Gulnara describes her 15-year-old student from China.

After months of hard work, the first results were achieved: “I already have them reading, for example, some middle school textbooks. Yes, they already speak fluently. They can speak plain Russian: they can talk to one another, ask for something,” Gulnara says. Gulnara Myrzagalievna is especially pleased to receive feedback from her colleagues.

“For example, Karlygash Bakhytovna says that Shokhsanam has improved her Russian. She can do the assessment of her progress herself. She already understands what she is reading,” Gulnara lists her students from Uzbekistan.

Such progress was made possible, in part, by carefully planned out lessons. Her lessons usually begin with articulation and pronunciation exercises, then they review the materials from previous lessons, get to a new topic and consolidate the new material. The final part of a lesson usually contains a dialogue with the teacher and the classmates followed by a test. “We often play with children during breaks, but these are educational games so that kids can remember something, have some new words to learn, to comprehend,” says Gulnara, immediately citing riddle poems about the bath, the bear, and the moon.

A tablet with the Akelius platform installed is a very efficient tool. “On the platform, everything is calculated, split into levels. Each child, when they pass from one level to another, earns points,” Gulnara Myrzagaliyevna explains the principle of the Akelius educational platform. She avoids direct assessment of the students’ progress.

“I treat everyone equally. I try to praise them all at some point. We cultivate freedom in the classroom, but at the same time I see to it that they speak and spell correctly”, notes Gulnara.

The friendliness and the absence of barriers between children and the teacher creates an easy-going atmosphere: “They immediately say what they don’t understand. We translate the example into Kazakh and try to demonstrate the meaning,” shares Gulnara Myrzagalievna. She also helps her students outside of class. “Madina brings all her textbooks, notebooks, all that she could not do on her own, for example, in the first-grade program, I explain it to her personally,” this is how Gulnara works with a student from Azerbaijan. The ninth-graders from China, for example, received additional training before the exams.

Parents also come to Gulnara Myrzagalievna to say thank you. The mother of one ninth-grader confessed that previously she had difficulties communicating with people of different nationalities, but now her daughter helps her to adapt, often acting as an interpreter. But the primary focus of the program is, of course, the children. “There’s a great emphasis on making kids feel comfortable, so that they can integrate themselves into the society. Gulnara Myrzagalievna admits that the initiative of improving children’s literacy seemed attractive to her from the start.

Gulnara, as well as her colleagues in the project, is offered methodological and organizational support not only from the school, but also from other stakeholders. For example, experts from the International University of Information Technologies provide methodological support in lesson planning, blended learning and assessment. The Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights helps to identify students who need to be in such a program. The Education Modernization Center of the Akimat of the Nur-Sultan city also helps the program providing methodological and coordination support.

Gulnara is especially careful to ensure that the children do not have to deal with excessive workload. “You can’t demand too much either, because it’s impossible to learn all the grammar that people study at school for five or six years,” she notes. Even if children mix up generic endings and are not well versed in phraseology, they should not be psychologically hindered by it,” says Gulnara Myrzagalievna. Digital literacy and heightened motivation come as a bonus of such a program.

“When they don’t speak the language, they can’t talk about themselves, they can’t express their feelings, they can’t say what they want, they can’t share their opinion. And that’s what we are here to teach them,” she concludes.