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The Rainbow Tree

The Rainbow Tree is a training tool to be used in Teacher Training workshops focused on children’s participation in health education. It can be used alongside, The Rainbow Flower (a tool for children).

Like The Rainbow Flower, this tool contains seven concepts which distinguishes a participatory model from a ‘traditional health education model’. It is specially designed to be used with teachers.

Each of the seven concepts is like a branch of a tree.

These 7 concepts are the:

  1. Roles of the teachers – ROLES
  2. Three stages of a project – WHEELS
  3. Skills that teachers develop and use – SKILLS
  4. Words that guide the spirit with which the activities with children are done – WORDS
  5. Places where the learning and sharing of information and activities happens – PLACES
  6. Values that are at the heart of the activities – VALUES
  7. Connections that ensure healthy habits are effective and long-lasting – CONNECTIONS

For each if these 7 concepts there are three key ideas to remember that:

  1. In this work teachers ‘dance’ between 3 ROLES of teacher, facilitator and coach.
  2. The 3 learning WHEELS include: understanding, taking action and reflecting on what has been done.
  3. Teachers develop and improve the 3 key SKILLS of listening, asking open questions and organising groups.
  4. All activities are important, relevant and fun!
  5. The activities with children move from PLACES where smaller groups of children learn like a club or a class and to larger groups such as entire schools, and then on to the home and community. The activities will therefore reach  ALL children.
  6. All involved VALUE working together with originality and creativity with a sense of community and with clarity of purpose and shared understanding.
  7. It’s not enough for children or their teachers just to know something! Real and lasting changes happen when connections are made between what they know – head what they do – body and what they feel – heart.

How to Use the Rainbow Tree

Teachers in Lagos display their Rainbow Trees

In our training workshops each of the 7 concepts are introduced separately using a variety of methods including discussions, games, movement and choral speaking.  The challenges of implementing this new approach are tackled one by one.

After the seven sessions, the 7 concepts get combined together into one unified piece, which participants love. Then the participants work in pairs as they cut out and assemble a craft version the Rainbow Tree, reinforcing their leaning. The Rainbow Trees made by the participants are then displayed in the workshop and taken away by the participants at the end.

DOWNLOAD OUR RAINBOW TREE

Download the The Rainbow Tree (or in black and white). Please note that we have also created a learning tool for children and adolescents, The Rainbow Flower.

Please share the link to the Children for Health website with anyone you know who is interested in health education, participatory teaching methods and innovative training and monitoring methods. Each month we have at least one give away plus news about our projects and programmes and progress. We want you to be a part of this. If you would like to keep in touch with us regularly, please join our community by clicking this link.

Get in touch on clare@childrenforhealth.org if you want more detail on our training or any other aspect of our work.