KidsREAD

Reading opens up a world of possibilities for your child

2008-03-01T20:44:00.003+08:00

One of the lessons I learnt from my experience in teaching children reading under the kidsREAD programme with the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC) was how reading opens up a world of possibilities for your child!

Children are imaginative and creative

We were all children once. :-) If you observe children, you will realise that even in the absence of toys or distractions, they will sometimes come up with their own games and activities fashioned out of their very own creative minds.

Children have the power of imagination. However, even their imagination is bounded by what they hear, see, read and experience. One of the ways in which we can expand their experiences vicariously is through reading to them and getting them to develop this lifelong love for reading! Reading opens up realms of possibilities for them.

Fiction or story books, especially help them to dream about far-away places. Fantastical scenarios and creative characters that they may not meet in real life. Such stimuli helps them see the world of possibilities that exist through the settings, worlds and universes available through the story book.

Interaction with children through stories

When I interacted with my children during kidsREAD classes, I always made it a point to make the story interactive. Reading to children shouldn't be a monologue or a lecture. It is to bring to life the story in the book to the children, and to DRAW THEM INTO the world you have painted. How do you get the children interested in the book in the first place?

When I select a story book to read to the class, I will try to choose one that is suitable for their age group in terms of the level of vocabulary as well as the subject matter. Next, I will look for those books with beautiful or interesting illustrations as children are very attracted to well drawn illustrations that help them visualise the story and setting of the book.

Before I even start reading to the children, I will ask them questions to warm them up to the topic on hand. For example, when I was using the book "Wembley Worries" by Kevin Henkes, I would ask the class if they ever worried about anything in their lives. From there I would slowly ease the class into the book which showcases a mouse named Wembley who was a serial worrier until she met someone almost exactly like her and they learnt to worry less about things.

Children's books are easily available at public libraries

Nowadays, the amount of children's reading materials available at our well-stocked public libraries are amazing! What we lack is the time, energy and effort to sustain the reading effort to our children. If you are a parent, make time to read to your child regularly and your child may be the next top Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) student like Natasha Nabila Muhammad Nasir who was also 2007's top Malay student. who said that,

"The secret of my success is reading. I have been reading since I was two years old and I think that has helped me a lot. Through reading, I gained a lot of knowledge."

Even my sister who is an educator in mainstream education system in Singapore tells me that children nowadays can speak better than their previous cohorts, but the test of their academic achievement is still in reading and writing especially when it comes to continual assessment and year-end examinations.

Reading to your children will reap dividends for years to come.

Go visit any public library's children's section today!

kidsREAD will be making a return soon

2008-02-22T16:20:00.001+08:00

With the impending birth of my daughter, I will resume kidsREAD blogging (but not the actual kidsREAD volunteer work) as I will be starting to read to my daughter even as she is an infant! :-)

Watch this space for more developments.

Read to your child, you never know what impact you can make in his or her life!

kidsREAD: Taking A Long Break

2007-08-23T09:43:00.000+08:00

I will be taking a longer break in kidsREAD as my wife and I are expecting a little bundle of joy sometime next year. Hence, I will need to prepare for my own little kidsREAD programme for my baby who is on the way. :-)

Looking back at my involvement in kidsREAD, it has been a fulfilling time and allowed me to understand children aged six to eight just that much better in some respects. It is also tough to be a parent in today's society as Singapore is a ruthless laboratory of social darwinism where survival of the fittest rules.

Children have the potential to grow and develop
One of the key life lessons I learnt during kidsREAD is that all children have the potential to grow despite their family backgrounds. The children in kidsREAD tend to be from lower income families and bigger families but I found very little correlation between their intelligence and ability against their social backgrounds. In fact, many of the mothers I met understand the value of education and send their children not only to kidsREAD but also other tuition programs offered by the Chinese Development Assistance Council.

Also, some of my brightest children in the kidsREAD class are from large families with four siblings and they all have the potential to be the next Prime Minister or Chief Executive Officer if we can nuture their talent and allow them to tap on opportunities despite their humble family backgrounds. They are the future of Singapore: each individual child endowed with the potential to be future leaders of this country.

Some of them read well even though at home they speak mostly mandarin as some of the parents do bring them to libraries and expose them to English reading material on top of school work and readings.

One in four adults in the US did not read a book in a year
I read this article which talked about how reading was at risk in the US as almost 25% of adults did not even read a single book in a year. Increasingly, that is the risk that alternative forms of media delivery such as the internet (youtube, dailymotion), television and radio takes us away from reading as a leisure activity, reading for personal growth and development and reading to understand more about the world around us.

