On July 9,2011, in Vake Park, the Centre for Civil Integration and Inter-Ethnic Relations organized the meeting of students of primary grade of Tbilisi public schools. Sixteen children during four hours were actively involved in the joint work with the experts of the Georgian as a second language and composed stories and essays. The activity was implemented within the framework of the project “Supporting Multilingual Educational Reform in Georgia” funded by the OSCE High Commission of National Minorities.
The project aims at an improvement of the of the quality of education in minority schools of Georgia and along with other initiatives there is plan to develop and publish the series of the educational textbooks “Reading Ladder” that supports ethnically minor students studied at non-Georgian schools in learning process of the state language. The small writers chose the topics for their essays themselves. There is planned to edit the essays by the children and include them in the books for elementary stage of “reading leader”.
The experts agree that the ideas by the children are the most interesting for contemporaries and raise their motivation for learning the language. National channel “Rustavi 2” found the initiative also interesting and made a small TV broadcast proving insight into the initiative.
See link: http://www.myvideo.ge/?act=dvr&chan=rustavi2&seekTime=07-07-2011+13%3A30
The CCIIR plans to proceed with the initiative and involve more children in development of reading materials for peers.