The Girls Project focuses on enrolling more girls in school, but it also aims to help those girls succeed once they are in the classroom. To help our girls, we organize regular study meetings. This allows girls to learn techniques to better understand their lessons, with a particular focus on what the girls identify as the difficult parts of the subjects.
The Study Groups are new for the Girls Project this year. It is in the spirit of creativity that we introduced them into our activities, after finding that the girls have deficiencies in learning their lessons when trying to study after class.
In November, the Study Group focus skill was based on memorizing lessons because memorization is a huge focus in Mali's education system. As it turned out, the Study Group meetings were done at the right time because they were held just before the third and last exam that will allow girls to move on to the next class.
The girls sometimes tell me about their problems studying. For example, one girl spoke for her group and said, “The teachers tell us to reread our lessons in the evening at home, this does not help us memorize, just reading a lesson does not allow us to understand and remember, there is no one at home to help us understand the difficult parts. Suddenly we feel almost drunk, we spend three hours and we don't remember anything anyway!”
Obviously the girls have never been shown how to reread their lessons and study effectively! As a result, many students see homework and studying as boring, obligatory, tasks. Under these conditions, without pleasure or interest and even less project, how can these teenage children learn?
Memorizing and learning lessons is a long-term job. In the Study Groups, we bring the girls to quiet places to learn the lessons. Each girl is given her own mat to sit on under the shade of the trees while we work. Then we get to work! Here is the basic outline of our November Study Group session:
How to read effectively? Girls spend 20 minutes reading the lesson silently, asking me or their peers for explanations when they have difficulty understanding a word or part.
How to memorize permanently? Girls start memorizing words then sentence until they memorize the whole lesson. They take 1.5 hours to tackle this task.
How to learn otherwise? After memorizing, each girl stands in front of the group, one after one, to recite the lesson learned. This is helpful because repeating the information to someone else can help them memorize better.
This memorization drill has helped the girls immensely. Some girls admitted they were too lazy to learn the lessons; others were distracted. This was the case of Konimba Samaké. Konimba is 12 years old and is in grade 7 at Tamala school. Before the Study Group, Konimba used try to learn her lessons with her friends once or twice a week. They all gathered in one place to study, but unfortunately it always ended with chats or jokes.
Here is her testimony:
“The memorization technique that Girls Project did allows me to concentrate more. I'm under pressure — I don't want to be humiliated when asked to recite part of my lesson, or asked a question that I don't have the answer to! Pitting myself against other girls over memorizing lessons helps me a lot, not only does it make it easy for me to learn my lessons but it also allows me to get a good grade to move up to the next level. Even my brothers and sisters are doing their studying like us now to learn their lessons ”.
Konimba Samaké has become skilled at learning her lessons and presenting them to the group, thanks to some simple strategies and a little quiet time!
Bringing girls to a quiet place to learn better can help them enormously because when they are with their families they are kept busy with housework. They just don't have time to learn. Girls may be distracted by the noise and rukus of big families at home, or their parents may require them to do hours of housework. These sessions are very valuable for girls in learning their lessons, but also help them become stronger women because they all come back confident to have learned their lessons.