Using myself, I too at times get lulled by the relative ease at which I can get content and info-tainment through cable televisions, internet music videos and from surfing the internet. However, my kidsREAD experience shows me that all is not lost. Children will still respond to books and reading if it is made a fun activity with interactivity between them and the books. The human element in communicating the story in the book to the children, bringing their attention to the pictures and illustrations in the book and getting to them read aloud all help to make it more active for them and less passive. That is one of the keys of arousing their interest in reading.

Reading is for you, for me, for all to see!
Reading is a critical lifeskill that you can impart to your child. It is not just about learning something to pass exams and get a paper qualification. It is about empowering them to learn how to learn new knowledge, skills and experiences in the ever-changing world: through reading, reading and more reading.

Empower your child today:

Read to them
Read with them
Read, read and read.

Read well, live well.

kidsREAD: A short break

2007-08-07T09:55:00.000+08:00

I have not been updating kidsREAD as regularly as I was on vacation for two weeks and was involved in the SIM National Management Competition 2007 where our team was fortunate enough to come in 2nd Runner-Up (third!) in the competition.

The interesting thing is that readership of this blog has spiked recently and I am getting a number of hits from the US of A!

Here's wishing readers from the United States a good day surfing my site and drop a comment if you'd like to know more about kidsREAD programme in Singapore.

For my Singaporean readers, do drop a comment too if you are interested in kidsREAD as we do have some student volunteers who need to take a break to focus on their studies leading up to their school examinations. We are always on the lookout for people who have an interest in teaching reading and literacy skills to children aged 4 to 8 and who like to work with children every Saturday from 10.30 am to 11.30 am (younger children's class) and/or 11.30 am to 12.30 pm (older children's class).

Have a great day and more updates when I am back in my kidsREAD class!

Wemberly worries by Kevin Henkes

2007-07-15T13:38:00.000+08:00

My kidsREAD class has more girls than boys aged seven to eight. Today only one of the two boys appeared in the class while most of the girls turned up. Girls' reading abilities appear to be better that the boys at their current ages. Most of the girls in my class are quite good readers except for one or two who need to catch up with the rest of their peers. I am blessed to have a class where they are no behavioural problems and the children are all quite enthusiastic regardless of their abilities.

We read the book, "Wemberly Worries" by Kevin Henkes during this kidsREAD class. The book's main character is the mouse called Wemberly who in the words of her grandmother was always about being in the state of, "worry, worry, worry!". This is one of the recommended kidsREAD story books written by Kevin Henkes who also has a series of books titled "Chrysanthemum" about a girl who was teased about her name.

The children took turns to read each page from the book while I asked them about what they were worried about in their lives. Most of the standard answers were "I dunno" but some did worry about exams and parents not being around for them. During the kidsREAD volunteers training, the trainer recommended this book for us to use if we wanted to share with children about the topic of worrying as the children who were worriers could identify themselves with the main character Wemberly who had the habit of stroking her rabbit doll Petal.

"Wemberly Worries" illustrations were quite well drawn as in water colours and ink and the children enjoyed looking at what happened during each stage of Wemberly's worries.

The exercise that followed, taken from the kidsREAD 2B workbook, was for the children to draw a picture of their best friend and the things they like to do. I gave the children some hints on what they could write e.g. My best friend and I like to _____________ (talk to each other, complain about boys, play together etc.). We didn't break into small group reading this round as there was only K and myself in for today's session for the Primary one and two class.

It was an enjoyable session as the children seemed to be in a good mood today and everyone seemed to like the book in the way they responded to it.

I will be on vacation for the next week or so and will updated from 1 August 2007.

What kidsREAD taught me

2007-07-07T20:48:00.001+08:00

This cute girl is in my kidsREAD class and has made good progress in her kidsREAD journey. I was a little bit disappointed that she has not been appearing in my class since the second half of the term has started as I think she can continue to benefit from our reading program and the volunteers can teach her. She has good attitude and is a very fun-loving girl. Her elder sister was also in the program.

What kidsREAD taught me
Life as a volunteer comes with its ups and its downs. Lack of attendance of a child or withdrawal of a child from the program can be due to many factors and not just yourself. Hence, I learn not to take things personally when it does not go my way.

On the contrary, when you see that you are making a real difference in the children's lives, there is a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. It takes time for progress to show up as the children will grow at their own pace. Some of them pick things up very fast, some less so. You need to have determination to see things through even if you do not always get to see the result.

