Loei School Leads The Way On Literacy Skills

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EDUCATION

Loei School Leads The Way On Literacy Skills

By WANNAPA KHAOPA

THE NATION

Loei

Regular practice in reading and writing, mixed with special language classes, helps youngsters be fluent in their mother tongue

Tens of thousands of Thai students are unable to read their mother tongue. To Wijittra Busaba, a teacher at the Baan Nong Yasai School in Loei province, the basic literacy problem was a challenge.

"With the question 'Why can't they read Thai in my mind?', I promised myself not to ignore and let them pass the primary level without helping them improve their weak reading skills," she said.

This helped Wijittra come up with ideas to seriously strengthen her students' reading skills.

Close to 37,000 out of 500,000 Prathom 3 students (third graders) could not pass reading criteria, according to a survey of the 2009 academic year by the Office of the Basic Education Commission (Obec). Also, around 94,000 of the target group had poor writing skills.

Over the past five years, Wijittra has created practice books for reading Thai by herself with varying levels of difficulty for students at each level.

Every Tuesday morning from 8.30am-8.55am, all Prathom 1-6 students have to read out words in the books with various difficulty levels suitable for each level. Then they practice reading the same lessons they do in the morning after class, from 3pm-4pm. And on Wednesday mornings they have to write what they read on Tuesday. Parents are told to assist the students when they practise reading at home as well.

Wijittra said she adopted audio-lingual theories, multi-sensory approaches, phonetics approaches, whole-word approaches and language-experience approaches. Continuous practice was the key to success.

"We've done this every week during school opening time over the past six years. In the 2010 academic year, 100 per cent of our Prathom 2 students were able to read and write words or contents in my practice books. Ninety-five per cent of those could read excellently and fluently and another five per cent could read well," Wijittra said.

"In the overall school - when we evaluated all of the trained students - we found that only 6 per cent of them were unable to read fluently, and this was because they had health problems.

"Born as Thais, children have to be able to read and write in Thai," she said.

But reading and writing improvement is not enough. In addition to work with the Thai language, the school also has its students practise their English and thinking skills through different activities in the morning on other days, such as spelling vocabularies, "funny bingo" and easy dictation.

Students who can read fluently are encouraged to volunteer as mentors for students with learning disabilities (LD), assisting them to practise reading.

Supansa Thepkam, 12, a Prathom 6 student who is among volunteer students assisting LD students, said she used to be one who could not read fluently but after the continuous reading and writing practice with Wijittra her performance was better.

"When I had problems with reading, I did not want to read aloud. My parents scolded me for being unable to read. Now, I can read. They see my reading development and studying is more enjoyable for me. Moreover, I can help LD students to improve their reading. I like writing the Thai language and speaking out in English-language activities," she said.

Wijittra's initiative has spread to 12 schools nearby. Some schools in the North and Northeast have learned her techniques.

Kittisak Phalee, the school's director, said it would continue to adjust and improve activities of reading and writing training.

Obec's deputy secretary-general Chaipreuk Sereerak and the media paid a visit to the school earlier this month.

Chaipreuk said that as reading and writing literacy was a main policy of Obec and the school had a good model, which teachers had created by working together continuously, Obec plans to share its successful techniques with other schools.

-- The Nation 2011-04-04

[TheWalkingMan]

Nice to see teachers going the extra mile to help the kids.

[tmvolunteers]

Wijittra Busaba, great to read about your work and your success with it... and it is spreading!

I really like that students help other students and that they volunteer for it.

It made me happy reading this article.

Have a great day everyone!

[trompelemonde82]

Great to hear about some positive changes in the curriculum and the positive impact this will have on the students educational wellbeing and potential for the future of this generation. About time and long may it continue, as it branches out all across Thailand.

Strange how the good news links seem to get so few comments compared to the 'tabloid' news, even though they're generally ''nothing but crap" - not my words, just another typical comment from one of the multiple whinging farang community here on Thaivisa. Lighten up yourselves all ye moaners!