Project News

JICA Project conducted a series of workshop at Special Schools No. 25, 55, 63, and 70 in Ulanbaatar. Teachers at each school developed Individual Education Plan (IEP) for a selected child. Based on the IEP, lesson plan was developed in order to conduct lesson study at class where the selected child belongs.

There are different lesson plan formats at each special school for conducting the lessons for students with different educational needs. However, those formats did not include columns where teachers could write objectives of the lesson, special educational needs to pay attention to for individuals, means of teacher support, etc. Thus, JICA Project introduced a new lesson plan format during the workshops.

A working team was formed at each special school including a homeroom teacher of each selected child, and a lesson plan was developed based on the IEP through discussions among them. Working team did a trial lesson with the first draft lesson plan and then revised it based on comments and suggestions from the members. The working team mainly discussed about how to achieve individual objectives in group activities and how to support students with severe disability.

For example, take a mathematics lesson at one special school. Although students' learning levels of mathematic are different, the first draft lesson plan did not include activities of each level so that it was difficult for other teachers to image the lesson. Considering advice from the project experts and comments from the team members, students were divided into three groups depending on learning levels, and different activities for each group but related to the lesson topic "subtraction" were added, when the lesson plan was revised.

Not only teachers from special school but also teachers from neighboring regular schools and some members from Core Group^[1] observed the "lesson study". After the lesson study, a review meeting was held at each special school to discuss about the lesson. It was the first time for most of the teachers from regular school to observe a lesson at special school. Some teachers said "It was good to see the teaching materials made for each student and teacher support based on different educational needs of children". Demo-teacher who conducted the lesson said "because we wrote teacher's activity and students' activity separately in the lesson plan, it was easy to conduct the lesson compared to the previous lesson" and "we could make the teaching materials considering children's individual educational needs"

In Mongolia, summer vacation at school starts in June and ends in August. The new school year starts from September. The series of workshops for this school year ended and we will start the new workshops from September. Lectures related to Child development and workshops on making teaching materials will be included in next school year's session to improve practical teaching skills while considering individual needs.