One of the challenges in kidsREAD that I encounter is being able to see visible improvement in my children's reading abilities. Most of the children's time are spent in primary school where the mainstream education system is in charge of their development. The other major part of their lives are spent at home with their family and that is where parents' and siblings involvement in the children's education yields returns. My kidsREAD class is only one hour on Saturday mornings. What can that one hour do? :-)

Having been a volunteer with the Chinese Development Assistance Council for the last six to seven years has taught me patience. While we may not see the immediate results from our efforts, I truly believe that if you do the best that you can and pour some of your life into the children, they will benefit in some ways no matter how small. :-)

Teaching kidsREAD also hones my skills in interacting with children. I now realise I am more relaxed with my class partly because I am familiar with the children. But I also start to relate to them at their level. If they throw tantrums in class, I do not lose my temper. Instead, I throw a mock tantrum back at them and this usually allows them to see how they are behaving. I also learn to interact with the children, allow them to speak and interrupt me sometimes so that there is interactivity. Children get bored very fast and having a two-way communication during the class helps the children get interested in what is happening.

Would you like to learn how to work with children in a reading program? Leave your email in the comments page and I will get in touch with you!

Calling for kidsREAD volunteers

2007-06-22T15:09:00.000+08:00

You have been studying and working and find that life has become a meaningless routine. You realise that getting that paper qualification and earning that salary meets your needs but yet doesn't satisfy your soul. You ponder if you can somehow re-ignite the spark in your life, that feeling that there is more to life than just living your own, that you can do more for others, for society and for children...

You have found yourself in my kidsREAD blog!

Is there more to life than work or study
What you are going through is not unique. For a big chunk of my life, I was involved in other extra-curricular activities even as my career started and I have been involved in many different domains as diverse as personal finance to public speaking to teaching children reading skills in kidsREAD. :-)

I discovered from my volunteering activities that while all of us only have 24 hours in a day, our hours become more meaningful when it is applied to endeavours that touch lives.

Your unique experiences shape who you are and who you will become
My toastmastering has allowed me to share a little about myself, my experiences and my soul to others through public speaking.

My personal finance blog allows me to think through my own attitudes about wealth, health and happiness and to sharpen my focus on achieving financial freedom.

My kidsREAD volunteering activities has allowed me to interact with families and especially children from less advantaged families, and allow me to contribute back what the mainstream education system has given me. The gift of knowledge and the privilege of touching lives through something as simple as sharing a story with children.

How about you?
Do you want to touch lives too?
Do you want to leave a meaningful legacy not in dollars and cents but in the memories of young children who remember a volunteer who taught them reading?
Do you want to try something new and experience for yourself the intrinsic joy of giving?

kidsREAD may be for you.

To find out more, please leave a comment to this post and preferably a contact email so that I can get in touch with you. :-)

kidsREAD starts on 30 June at the Jurong Student Service Centre of the Chinese Development Assistance Council.

This is the face of the future

2007-06-19T17:01:00.001+08:00

Photo_081206_004
Originally uploaded by panzergrenadier.

Two more weeks before kidsREAD restarts at our centre! The picture on the right is that of one of my ex-kidsREAD students. He has graduated from the program and I hope he is doing well in his studies, especially English!

Children are our future. Without children, there would be no continuity and all our endeavours however magnificent will fail to be appreciated unless there is a future generation that can be there to appreciate it.

I do not have children of my own (yet! :-) )and see the kidsREAD class as a way to build skills in relating to children. I have 3 nieces whom I get to see on their birthdays and family gatherings. They are growing up so fast. The eldest is already in Primary Six will will be going onto Secondary school next year.

Time really flies and before you know it, you become mature enough and financially stable enough to go for more adventures but you lose the interest and inclination to pursue them. :-)

Two more weeks before the kidsREAD classes will rejuvenate, revitalise and recharge me for the year ahead!

Interested in kidsREAD? Drop a comment in my comments page and I will get back to you!

kidsREAD 2nd Anniversary on 23 April 2006

2007-06-17T08:20:00.001+08:00

The kidsREAD 2nd Anniversary was held last year on 23 April 2006 at the NLB @ Central at Bras Basah. Here are some scans of the brochure that was given that day.

kidsREAD is about kids having fun reading

2007-06-10T23:48:00.001+08:00

kidsREAD is about kids having fun reading. What else can be simpler?

Do we need to be experts before we teach?
I used to think that to be a volunteer and to work with children, you need to come armed with a degree or diploma in early childhood education to that you do not teach the children the wrong things. Yes, it's important to know what you are teaching, but it's more important to approach the whole idea of working with children from the right perspective.

Children have great learning capacities
Children all have a great capacity to learn and natural curiosity. That is something I learnt from my kidsREAD volunteering for the past one and a half year. You first need to grab their attention, get them interested in reading and to associate it with a fun activity before any progress can be made. The older model of "forced" learning and rote learning is increasing giving way to engaging the children and guiding them along where their natural curiosity will take them!

It is with this approach that I start my kidsREAD classes warming up the class. This involves getting them to sit in a semi-circle near me, where all can see me and more importantly, I can see everyone and know who is paying attention and who is not. In addition, this puts as little barriers between myself and the children so they do not feel so distant from the volunteer teaching them. I talk to them and find out about how they are. Why they look so tired or chirpy or whatever, just to get them to be responsive. Once their engines have been started, I start the class reading with one of the big books with bright illustrations and we have our reading together session.

