The school education and literacy department on Friday issued guidelines on home-based learning through homework assignments, online classes and tele-learning.
As per the guidelines that would be adopted at all the state-run and private schools, the headmasters and teachers would continue to attend their institutions till January 10, 2021, for facilitating home-based learning. They would also assist students individually whenever they approached the teachers.
The school authorities would make all possible efforts to facilitate the teachers and students for the successful home-based study mode of teaching and learning to reduce further loss of education.
The schools would help develop content-based guidelines for each subject in the shape of a worksheet to be covered during the suspension of classroom learning. The teachers have also been asked to design the teaching-learning material and activities to support students to carry out their studies individually through a home-based study mode of teaching and learning during the notified period.
Also, subject-wise learning material for both reading and writing in the form of packs would be distributed among the students. The design of educational activities should suit all the students and no students should be left behind due to non-availability of means of communication, lack of resources and family background.
Where possible, schoolteachers would create WhatsApp groups for each class and each subject to monitor the activities of students and provide support to them. Parents and students would visit schools weekly on scheduled working days for a particular class to get support and feedback from teachers.
In order to minimise the rush of students, primary and middle schools would allocate one separate day in the week for each class of students for checking and distributing weekly homework and assignments.
Likewise, the elementary, secondary and higher secondary schools would allocate one separate day every week for one or two classes of students. However, not more than two classes of students would be called for checking assignments on the same day.
Similarly, high and higher secondary schools, if possible, would preferably conduct online classes for each subject as per the timetable to cover the prescribed syllabus.
The office of the schools with essential staffers should be opened for support and feedback. Homework would be based on 24 per cent of the remaining condensed curriculum of each subject.
The guidelines clarified that where online classes are not possible, the teachers and school administrations will encourage students to do assignments and homework so that they could be engaged in learning activities. Likewise, the teachers will also inform students about the timing of tele-learning on television.
From November 26 to 28, the teachers and school administrations will start planning to develop material for home-based study and learning. In the second week from November 30 to December 5, teachers have been tasked with designing worksheets covering around four per cent lessons of English, Sindhi Urdu, Mathematics, and general knowledge and science for grades one to eight.
The same formula would be also applicable for upper grades up to the class 12. However, each week, the teachers would cover four per cent of the subjects. The worksheets would be based on multiple-choice questions, grammar, basic definitions, labelling diagrams, constructed response questions and other learning activities, which will be continued till January 10.