I promised to make this short in the last post. So I’ll try.

A Brief Introduction

This is the third part of my intervention with various organizations for Women's History Month using Oppia. I called it the Oppia X Yigakpoa project! You might want to read the first & second parts!

In all 4 parts of the Oppia X Yigakpoa project, I will be narrating my unique experience with each organization while spreading love through Oppia for Women’s History Month.

(If you want to dive right into Project 2, please check the table of contents & click on “Partnerships”!)

Oppia as a Free and Open Source / Ed-Tech platform provides a novel and engaging approach to online learning that is specially designed to meet the unique needs of under-resourced learners around the world.

Background:

Student profile	School or program	Grade	Time started	Time ended
Age / Gender	Kuramo Nursery & Primary School	Pry. 1, 2 & 3	11:30 am	1:00 pm

Kuramo was founded on Friday 26th of September, 1980 by the then Lagos State Government His Excellency Lateef Jakande. The school is situated along Ademola Adektokunbo Street opposite Eko Hotel, V/I.

Kuramo Nursery & Primary School is a free school, children just have to show up to learn. Many of these children’s par­ents are largely traders, and indigenes, whose main con­cerns are to meet their immediate needs like shel­ter, clothing, and feed­ing. For them, sur­vival is a ne­ces­sity, giv­ing their child quality education may not be a priority due to lack of fi­nan­cial means.

Partnerships

As you already know, Oppia.org is constantly looking to partner with organizations and schools as part of its efforts to reach more children. After the first meeting with the headteacher on the 9th of March, I was well on the way to starting this beautiful partnership. This blog is about my experience sharing Oppia with the Children at Kuramo Nursery & Primary School.

Let’s dive in!

Stories of each project will be picture stories because I believe a picture speaks a thousand words.

Day 1 - 29/03/2023

I was scheduled to come the previous week but my time with the children at Maiyegun Community Primary School ate into this, so I just came on the 22nd of March to drop off my gift packs (60) and headed home after rescheduling for today.

If there’s anything I love about handling a younger class, it is the fact that their imaginations and minds are still very vivid, so using the right tonality, body gestures, facial expressions & pitch when talking to them always captures their imaginations and works wonders with setting the tone for my class. In the paragraphs below, I conveyed every message from Oppia using these communication techniques.

Moments after I did a headcount, I introduced myself to the children and asked them if they loved storytelling & cartoons & they all yelled “Yessss”. Well, that was a great opportunity to pitch Oppia’s storytelling approach & beautiful imagery which I didn’t miss. I needed a coordinated & interactive class so I explained to them that we will be answering questions & my gifts will be for them. There were more children than the gifts I brought so I told them that those who got a question correctly will get the packs with the math set, while those who make a good attempt at the question will get the other packs (I explained to them that even if they didn’t get a question, I was proud of them for making a good attempt & failing was only an opportunity to get it right the next time, hence the gift). One rule was that if you yell out the answer, you were going to be disqualified. To avoid having a rowdy class, I told them that anyone who goes “Aunty me me me” would not get picked. I asked if this was fair and they all yelled “yessss”.

So we started!

After asking them to clear their desks of any distractions, I got my marker and wrote: “Oppia.org Maths Lessons” on the board and asked everyone to show me the word “Oppia.org”. This was to trick their minds into remembering the Oppia website and not just the name “Oppia” when they got home to their parents.

I went ahead to Introduce the lesson of the day (Multiplication) to them & chapter 1 (Parts of a Multiplication Expression)

My very first question was gotten from here before we even started the lesson:

Habeebbullah from Primary 3 answered Oppia’s question correctly & all the children clapped for him.

To ensure that they understood words like gardening, vegetables & planting, I asked them to tell me what they were and reiterated that we will be helping Aria & Omar set up the garden.

I was certain every child knew an orange so I used orange seeds as the analogy here. I explained to them that to get an orange tree, the seed is what you plant. I went further to explain to them that, the space an orange tree needed to grow was different from the space needed to grow corn.

Our star of the day is this young champ from Primary 1, who attempted to answer the first question on Oppia asking children, what the addition expression of 6 baskets with 3 apples in each will be. He missed it, but his courage & enthusiasm to try out a problem before being taught was encouraged with a gift.

Hassan from Primary 2 got the multiplication expression correctly on the first try.

Interestingly, Hussein got this question right however when I asked him his name, he didn’t say a word to me and seemed shy. The class teacher had to explain to them that they could answer me as I was there to teach them and I was not just any stranger. I thought this is impressive & Kuramo deserves her flowers.

7-year-old Khadijat from Primary 1 got this correctly.

When Mubarak from Primary 2 tried this the first time, he failed it. But he got it right after an explanation from me and a second attempt.

8-year-old Fatima got this question correctly.

And just like that, we were done with Chapter 1 of multiplication and we had to go because school was over and some parents were waiting outside.

Challenges / Learnings:

• Kuramo has a computer lab but I was told that I needed to take permission from the Organization that donated it if I want to use it. I had only my laptops and my phone. So, I resorted to reading out the lesson to them from my laptop.

• Getting them to understand “addition expressions” & “multiplication expressions” was a bit tough initially. I had to use more examples outside the text to make them familiar with the term.

• Making them understand the term “products” & “multiples” also took a bit of time and had me answering some questions with them.

Conclusion:

Let’s just say I kept my promise! Because I’m surprised at how short this is.

Sharing Oppia with the little children at Kuramo was amazing. I was so engrossed in teaching them, I wish I took more pictures.

I might sound cliché at this point but the effects of Oppia’s storytelling approach & artwork on these kids can only be felt when you experience it first hand. You can find a video of excited children in the first part.

Another beautiful thing to see is the way they ease into the lessons after understanding the concept.

Lastly, If you’re a maths teacher or a parent and your child is struggling with maths, download the Oppia app now. Visit Oppia.org to learn directly from your browser & thank me later.

At Oppia, there are various opportunities to contribute ranging from UI/UX Design, UX Research, Go-To-market Strategies (Product Management), Devs Team (Coding), Art, Project Documentation, Lesson Creation & Translations (Hoping that you chose to join the Nigerian-Pidgin team)! Feel free to join us in making a difference across the globe by volunteering your time here or donating here.

There are endless opportunities at Oppia and anyone can fit in. So whatever you choose, rest assured that you are making a positive impact in the lives of children across the globe.