Early challenges teaching kidsREAD
One of the things that tended to put me off during my kidsREAD classes was too many questions thrown at me and me not knowing which child to respond to first. After a while, I realise I am not a machine and cannot answer all sequentially in the same order that their questions asked. I will try to respond individually but still need to make affirmative noises "umm...ah.. I see.." before moving on with the classroom reading. I also needed to respond to the children in their manner. For example, when they sulk or pout when the book is not what they want to read, I will mirror their behaviour and that usually surprises them and they will stop their sulking. ;-) I am blessed that my class are generally very well behaved and they also are all very photogenic as the picture above demonstrates. I salute their mothers and fathers for bringing them to kidsREAD to build a firm foundation in their english literary skills.

K is for kidsREAD!

P.S. We are having a holiday break and will resume kidsREAD sessions on 30 June 2007, Saturday.

The kidsREAD story brochure produced by National Library Board

2007-06-05T22:14:00.000+08:00

I attended the kidsREAD volunteers appreciation ceremony on 28 April 2007 and each volunteer was given well-made brochure on "The kidsREAD Story - Dedicated To All kidsREAD Volunteers". I have scanned in the entire brochure and made it available on my blog.

Objectives of kidsREAD as well as who are the partners and sponsors.

3,000 children have been served in the last 3 years and how 52 reading clubs have been set up all over Singapore

1,000 volunteers have come forward to help out since year 2004.

Some of the memorable moments such as the MRT read-n-ride as well as the launch of kidsREAD by PM Lee Hsien Loong on 23 April 2004 at Woodlands Regional Library

All the various kidsREAD clubs in Singapore. kidsREAD clubs can be found in schools, libraries, self-help groups such as CDAC (student service centres), Mendaki (mosques), MCYS (family service centres), student care centres etc.

Story reading is for you, for me, for everyone!

2007-06-03T18:09:00.001+08:00

Contrary to popular belief, the self-help groups do open up their programs to people of all races and religions. I volunteer at the Chinese Development Assistance Council's (CDAC) centre at Jurong West and my class of 7 to 8 year olds include some malay students. The photograph above shows two of them. The boy is 7 year old while the girl on the right with her hand outstretched is eight.

I have seen improvement in both their reading abilities and the girl has been in my class for 1.5 year or so. I remember when she first joined the program, she was fun loving (she still is!) but she didn't have the confidence to read in class. Hence, when it came to her turn to read, she wanted to give it a miss. Over time, as she realised the rest of her classmates were having such a fun time participating in the group reading session, she also decided to join in and have improved tremendously in terms of her attitude and approach to reading. Now she sees it as a fun activity and not a compulsory you must do it sort of activity.

You may be wondering how I conduct my kidsREAD classes. Typically, there is a lot of interaction between myself and the children. You have to get children to warm up as some of them are still not in tune to the class when their mothers bring there there. I would get them to talk by asking them about school, whether exams are coming, what date is it today in the calendar and so on. Pretty soon, once everyone starts coming into the class, I will then start the class reading with me leading in one of the big story books and the children will take turn to read each page as I pause, ask them questions and get them involved in the book.

I didn't know that I enjoyed kidsREAD so much until I got myself involved in this volunteer program. Working with children is fun and I am blessed to have a class of relatively well behaved and very smart children. The common denominator is that their families need a helping hand but other than that they are very bright children with very good potential to go far in their academic work.

If you would like to volunteer to work with children, leave a comment and a contact email so that I can follow up with you!

Story reading is a fun and enriching activity and really it's about learning to read in a condusive environment. It is for you, for me for everyone!

How to get children to learn reading in a relaxed setting

2007-06-02T10:36:00.001+08:00

How do children and even adults learn? By being relaxed. ;-)

Photo_082706_003
Originally uploaded by panzergrenadier.

The picture shows one of my students in the kids-read programme having a whale of a time as we did our group reading using a large ground mat so that the children can jump around and be relaxed.

It was an experiment I tried to see if changing the layout of the classroom would make a difference to how the class progressed. And how it worked!

Children once freed from the confines of their desks and chairs where there is a pre-determined place to sit, a defined space from which to participate in the class, the physical layout imposes rules whether spoken or unspoken about whether you can move around, fidget, explore your space. Once they are set free (as the picture above shows) it allows their natural energy, exuberance and enthusiasm to come forth through them running around, jumping, lying on the mat and trying different types of positions because all this was not possible when they were confined by their desks and chairs.

