Occupational therapy trainees in Añañau
From April untill June the following trainees joined our team and worked out a specific internship project for the organization.
Sarah, Iris, Alysha and Nico are four occupational therapy students from the University college Thomas More in Geel (Belgium) and they came to Peru to do an abroad internship with the organization before graduating in June. This abroad experience and final traineeship gives them the opportunity to practice different skills and competences and professionalize themselves in an intercultural setting to be soon an occupational therapist.
They worked with the children in the different classrooms and ages supporting them during the homework/remediation and in smaller groups they set up specific therapy activities for the children that have certain difficulties. Besides each of them worked out a specific innovative project for the organization to be used or implemented. This can be a method, educational resources, materials to practice a specific skill etc. Sarah and Iris did their internship in the project in San Jeronimo where Sarah worked out practice material and fun exercises on the multiplication tables for maths and Iris did assessments with her group on the (pre)writing skills and worked out a practical manual for the team to use the assessments for more children in the future. Alysha and Nico on the other hand have been interns in the project of Huancaro where Alysha wrote a learn to write book with interactive exercises for the children and to be used at home and Nico created a interactive board for the little ones to learn and practice to bind their shoe strings (he had observed that many children, even several ones in third grade, didn’t know to bind their shoe strings yet!).
Nico and Alysha participated as well in the school activities in the morning in Huancaro and worked together with the teachers of the children of their age groups. They exchanged different methods and educational resources with the teachers and did assessments on the writing skills with all the children as the teachers indicated that it would be very good to have a certain diagnosis now after the pandemic to see where the children stand in their writing development.
They have been using a special writing assessment for this that is used by occupational therapists in Belgium and that is a great indicator for determining where the pupils are having difficulties with writing skills or the development of these writing skills. First, they have been taking this interactive test with the children that come to the project in the afternoon and after this, they have been setting it up as well for all the children from the first, second and third grade from the school. After taking all the tests they have been filling in the scores and making an evaluation of every child. This report is very useful for us the learn where the children are falling behind in writing still and to see how we can adapt our tutoring during the home work support and the remediation at the project. We are also sharing the results in a structural way with the teachers’ team of the school so that they can learn more about their pupils and respond to this during classes or other school activities. The results have also been shared with and explained to the parents of the children during Añañau’s parent meeting. We are very thankful and proud to be able to work this way with trainees in a certain specialty and that it benefits the school as well.
Are you interested as well to do an abroad internship at Añañau? Get in contact with us for more information through info@ananau.org.