The “Biblioteca” project in Huadhua aims to improve the community’s 29 primary school students’ educational performance by offering reinforcement workshops in the afternoon. The workshops will take advantage of working outside of regular school hours by complementing the more formal education students receive in the classroom with a fun, creative, and flexible model reinforcing reading comprehension, creativity, communication, and critical thinking.
By allowing students to choose a fun activity and challenging them to make the link between the activity and a specific school course content, students must: approach play from a critical and analytic point of view; practice their course content in the context of play; reflect on their investigation process and outcomes in order to present them and; create creative connections between play and academic lessons. The presentation provides motivation for the students to excel in their investigation.
Not only do the students practice the course content from their classrooms, but they also must develop their critical thinking, analytic, and creative skills. By not only receiving information but, more importantly, questioning, evaluating, and reflecting on it, the normally rote academic lessons become an intimate part of their daily lives through which meaningful learning can occur.