Welcome to Make a Difference Website!

General Introduction. What is MAD?

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
~Anne Frank



Make A Difference (MAD) community service activity was initiated in the Fall of 2005 to introduce TIS students to service learning. Community Service is defined at TIS as ‘an unpaid and voluntary exchange that has a learning benefit for the student’ and where ‘the rights, dignity and autonomy of all those involved are respected’ (CAS Coordinator’s Handbook).

Through this endeavor, students undertake new challenges, plan and initiate activities, work collaboratively with others to develop new skills. We seek to develop attitudes of perseverance and commitment, awareness of strengths and areas for growth while considering the ethical implications of our actions. Students reflect on how their actions connect to issues of global importance.

Make A Difference challenges students in unique ways. It requires students to exhibit the characteristics described by the IB Learner Profile – to beinquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced, and reflective.

Key to the learning process is following an inquiry cycle of planning, interaction and reflection.


In order to achieve the goals described above, MAD has had a long-standing and mutually beneficial relationship with School # 100. School #100 is a boarding school for students with physical and/or mental challenges, staffed with excellent and caring teachers. Our work with the students focuses on building relationships between the two groups through a variety of activities mainly centered on building English language skills. Currently the activity is divided into two main areas; Bilingual Children’s Literature & Operations Project

English Language Development 2010-2011



This year in MAD, teams of TIS students are working collaboratively with groups of students from School #100 to author, illustrate and publish bilingual children’s literature. Through this project, we seek to explore issues of culture and art, develop our creativity and provide a meaningful service by creating inspiring books.


                         


Steps:
• Skills development & vocabulary
• Identification of a story – planning
• Co-authoring the story and translation
• Illustrating the story
• Editing and publishing



Reports


Book Writing.


Since this year we all decided to take a whole different approach in working with children, we first needed to understand what we are working at ourselves.
First 2 sessions of Make a Difference this year was discussing this idea, looking at the children literature written by professional authors and by children. We were learning about different ways these books can be illustrated – photos, children’s drawings, or actual professionally looking pictures.

But the most important thing we had to understand was what makes a good children’s book?
We looked at different examples and found the specific features that most of them had:


  • Use of simple language, or focusing on a specific part of speech – verbs, nouns, adjectives etc.
  • Repetitions – starting each page with the same phrase, coming back to main idea several times, or just having a repetitive pattern on what’s going on.
  • Foreshadowing – suggesting what will happen later, to create an intrigue.
  • Didactic aspect – there should be some kind of moral in the end of the story, some lesson to learn.

And the last and the biggest aspect to consider was making it visual, not just through the illustrations, but also finding the appropriate font, size, color, layout on the page. One interesting technique was framing the words by illustration, rather than separating them visually.

Other possible techniques we found in the various books we looked at were:

  • Vocabulary building – giving the new word in footnotes or in the end of chapters(depending on the size of the book)
  • Playing with sounds and using the words that are associated with the noise they refer to.
  • Rhymes – children like small poems and songs in the book, especially if they are repeated.
  • Making readers curious and impatient to read further, which is connected to foreshadowing.
  • Telling the story through illustrations, rather than illustrating the words.
  • Making it funny, adding some humor the children will understand.
  • Make it an educational book: include a questionnaire in the end, vocabulary, or some grammatical constructions to learn

We spent 2 session on looking at the different books. The next week we visited the school 100 – it is a boarding school for children with disabilities, one of the few schools like this that exist in Uzbekistan. To get the better idea of who these children are we had a small excursion around the school - looked at the classrooms, dormitory, dining room; met some of the teacher and students.