I found that the lesson was more fun for the children but it made me teaching them somewhat more challenging as they are not so inclined to sit still given the continguous space they were allowed to use. Those children who were more active took advantage of the opportunity to allow their kinesthetic learning styles to emerge! :-)

It was a very energetic class and I found myself literally chasing after some of them as they wanted to even try leaping from the desk onto the ground mat.

Eventually, things got sorted out and we managed to do our class reading as well as break-up into small group reading.

This experiment allowed me to try out another way of teaching the children through exploring the more physical aspects even as we are doing a traditionally sedentary activity such as story reading. It was useful for me to learn to let the children "blow off steam" by allowing them to let their natural energy express itself through they physical movements.

Hmm.. I last tried this format almost a year ago. Perhaps it could be time to try it again this year?

Let's see how it turns out and I will update this blog with the experiment if it is tried again!

Volunteering at a kidsREAD Program Near You!

2007-05-27T15:17:00.001+08:00

P1010009
Originally uploaded by PanzerGrenadier

The kidsREAD programme at our centre is taking a break until we start again on 30 June 2007 Saturday. Since its inception at our Chinese Development Assistance Council's Jurong Student Service Centre in October 2005, our program has provided opportunities for students from Junior Colleges such as Jurong Junior College (JJC) as well as undergraduates from National University of Singapore as well as Nanyang Technological University to help out as volunteers in our kidsREAD program. Read more about kidsREAD background here.

What does it take to volunteer at a kidsREAD program?
Typical kidsREAD class at Jurong Student Service Centre
At our centre, we have three kidsREAD classses conducted once a week on Saturdays. Two of the classes for the younger children aged 4 to 6 are held at 10.30 am to 11.30 am on most Saturdays except for school holidays in December and in June. The third class is from 11.30 am to 12.30 pm for older children aged 7 to 8. This is the class that I teach regularly. ;-)

Typically, what we do in my class is as follows:

1. Class reading of Big Children's Book (Judy Ling series) - 15 to 25 minutes
2. Break-up into smaller groups of 2-4 students for small group reading with volunteers - 15-30 minutes
3. Wrap up with game/activity (if time permits) - 5 to 10 minutes

The main reason I enjoy the program so much and have been a volunteer for one and a half years is because it is non-academic so the children have fun during the class. In addition, I am rediscovering the joy of children's books and reading to children: skills that help me to be a better toastmaster which is my other passion in life. :-)

Interaction and Teaching Children is Fun
My fellow volunteers and I also enjoy interacting with children and it's interesting to note that there are only two men volunteering in this program. Most of the other volunteers were women which was typical according to one of the trainers who conducted one of the kidsREAD training sessions organised by the National Library Board.

The women volunteers prefer to interact with the younger class as they are so cute. I prefer teaching the older class because they are able to hold a conversation with you while the younger ones are still too young to engage them. I find it fasinating to see how smart children can be at that age and some of them are very bright kids who come from low income families. They have some much potential and if they were given better opportunities in life they could be the next Sim Wong Hoo, Albert Einstein or even Leonardo Da Vinci!

Consider Volunteering Now!
If you are thinking of volunteering in a fun environment, where you also pick up skills in teaching reading and literacy to children aged 4 to 8 years old. Drop me a note to indicate your interest and I will get in touch with you! One of our volunteers Angie came into our program because I met her at the official opening of the Raffles Junior College Shaw Foundation Library and subsequently her interest was piqued in our kidsREAD program because she thought it would be fun and this kidsREAD blog helped to arouse her interest in the program.

Don't just take my word for it, try it out to see if it suits you.

We can use our time in studies, career or making money, but at the end of the day, are we defined by the dollars we have in the bank or the lives we have touched in our journey on earth?

kidsREAD is about touching lives. You can start now...

Unleash the Creativity in Your Child Through Reading

2007-05-25T11:05:00.000+08:00

I will be speaking at the Home Team NS Entrepreneurs Club for their Mini Talks by Women's Chapter on:

25 May 2007 (Friday)
7.30 pm to 10.30 pm
CELL Room, HomeTeamNS Bukit Batok Clubhouse
Charges: HTNSpreneur FOC
Member: $5.00
Guest: $8.00
(Charges are by Home Team NS Club, I doing this presentation FOC.)

Areas that I'll be covering include:

Understand the role story reading plays in creativity
Learn how to read stories to and with your children
Appreciate what are suitable children’s books
Sharing of kidsREAD volunteering experience

Do drop by if you happen to be in the vicinity. :-)

Post Script:

It was a cosy affair as we had 5 speakers covering various aspects of entrepreneurship as well as sharing of experiences of turning hobbies into a living. Toastmasters Edmund Chew, Susan Wong, Boon Hwee, John Woo and myself spoke on areas ranging from:

DNA - Discovery, Networking and Action (Edmund Chew)
Turning a floral arrangement hobby to a business (Susan Wong)
Passion for food business (John Woo)
Unleashing creativity in children through reading (myself)
From internal auditor to business women (Boon Hwee)

I also learnt from these fellow experienced toastmasters about how they sought out their entrepreneurial paths and the struggles and challenges they went through in their respective journeys. Highly enjoyable!

