Jumping Into Reading: The Rescue
From January to March 2019, we, at Exponential Education, realised our Program Associates (PAs) were going to be idle. Due to the new academic calendar the SHS students we would usually work with are now on break. We thought to ourselves, “What do we do?”
A lot of suggestions came through. Then, we settled on a Reading Program to be organised for selected students in some districts of the Ashanti Region.
We wrote letters requesting 20 Junior High School (JHS) Form Two students each from Antoa, Asokore Mampong ‘A’ and ‘B’ and Ejisu Model JHSs.
The programme was to guide the students into reading and discussing the selected book, "The Rescue" with the help of our staff members at Exponential Education. The students were required to meet once a week after school for an hour. During the course of the programme, a curriculum was to be followed to ensure that words and phrases which the students may not find familiar will be explained.
This programme was targeted at not only helping the students develop their spoken English, but also help them prepare adequately towards the English Language paper in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
On meeting with the schools, all the heads confided that the number 20 is rather on the low side and had us commit to meeting the two groups of students twice a week, instead, so as to include more students in the program. Now to the current numbers; there are 25 students in Antoa JHS, 59 at Asokore Mampong ‘A’ JHS, 58 at Asokore Mampong JHS and 52 at Ejisu Model JHS.
The program has been running for only three weeks yet we are getting positive feedback from the students, their teachers and our PAs.
