Anglican Diocese releases five new text books
Primary school children are on summer break, but teachers of the Anglican Diocese have been busy, and today the Anglican Schools launched five books written by the teachers. The texts are all about Belizean nationalities and are designed for students of different levels of primary schools. Carol Babb, General Manager of the Anglican schools told us that the books can be used by primary schools throughout Belize.
Carol Babb, General Manager, Anglican Schools
“We are launching five books written by our Anglican teachers for our Belizean children. These books are locally—the setting is local, it’s all about Belize and about the national symbols and about our country. It is very, very relevant and it talks about Belize so I think its going to be very attractive, our children will be able to relate to what they read. It’s very Belize focused.”
Jose Sanchez
“What age or class level do you expect the kids to be who are going to read the books?”
Carol Babb
“I would recommend that the children be five to eight years. So that would be infant one to about standard two. We had a writing book shop and we trained our teachers how to do story writing and we selected the best stories from among those that were written and then we publish those.”
Eleanor Usher, Acting Principal, Christ the King
“Well, my group, which is Miss Maud McLaughlin, myself and Joy Rasp, we decided that we were going to write on the national symbols of Belize. Why we chose that is because in the curriculum, September is usually the celebration month. We use a spiral curriculum. From the little ones are in preschool, they are introduced to the national symbols. So we decided that we are going to take this information and put it in the form of a story and that’s what we did.”
Urvilla Kelly, teacher, Queens Square
“This book lends to phonics. The book is about the beach and so its starts with the beach so when we want to teach the phonics song for B we do beach. And also in the book, the children can find words in the book that begin with B. you have blanket, you have bag, you have bananas. Also, they can talk about the family, which goes under social studies family responsibilities, how a family works together to get things done in their home. To the back of the book we have lots of activities that teachers can follow through.”
Each of the five books can be bought for three dollars at the Anglican Diocese on Southern Foreshore. Funding for the book in the form of nine thousand dollars was granted by the Inaba Women’s Group in Japan and ten thousand dollars from the Ministry of Education.
