Young readers show creativity

We keep hearing that unrestrained cable television is killing our children’s reading skills…and while that may or may not be true, Belizean educators are fiercely clinging to the value of the written word. Today News 5’s Patrick Jones saw first hand that all is not yet lost.

Jasmine Tillett, ?The Fox?s Cheese?
?And that Fox had it good ? ?his bread was buttered on two sides.? It was a bright and early morning when a crow flying over the fox?s house suddenly stopped and flew down as she saw what looked like a piece of cheese.?

Patrick Jones, Reporting
There was humour…

Keyon Arnold, ?The Missing Cheese?
?The race started, the fox was running and the bird was flying. ?I know I can win this race. Please let me win it,? the fox prayed. The bird flew fast to the finish line. The fox ran up to her and grabbed the cheese and ran with it.?

…deception. And life lessons told in the form of stories from the pens of standard three students from all over the country. Hundreds of primary school boys and girls sat down to hear their peers read their interpretation of the fable: ?the Fox and the Crow.?

Karina Heusner, ?The Chase of the Wild?
?Foxy stopped and said, ?don?t take what?s not yours, Stuart.? In reply Stuart said, ?Foxy, we can share the papaya.? The two animals shared the papaya and lived happily ever after. That was ?The Chase of the Wild.?

According to the Programme Manager for National Examinations, Yvonne Davis, the stories were selected from compositions submitted by children who wrote the Belize Junior Achievement Test in October of last year.

Yvonne Davis, Programme Mgr., National Exams
?When we look at the responses from the children across the country, we noticed that there was a variety in response to the topic. You would have noticed that the stimulant that we gave this year was a very well known fable ?The Fox and the Crow.? Many of the children know that story and a lot of them wrote on that story. But we noticed that some of our children did not really stay with the theme. They went a little beyond and added their own creativity to the story. And we felt we needed to show the nation how our children are thinking at that level. And so we pulled some of the scripts that had a different twist from the regular fox and crow story. So we did it with that in mind, one and we also did it to motivate the children at that level.?

And while officials of the Ministry of Education saw the need for a lot of motivation at the midway point in the children?s elementary education, for these young writers whose stories now appear in book form, putting their talents in black and white was a piece of cake.

Shanice Bonner, Queen Street Baptist
?Easy because I mi just deh inna class the sit down and I think about that. And I remember in standard one the ?What a Fright? book about the crow and the fox then I get this idea for it.?

Patrick Jones
?Now who would you want to read this book or this story? Who would you want to read your story??

Shanice Bonner
?My mom and anybody who wants to read it.?

Keyon Arnold, Hattieville Government School
?It is not hard. You just have to put your mind into it and you will do it.?

Patrick Jones
?How long did it take you to come up with the story??

Keyon Arnold
?About one hour.?

Kaeli Wilson, Hummingbird Elementary School
?Well it was easy because usually, first I say this is going to be hard. And then I just write and write and it just goes and I write the story.?

Patrick Jones
?Are you good at story writing? Do you write a lot??

Kaeli Wilson
?Yes I write a lot. Not at home, but I write a lot like for school and I write about different things.?

The 2005 BJAT will be administered in June. Davis says while the exam is not of the same importance as the P.S.E., it is giving educators an early indication of what needs to be corrected.

Yvonne Davis
?It is not a high stakes exam like the P.S.E. It is really evaluating the system, and we use the result as a kind of diagnosis to see how the system is performing at that point. So the children do get a profile report of how they did on each of the different areas tested. The schools also get an average performance of how their children performed. But the results are used basically for intervention like this one that we are doing today.?

And while some children may need a lot of assistance, the writers included in the ?Belize Juniors Write? book have demonstrated a lot of creativity.

Kaeli Wilson
?Well my lesson that I wrote in the story is that you should never talk or sing while you eat because your food might drop out.?

Keyon Arnold
?Learn that you should watch over things because people can easily thief it without you know. So if you left something somewhere keep an eye on it and don?t leave it and go about and always be there. Always go back and see that your stuff is there.?

Carlos Zelaya, Holy Redeemer Primary
?Well I just thought about life. How would it be in the picture.?

Patrick Jones
?So this is a story about life??

Carlos Zelaya
?Yes; it teaches you a lesson.”

Patrick Jones
?What lesson is taught in this story??

Carlos Zelaya
?You should do to others as you want them to do to you. Like in the history when the fox got hurt after trying to climb the tree, the bird felt sorry for him and help him and let him live.?

Yvonne Davis
?For sure we know that our children are thinking and they have a lot of ideas, a lot of exposure as well. However, I must say that we have noticed over the years that the mechanics of writing English is very, very poor. And that?s why we wanted to do this kind of intervention to help to improve in that area.?

Minister Francis Fonseca, ?The Fox and the Crow?
?He told her she was the most beautiful bird in the forest. He also told her that all the animals said that she could sing wonderful songs and she was the best signer around. The tricky fox asked her to sing a song for him so that he could prove that she could sing beautifully. The crow was so proud of herself that she wanted to show off her voice. As she opened her beak to sing, the cheese fell out. When the cheese fell, the tricky fox got it and went to enjoy this delicious meal in his den, while the proud and hungry crow was left without anything to eat.?

Minister of Education Francis Fonseca challenged the students to develop the habit of reading because it is a crucial link to almost everything else around them.

Francis Fonseca
?And a part of that problem my young friends is comprehension, reading. Very often when you sit and talk to the young students afterward, many times they don?t understand the problem. When they read it they don?t properly understand what the problem is asking. So sometimes it?s not that they lack the capacity to solve math problems; sometimes is because they lack the capacity to comprehend what his being stated in that problem. And that goes back to reading. And as many of the teachers here I am sure know much better than I do, reading is fundamental to everything else that you do. Every other subject that you engage in, in school, reading is at the heart of those subjects.?

At the end of the two hour story reading exercise, the children signed a student contract with the Ministry of Education in which they agreed to keep the book in good condition and to pass it on to another child in their own school. It is hoped that this will mark the rebirth of a story writing…and reading revolution. Patrick Jones, for News Five.

Editors of the book are Alice Castillo, Beatrice Kingston-Smith, Elswith Lopez, Juanita Nunez, and Rosenda McCullough. Six thousand copies have been printed for free distribution.