Online Farsi Lessons at DBST

During these extraordinary times of lockdown, we have all been facing many new challenges in our daily lives. This new situation has also brought us a learning opportunity to reflect and act more creatively in order to better cope with these tough times. We have been working in a new system which is developing on a daily basis. The Farsi Department of our school is not an exception to this. Our dedicated colleagues in the Farsi Department have done an amazing job in transitioning to online teaching smoothly in such a short period of time.

What are the challenges that the Farsi department faces?

• Streaming is the main challenge. The lessons are scheduled to be delivered at the same time to students of different levels in one class, which means that the teacher should deliver lessons and be available to support students of various levels simultaneously. This has become possible only with our teachers’ professional skills and strong work ethics.
• Preparing authentic materials is another challenge. Unlike other languages, unfortunately, there aren’t many online resources that we can utilize. Also, as the transition happened somewhat unexpectedly, some of the students don’t have their Farsi books with them at home. In order to be able to follow the curriculum, each lesson’s materials are being designed based on each individual’s level, which takes a noticeable amount of time, to make sure that all students have access to the lesson materials.

Can parents improve the quality of our lessons?

Of course! Especially with the younger children your supervision on their work can be helpful to both younger learners and teachers.

Lesson formations, projects and homework

Since the beginning of DL, we have been using a unified format of Farsi lessons so that the students can follow the lessons’ instructions more easily. We have had some research based projects, story writing, videos and storytelling as well. We are editing and subtitling the videos of students’ work which will soon be uploaded on the school’s website.

How do we ensure the high quality of our lessons?

We have been using different methods of lesson design including videos, audios, E-books, audio books, online games and quizzes made by the teachers, and also different platforms for different levels such as Seesaw, What’sApp and Skype to simulate a classroom-like experience for the students. Besides learning how to use different applications and softwares to produce teaching content, we have been attending some online training courses and webinars to make sure we are using the latest online teaching methods and platforms.

The Farsi team has dedicated a huge amount of time and effort to catch up with the constant changes in the education world of the Corona time to make sure that our dear students are receiving the best education possible even during these hard times. The whole situation is new and tough for all of us, however, we believe that by supporting each other, being hopeful and positive we can overcome it, and turn it into a valuable learning opportunity.