As part of Peace Corps' effort to fight Malaria, an organization of Peace Corps volunteers was formed called Stomping out Malaria. The purpose is to raise awareness on prevention and treatment of malaria in Peace Corps countries where malaria is prevalent. Here in Mozambique malaria is a huge problem and is responsible for 45% of deaths among children under 5. All of us Peace Corps volunteers are put on malaria prophylaxis for the two years we are in country. Being a volunteer in Mozambique, I often hear about cases of malaria or even see my friends with malaria. It is not uncommon for my students to miss class because of malaria. Since April 25th is World Malaria Day and the month of April is Malaria Awareness month, I tried to do my part and educate the people around me. Here is what I did.
-In the Classroom-
In each of my classes I spent one class period (1.5 hours) teaching about malaria. We started with a true and false quiz, followed by reading a fictional story about malaria. I then explained the biology of how malaria is transmitted. We then talked about prevention and treatment and I gave the kids the option to draw pictures to make a picture wall for the whole school to see.
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| Working on a skit |
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| Using a malaria comic as inspiration for their drawings |
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| One of my classes with their malaria learning materials. No that is not a bird on the chalkboard, its a mosquito :) |
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| Reading aloud the story about malaria |
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| Picture wall |
-Weekly Reading Activities-
Every week my site-mate Sam and I hold reading activities for 2nd and 3rd graders. USAID provided selected Peace Corps volunteers with 150 children's books in Portuguese. Through their research USAID found in Mozambique, children in primary school were severely behind in their reading abilities. Therefore, it is our job to use these book and hold reading activities with these kids. Our weekly sessions go as follows:
Arrival, find name-tag, read silently
Sing alphabet and introduce a theme for the day (maybe a letter or vowels)
Story Read aloud - one of our 12th grade volunteers will read a story to the whole group
Split for structured activities - we split the kids by grades and do activities to work on literacy
Since April is Malaria Month we decided to use this "captive audience" of primary school kids and teach them about malaria. We kept the same schedule but altered it so every activity was malaria related. The day went as follows:
Arrival, find name-tag, read silently
Sing alphabet, vowel song, introduce malaria and transmission
Read the story about malaria
Learn a song about using a mosquito net
Mosquito, Mosquito, Mosquito Mosquitao. Eu vou dormir na rede e nao vais picar-me nao.
(Mosquito, Mosquito, Mosquito Mosquitao. Im gonna sleep in a net and you're not gonna bite me, no)
Play mosquito tag
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| Silent reading time |
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| Singing the Alphabet. One kid always points to the letters as we are signing. We usually sing it about four times. |
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| Sergio using that ball to explain malaria transmission |
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| Esperanca reading the story about malaria to the kids |
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| Mosquito tag safe-zones |
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| If they got tagged by a mosquito they had to go to the hospital and get treatment before they could keep playing |
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| EVERYONE ran to the mosquito nets |
The Reading activities with the kids was extremely successful. We were a little overwhelmed because I had the great idea (or maybe crazy idea) of telling their teacher to remind the kids to come that day. We ended up with ~80 kids! Luckily we had a lot of 12th grade volunteers to help us.
If you're interested, here is more information about malaria in Mozambique and more information about Stomping Out Malaria.
So proud of you Kim for all you're doing! Thanks for the information! We miss you!
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