It never fails to amaze me how I learn something new everytime I attend a toastmasters meeting!

Frog and the wide World - Max Velthuijs

2007-05-14T12:02:00.001+08:00

P1010319
Originally uploaded by lunatic_fringe.

We did "Frog and the wide World" by Max Velthuijs during the kidsREAD class for the group reading. The book reminded me of "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame because of the characters of Rat and Frog who basically went on a journey together to explore the wide world but discovered that home was the best of all because of their friends.

This book was considerably longer than Judy Ling's big picture books and it took me almost 40 minutes to read it together with the children. It has delightful illustrations and a simple storyline. However, the children did feedback that they did not enjoy the story as much as it was too simple even by their standards. There main point about the story was the different emotions that Frog felt as he followed Rat on the journey. He was excited and enthusiastic at first, but his enthusiasm slowly waned as both of them journeyed further and further away from their homes.

That mirrors life in some respects as I believe most of us have embarked on journeys in our life and ultimately, the draw of home and the feeling of homesickness strikes us to a greater or lesser extent and we all heed to unspoken call to head for home sweet home.

I will use this book in future for the more advanced readers because it is more suited for the primary 2 children as it has longer sentences and a wider vocabulary than other books. Its length is also not conducive for a quick read with the children as it gets boring as the hook on "what next" is quite predictable.

Next week will be the last session at our centre before we return on 30 June.

Wishing all volunteers, parents and readers happy June holidays. :-)

Video of kidsREAD Class: Coming Soon!

2007-05-07T11:01:00.000+08:00

An NIE trainee-teacher Audrey came to visit our centre on 7 April 2007 and was filming our class for her academic assignment. I had wanted to film our kidsREAD sessions but had not done so because I did not have a video camera, video editing software/hardware and the time and inclination to do so. Audrey's video recording on mpeg is a great gift to us as now I can upload it into youtube and share with the other kidsREAD centres within the Chinese Development Assistance Council student service centres where kidsREAD clubs operate as well as with the larger kidsREAD community.

The issue now is to edit the video as youtube has some size restrictions and I also want to try out video editing using ULead's Videostudio 8 software. :-)

Thanks Audrey for the video and it has fired up my interest to video the kidsREAD sessions as a record and to also cut a kidsREAD starter pack for volunteers. ;-)

Stay tuned!

Reading to Your Children

2007-05-03T16:14:00.000+08:00

Having volunteered with kidsREAD and spending most of my Saturday mornings reading to my class of 7 to 8 year-olds, I realise that reading to children allows us to understand more on our own child's learning styles.

Some children are visual learners. They absorb new words and sentences through looking at the words and figuring out how to read them and to make sense of them.

Others are aural (hearing) learners. They pick up words quickly based on how you pronounce them. Hence, it is important how we read and speak to children as they also pick up the correct and incorrect pronunication from their environment. I have children who cannot read sentences well due to their weak foundation in English but their ability to repeat accurately the word I just read to them was uncanny!

Some children learn by touch and their senses (kinesthetic) which makes them seem fidgety and not able to sit down quietly to read their stories.

All these types of learners can benefit from parents spending time to read to them. :-) Reading stories to children helps visual learners as they can also follow the words and illustrations or pictures in the storybook. Aural learners pick up new words and sounds that are fascinating to them and they relish repeating the choice words and phrases. Kinesthetic learners can interact with pop up books and role play some of the characters and animals in the book.

Reading stories to and with children also allow parents to bond with their children. I can still recall the stories that my father read to me while I was five or six years of age. The story was about a polar bear called Puck. Whilst the details of the book escape me, I can still remember my father's voice reading to me the story. It still warms my heart everytime I remember the time he spent reading to me. Your child may have similar memories when he grows up so invest in his memories now! ;-)

Children develop a life-long love for reading if it is seen as a fun family activity and not homework or a chore to be completed. We can engage our child's sense of fun and excitement about discovering new worlds and situations in stories that engage our intellect and emotions at the same time. We as adults soon re-discover the joy of reading and finding out with our child the excitement of finding out how the story develops.

So parents, go visit the nearest National Library branch and stock up on a lifetime of memories for your children!

