Teachers Learn New Strategies for Students to Learn How to Read and Write
The Ministry of Education is hosting a four-day literacy training for teachers from underperforming schools in Belize City, Stann Creek and Toledo. The purpose of the workshop is to equip teachers with strategies to teach students to better read and write which will help to improve their performance in school. News Five spoke with the literacy consultant and a participant about its importance.
Rose Bradley
Dr. Rose Bradley, Literacy Consultant, MoE
“So, what we are looking at is some strategies, in terms of how to prepare that. It’s about how to set up their classrooms in terms of making it more fun, inviting and engaging. Also, setting up learning centers, so that we teach in such a way that we tap into what students bring to the classroom and we make the learning more fun and engaging and so that students are doing more instead of teachers just talking to the children. So, it is very interactive and even the way that we are presenting the workshop, we are trying to model some of the things we want the teachers to do. So, we are working in small groups and it is very hands and on that kinda thing.”
Andrea Polanco
“Once these teachers go back to the classroom, how do you measure the effectiveness of this kind of training?”
Dr. Rose Bradley
“One of the things that we will be doing and that is a little bit different is that we are going to be following up with the teachers in terms of what they are doing in the school and providing additional support, encouraging them to implement the strategies but also looking at students performance. So, I think that is a new area or a critical area – that it is not just the training but that they make a different in the students. So, we are going to be collecting some data in terms of students’ performance and working with the students to ensure. One of the things that we really have as a target is to ensure that our standard one students by the time they leave standard one that they are really reading and writing at the level where they should be so that they can progress and really become successful as that is really important.”
Keisha Garbutt
Keisha Garbutt, Standard 1 Teacher, St John’s Anglican School
“From this morning, I have been in the assessment room whereby we have been taught the different types of assessment when it comes to reading – doing reading records, and then grouping and later on teaching us what other strategies we will use moving forward teaching them at their level. In our classroom it is not a whole teaching anymore, it is grouping. And so with each group, I will know that this is my group one or A group students and I will be able to take them at a higher level than they are. Or this is my group C or maybe they are just at the emergent level and these are the type of strategies I will need to implement to move them from emergent readers to independent readers. It is a rotation we are doing this week and after we leave assessment, teachers will move in phonemic awareness where we develop different strategies for how we go about teaching phonics and then later on in the week, the teachers will actually see a model language arts and then we will incorporate everything, so teaching will be an easy breeze from there.”
