Low literacy levels
IT is no secret about Fiji’s low literacy levels nor is it a new revelation. Both teachers and students have been struggling for decades. Take a look at the texts used in schools: The Silent One, Village by the Sea, I Heard the Owl Call My Name. I taught these very novels in 1999 and they still are on the Fiji curriculum. Nothing has changed for decades.
If you want to find the texts for Early Childhood Education (ECE) on the Ministry of Education website, you will be staring at a blank screen. Why is this? It is because children are not expected to be readers until they are in grade 1 so they are not taught formally until then. Is it because children are incapable of learning to read at a younger age? Not at all. Research supports children are most capable of reading earlier if given the opportunity.
Are they being held back? Most certainly. This is due to a number of factors. Kindergarten teachers are not formally trained to teach children to read. There have been no suitable texts available up until recently for teachers to use in the classroom to help children with the reading process. Parents haven’t been encouraged by the Ministry of Education to support teachers to teach children at kindergarten level to read. Everyone washes their hands of it and it ends up in the too hard basket.
Without underestimating the importance of play at ECE level, there is an overemphasis on general play and a lot less focus on developing literacy skills at such an important stage of a child’s development.
Sight words
Here is an example of how early literacy can be achieved and with such little effort. The author will take you more than 9000kms from Fiji to Laos, a country in mainland Southeast Asia. There she taught kindergarten to a group of four and five-year olds. The language of instruction was English. They had a very detailed and busy curriculum from Lao maths, environmental studies, Lao dance, and English, just to name a few. As for English, students had to learn the 220 Dolch sight words.
They are mostly small monosyllabic words, not time-bound but pronouns, articles and prepositions. Many of the sight words cannot be decoded using phonetics; take ‘one’ or ‘the’ as examples. They just don’t sound anything like they are meant to using phonetics.
Sight words appear in most printed text whether it is The Fiji Times or the Wall Street Journal over 60 per cent of the time. So if you teach children sight words, they will be able to effectively read more than half the words on a page.
The children learnt them very quickly: five a day, three days each week. It was a matter of simply looking at the words written on the board or on cards; they would see them and say them. They learn them in no time.
The children in the Lao kindergarten also had the luxury of large print books. These were used for students to be able to read the words. At first, they were a little slow to get the hang of it, but then they were able to identify the sight words amongst the print and began to make sense of it.
The more they read the more they read. They soon developed confidence enough to be able to stand-up before the class and attempt a whole page. If they hesitated for a moment, the class would offer to help. This was a massive confidence builder.
The author returned to Fiji and had a light bulb moment. Why couldn’t sight words be introduced into Fijian kindergartens and by the time they are in grade I they can be reader ready?
One element of this idea was missing: suitable texts to use with the children. So the author wrote four large print books with local content. She chose local artists to do the illustrations.
Then they were published. A further text was written with parents and educators in mind. It explained in simple terms how to teach sight words along with inexpensive and practical exercises and games. They are now available in bookstores and on-line. The children’s books are large enough to be visible in front of a class. Furthermore, all the sight words are in green and there is the list of the first 100 sight words at the back.
Parents involvement
Engaging parents with their child’s literacy journey can be a bonus. Parents can support their children by teaching them sight words as well as reading with them. The parents do not have to be particularly literate to do so as the words are very simple. Sight word cards can be made from old cardboard.
Books can be purchased cheaply from second-hand shops and kindergartens.
A good range of books can be collected to further encourage reading. The choice must be carefully considered, however; they need to have large print and attractive illustrations.
Famous children’s author, Dr Seuss once wrote “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go”. Children can go much further if they can read a year earlier.
- JULIE SUTHERLAND is a PhD Ed student and a regular contributor to this newspaper. The views expressed herein are the author’s.