National Library Board Volunteers' Appreciation Day at Geylang East Library

2007-05-02T16:34:00.000+08:00

kidsREAD took a break this Saturday (28 April 2007) as volunteers were involved in the Appreciation Day organised by the National Library Board at their Geylang East Community Library near Aljunied MRT station.

kidsREAD volunteers that had been involved in the program for more than 1.5 years were given a plaque as well as some Borders book vouchers. A, Ag, K and myself were present at the event representing Jurong Student Service Centre kidsREAD club to receive the awards. The event was held at the auditorium on the 3rd floor of the Geylang East library and I could see that most of the kidsREAD volunteers were students ranging from upper secondary to JC to undergraduates. I met a NUS undergrad who helped out at a kidsREAD club set up in a family service centre and it was refreshing to see so many young people involved in this volunteer activity.

The Chairman of the kidsREAD advisory committee Mrs Koh-Kiang gave a heartfelt message about the kidsREAD programme and she thanked the volunteers for their efforts in the program. The CEO of NLB, Dr. Prasad, spoke on the developments of the program and how the Totalisator Board was going to sponsor the program for the next 5 years from 2007. That is indeed good news as the number of kidsREAD clubs now stand at 52 with over 1,000 volunteers and 3,000 beneficiaries from the program.

Personally, I have seen the positive effects of the program on my class and am glad to see that the Tote Board is putting money into helping children of lower income improve their reading and literacy skills as well as to help inculcate in them a lifelong love for reading. ;-)

It has been 1 year 8 months since I have joined the kidsREAD program and volunteering in the program has helped me grow in terms of presentation skills. I now know how to read to children aged about 6 to 8 as well as to interact with them with less trepidation and fear. I am more confident of my ability to hold the attention of primary 1 to 2 children and also in my vocal variety skills. In addition, I have become more attuned to focussing my attention across several children who speak at the same time and get less stressed dealing with the cacophony of voices clamouring for my attention simultaneously. :-) I have learnt how to recruit new volunteers to the program as well as reaped tangible benefits from faithfully updating this blog as a way to reach out to possible volunteers.

I still have a lot to learn about dealing with children compared to my relatives who have had 30-40 years of teaching experience in primary schools. But the learning I have received is good enough for a non-teacher! ;-)

Would you like to know more about kidsREAD? Drop me a comment and I'll get back to you!

Kumquats and Seasons

2007-04-23T10:43:00.000+08:00

Date: 21 April 2007 (Saturday)
Volunteers: YJ, K, A, myself
Children: 6/10 (4 absent: YZ - school, Az, Z, C)

It's nearing the mid-terms and some of the children were unable to make it for the class. I read the book, "The Golden Kumquat Tree" by Anne Smith to the children and it was a book that I could use to talk about the 4 seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter) as well as some Lunar New Year festivities. The in-coming coordinator MQ remarked that our children are generally well-behaved. :-) I concur with her view and not only are the children in our class generally very well-behaved and obedient, they are also very cute and photogenic. :-)))

Next Saturday will see us taking a break as the National Library Board is organising a kidsREAD volunteers' appreciation event at Geylang East Library and this would be a chance to meet up with fellow kidsREAD volunteers from other centres and locations. I am glad to have attended this session as I thought it would help me relax and let my mind not worry about the speech contest that was happening later. Fortunately, I managed to place 1st in the Table-Topics Contest and I credit kidsREAD volunteering in helping me improve my vocal variety because reading to children requires one to practice varying one's volume, pitch, speed and enunciation.

Will see the class again on 5 May after the May Day holidays.

k is for kidsREAD. :-)

How to Make Pinatas

2007-04-09T15:39:00.000+08:00

Date: 7 April 2007
Volunteers: Dh, A, YJ, K, myself
Children: 7/10 (C, Z, A) S withdraw from the program

The class has become smaller with 10 children now instead of 9. Three of the munchkins were absent Z ("got something on" as she was attending the 12.30 pm mathematics tuition class next door), C (chicken pox) and A (did not turn up). The volunteer-student ratio now is very good with 5 volunteers to 10 children. Almost 2:1. Hmmmm... I should start thinking of doing more small-group work with the volunteers and children. :-)

An NIE trainee was with us (Au) who dropped by to film some of our activities during the class. It was related to her NIE project on kidsREAD though I did not have time to ask how about the details of her research except for her to send us a copy of the video.

The feedback from Au was that the class was well-behaved. That was certainly good to hear. :-) Though one or two of the girls are very outspoken and familiar to the point of being highly opinionated about the stories and how the class was conducted. E.g. if there were no games they would pout and comment negatively about the lack of such "fun" activities. Oh well, you cannot please everyone....hahah..

I read with the class as a big group another Judy Ling book on How to Make Pinatas (they are pronounced as "Pin-yah-ta"). Did not take any pictures of the book but it is also an attractive book which can be combined into a craft lesson if time permits. After that, we had small-group reading again this time with me tutoring J one-to-one. She is still not too consistent in her reading and word recognition but I think I found out what some of the problems were. Her eyes are not focussing on the words in a book in sequence and hence sometimes read words that were totally not related to what was in print. I am getting her to track the words using her fingers and for her eyes to track her fingers to the words. Let's see if this works out next week as I will work with her again.

