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Literacy Content Creator

Organization Name: PEAS
Location: Remote, United Kingdom, Uganda, Zambia
Apply email: Not Specified
Start Date: 15-March-2023
Closing Date: 12-April-2023

About PEAS (Promoting Equality in African Schools)
We are PEAS. We are an international education not-for-profit with the mission to ‘expand access to sustainably delivered, quality secondary education across Africa.’ Our vision is for a world where all children enjoy an education that unlocks their full potential.

For the last ten years PEAS has built and operated quality secondary schools in under-served communities in Uganda and Zambia. We now have a network of 36 schools across Uganda and Zambia educating over 15,000 marginalised students. PEAS has strong evidence from a number of external studies showing that our schools in Uganda are more equitable, better quality and more cost-effective than comparison private and government schools.

PEAS has achieved great things in the last 10 years, and we want to achieve even more in the next 10 years. We are proud of what we have already achieved, but we are ambitious for our schools and students. We now want to make PEAS schools some of the best in Uganda and Zambia. At the same time, we also want to support the wider education systems in the places where we’re working and globally by sharing our evidence and know-how.

Literacy approach at PEAS
We operate schools in rural, remote communities and we know that in this context, many students entering secondary school have not acquired basic, foundational literacy skills in primary school. This means that often, learners need extra support to master literacy skills, even at secondary.

Our literacy programme aims to help young people catch up on the foundational skills needed to access and succeed at the wider secondary curriculum, and actively engage in the world around them. PEAS’ Literacy approach focuses on a range of literacy skills, centred around fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, spanning across both reading and writing skills. Our approach focuses on applying to relatable real-life contexts for our students, so bringing in African stories in literacy applicable to rural low-income backgrounds. We take an evidence-based approach to delivering literacy support, using assessments to identify needs at school-level. Based on assessment results, learners are able to target the specific skills they need support to catch up on. Low-tech digital innovation makes this possible, through the use of Kolibri.

Content creation - Kolibri
Kolibri is an open-source digital platform for learning that enables students to access digital textbooks, videos, simulations of experiments, and quizzes on offline computers. PEAS has piloted the use of Kolibri in schools in 2022 using existing and freely available numeracy content. We want to make sure that PEAS students are using contextually-appropriate content that is relevant to their age group and education stage. For 2023, PEAS is providing literacy and numeracy content. PEAS has developed the first 15 lessons for literacy, which is being rolled out from February 2023 in PEAS schools across Uganda. PEAS is now looking to create the next phase of content.

The literacy content is in addition to classroom teaching, providing further support to first year secondary students on foundational literacy skills, which are needed to not only access English lessons, but the whole curriculum.

Literacy content
Punctuation, spelling and grammar; Word classes; Reading sentences; Reading and comprehending a paragraph; Reading and comprehending stories of multiple levels

Real-life application should be embedded throughout all topics and lessons.

The content is delivered by classroom teachers with expertise in literacy, in ICT labs with a projector, to small groups of students once a week. The groups of students are selected depending on their literacy scores from a PEAS foundational literacy assessment, which all students sit as they enter a PEAS secondary school.

Kolibri enables videos to be uploaded and tasks or quizzes to be created, allowing content to be more engaging for learners, support teachers with planning and monitoring progress, whilst providing instant feedback to learners. It is important to note that the ICT levels of some teachers and students are low, so significant training on the platform and the format has already been provided. Therefore, the phase 2 content will need to follow the same template and format of videos and tasks for consistency.

Role objectives
Digital content development
- Review Phase 1 content, lesson template and scheme of work for literacy on and off Kolibri to familiarise with content level, style, context and digital platform, and review any feedback collected from the Phase 1 content
- Follow schemes of work to research, plan and create engaging literacy content using MS PowerPoint and the PEAS template
- PEAS lesson template (consisting of 12+ slides) will be provided and contains a consistent lesson structure such as a starter, objectives, examples, practice questions, activities, challenge questions and a plenary
- Suggested contextually appropriate text and stories will be provided within the scheme of work but would be expected to increase scope
- Create a minimum of 12 literacy lessons which last 80 minutes each using Kolibri on computers
- Create engaging tasks for learners to independently complete on Kolibri and for teachers to set as quizzes, which involve real-life contexts relevant to rural Uganda
- Create a basic video which contains a screen recording of the animated lesson on PowerPoint (no audio needed) for teachers/learners to follow clear examples and answers, and play and pause at their pace
- Regularly submit draft resources to relevant PEAS team members in UK and Uganda for review, and respond to feedback in good time, making any necessary adjustments
- Upload videos and tasks onto Kolibri with clear descriptions

Professional skills and qualifications

Experience & qualifications
- Proven literacy expertise through qualifications and/or at least 2 years of experience
- Bachelor’s degree and/or degree or postgraduate studies in Education
- Experience working in teaching at an upper primary or secondary classroom level, with a track record of improving student learning outcomes
- Experience designing high-quality and well-structured learning resources for Literacy, following a scheme of work
- Excellent technology skills, including proficiency in MS PowerPoint
- Awareness of international best practice in curriculum design, pedagogy, and assessment
- Ability to contextualise the content to the relevant context of PEAS’ schools and students

Skills & Personal Attributes:
- Aligned with PEAS values
- A strong facilitator and teacher who can draw input from a wide range of participants
- A concise, clear, and accurate writer in English
- Strong computer literacy skills, particularly proficiency in MS PowerPoint for preparing lessons
- Able to communicate with a range of stakeholders, including teachers, leaders and PEAS
- Works well independently, takes initiative and is self-driven to meet deadlines

Payment terms
The payment is competitive and based on production of literacy materials. There are a minimum of 12 lessons to create. Each lesson should take 2 hours to initially complete with an additional 1-2 hours per lesson for feedback and updates. Payment will be made after content is approved and uploaded and after receipt of invoice. Payment will be made by bank transfer in GBP/UGX from PEAS. Share your rates or proposed budget in the section within the application form (see below).

Application Requirements
To apply, complete the following MS Form on this link: https://peasrecruitment.wufoo.com/forms/mub8wqp0k632xx/

We require an immediate start or as soon as possible for the content creation to be completed by May 1st 2023. Hence, we will be interviewing on a rolling basis and will hire as soon as a suitable candidate is found.

Job Email id: iona.wotton(at)peas.org.uk