The next session was supposed to really get us going. In our groups of 3-4 people we had to write a 4 page children book in 1.5 hours. It’s not as easy as it seems. Deciding on the characters, settings and most importantly on plot is not as easy as it seems. Then actually wording all your ideas, without making it too complicated, deciding on appropriate illustrations, layout, font, title…. All in 1.5 hour! After such en immersion in book writing we all had a really good idea of what our lessons are going to look like. Or at least we thought we had it…

Next session was planning the first meeting with children, deciding on the format, exercises, activities, picking the levels to teach, deciding on materials – all the organizational questions…

And so the DAY came. On 5th of October we had our first session with kids. Despite the thoughtful planning, as usual, it turned out to bee pretty chaotic. The main difficulty to overcome with these children is language barrier. So sometimes our brilliant ideas had to be modified as we were going, just because they didn’t understand what we want them to do. The other problem was that these children are rather shy – they tend to freeze when you ask them questions, so we will have to try and find the way to let them feel at ease.

So for now what is ahead is a lot of hard work on planning, teaching, analyzing mistakes and making corrections, re-planning, teaching again – all going around in a loop.


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1.14.2011
We are continuing with our lessons starting next week. This time our process is actually going to the active phase of writing a book. Before that most of the groups were working on building some preliminary knowledge about books and general, about styles of writing, plus giving some grammar and vocabulary. One group actually has a plot already though ッ

The plan is to finish the book by the end of winter-mid spring(or by the end of the year for some groups) It will be a full of value children book, with illustration, interesting story, and hopefully interesting to any child of a younger age.


Operations Group


More detailed (but maybe more subjective) information on the latest news of our group can be found in My Blog

As soon as the school year at school 100 started we contacted the administration immediately to inform them that we are continuing with the operations project. We decided to meet in person to discuss all the details, because at first we had to contact the new person. We met with the acting assistant director of this school during our group excursion and gave her brief and focused introduction to who we are and we are going to do. Then we decided that they will need some time to form the new list of students who need operations and contact their parents to see if they will agree.


Contacting parents was also a tricky part. Last year we had a problem, when parents has already agreed on operations and were hoping they are going to help, but in the end their children were found to have a medical restrictions, prohibiting the operation. It was really disappointing for them and rather hard to explain – 2 out of 3 parents lives out of Tashkent and didn’t really understood what medical restriction we were talking about – they just wanted their child to be healthy.

It was a really hard time, when we felt like we can’t do anything. So this year we are ready, that the situation can repeat itself and we will have to start all over again. But the difference is now with enough money, we can focus only on organization of operations, so we have time for most of the unexpected situations that may happen.

So the following Saturday after the visit to school we went there again to donate 4 computers to school. It is a really valuable contribution for them – only 4 out of 12 computers in their IT lab worked, so now students will have wider access to them. When we came, we also talked to actual assistant director (the woman that we worked last year with) and got the list of names of children who need operations. The ages vary from 8 to 10 year old, now all we have to do is to take them to check up as soon as possible.

We couldn’t do it on 2nd of October, because it was a post-holiday day, when most of the children were taken home, so we had to postpone it. Now the hardest thing is to find the time when we are free and the surgeon is free and when children can be taken from their classes. We also remember our last year promise to provide one of the boys, who couldn’t receive an operation with orthopedic shoes and we are already arranging the meeting with the orthopedic shoes shop, to bring children to them and get their measures.


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1.14.2011
On the 20th of December during Winter Break we've been finally able to organize the check up. Turns out one of the kids we are working with has already had an operation a year ago, but the results are pretty much wasted, because no proper rehabilitation period has been organized for her. It's not too late though, and we definitely can help by buying her orthopedic shoes as the start. I believe that some official contact with the school will also help get her some extra necessary physical exercises to get some results. We haven't agreed on the future measures yet, but the suggestion is is to "officially" take charge of these two kids and check on their condition in a regular manner.

The same goes for the boy-he had the operation 6 years ago, but it didn't had any results. If we repeat the operation, and ensure proper rehabilitation period(that has to be done officially and be checked constantly) If it's not possible to do that we can organize some other medical help for them, like orthopedic shoes mentioned above or some other measures that our doctor might suggest.


This reports will be constantly updated as soon as there will be some new information to share, so check and see if something new has happened.