The Rising Star Project

The Rising Star Project is an outreach initiative in which university students tutor Grade 12 physics/chemistry learners at Thandokhulu High School in Mowbray, Cape Town. The tutoring sessions run once a week, at the school. The project was initiated at the start of 2023, and has been running successfully since then. In fact, in 2023, the matric class achieved an impressive 100% pass rate for physical sciences. In every session, we provide the learners with a printed summary of the topic to be covered that week. Our timetable is aligned so that we focus on a particular topic just after it has been taught in class. The largest portion of each session is spent practising exam-style questions, in order to build the learners’ confidence in answering them. We provide printed exercise sheets containing a mixture of multiple choice and higher-order questions on the topic for the week. The tutors are given the memorandum for these questions beforehand. The learners work through the questions in the sessions, and are able to ask the tutors for assistance. The learners are also provided with food during the sessions. Our aim is additionally hopefully to inspire the learners to follow careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This year, we are also running a pilot mentorship programme, initially just for female learners. The idea is to pair up a female learner with a female tutor studying in STEM. The mentor and learner will meet a minimum of once a term (in person, or via an online call), during which time the learner can ask for help/advice with university applications, career choice advice, etc. We are currently looking for more volunteers. Tutors can sign up for as many or few sessions as they wish to, based on their availability and the topic being covered that week. Since we provide tutoring resources, the preparation time is very minimal. If you would like to get involved as a sponsor or tutor, please email justinecrook@gmail.com.