In the meantime, have a great week one and all and mental note to myself to get a 2IC for older class as I will need to build up the capabilities of our talented and warm-hearted volunteers.

K is for kidsREAD!

The Pine and the Willow

2007-04-09T15:19:00.000+08:00

Date: 31 March 2007 (Saturday)

This post is 2 weeks after the event so forgive me for not updating the volunteer and children roll-call.

I used back the old format which was reading with/to the whole class using another of Judy Ling's big print and picture books titled, "The Pine and the Willow." The book was about the fates of two trees, the winding willow vs the straight and prideful pine. It tells the story of how the Pine despite being the better looking tree, suffers the fact that one would expect... To be made into furniture while the crooked willow continue to be left in the forest to provide fun and entertainment for people who came upon it.

The story is good for us to teach children on appreciating one's qualities even if one is not "beautiful/handsome" in the conventional sense. I asked the children for their feedback after the story and only slightly less than half enjoyed it. Ah well! :-)

We broke up into small group reading and I took R and J so that I could monitor their progress. R is okay, he is just mainly share and has a slight speech pronunication issue which I believe can be corrected over time as his tongue and palate develops. J on the other hand needs more individualised coaching but I noted some slight improvements after I realise her eyes jump over the words when reading so I need to train her to use her finger to follow the words and train her eye to look at where the fingers are pointing.

A good session as it went smoothly and the sense of satisfaction from teaching kidsREAD never ceases to amaze me. The other development is Az's elder sister asking me to help her in her picture composition. So now I set aside 1/2 an hour after the 1-hour kidsREAD class to coach Az's sister in english homework.

More in the next post.

Group Reading

2007-03-26T12:57:00.000+08:00

Date: 24 March 2007
Children: 9/11 (S and Az absent)
Volunteers: Dh, YJ, K, A & myself

I was suffering from a bout of cold and was sneezing today and hence decided against spreading my germs to the children by the regular story reading session. Instead, we broke up into groups after attendance taking. To make things more interesting, I told the children to "chope" or select their favourite volunteer to see which of the children will flock to which volunteer.

It was interesting to see that the girls went for K and some for A and YJ. At their age of 7-8 the girls preferred female volunteers while the boys were indifferent. After getting the volunteers adn children sorted out into groups, I took on one of the boys R while Dh took on YZ.

As this was the first time that I taught R on a one-to-one basis. I broke the ice with him by getting him to share about where he stayed, which school he went to and who brought him to kidsREAD class every Saturday.

During story reading sessions, R was mostly quiet as he was very shy. I was initially concerned about whether he could follow the class but this session made me realise that his initial non-participating was more due to shyness than any learning disability. I got him started on one of the books, I realised his reading ability was reasonable for a 7 year old and he could generally understand what I was saying.

Some of the girls who were advanced readers raced through 6-7 books with their volunteers! I did not know whether they were bluffing me when they told me they read so many books but I would not be surprised as some of the girls' reading abilities exceeded their age requirement.

We wrapped up the session with hangman and the children are by now very familiar with the concept of vowels and letters. I realised however that some of them still do not know how to tell time and they could be a topic to explore for the younger children.

It was an interesting session although my efficiency was affected somewhat by the cold bug.

Till the next session on 31 March 2007.

I'm Hungry

2007-03-16T11:14:00.000+08:00

Date: 10 March 2007
Volunteers: K, YJ, D and Myself
Class: 10/11 (S absent)

The big books were available this week and I read to the children "I'm Hungry" by Judy Ling. This is an interesting book as it allowed me to interact with the children asking them questions about who knows how to cook food, who helps their mothers in the kitchen and about the types of ingredients were mentioned in the book.

Attendance was reasonable given that the March school holidays had started so most of the children were back with the exception of one of them.

For the volunteer attendance, I was again fortunate to have D, YJ, K and myself to do the group reading session. After that, we had 5 minutes of "Simple Simon" game before ending the lesson.

The more I teach at kidsREAD, the more I will miss the children if I cannot make it for any of the sessions. The cute children in my class really grows on me...hahah...

As the teaching advertisements in MOE proclaim, teaching is about moulding lives.

I hope to be a competent potter. There are so many hidden talents in my class.

Spelling Bee

2007-03-04T19:53:00.000+08:00

Date: 3 March 2007
Volunteers: K, YJ, A and Myself
Class: 8/11 (C, J, LM absent)

The first drawer of the rickety old steel cabinet storing our kidsREAD books got stuck and hence I was unable to access the large print Judy Ling books for the group reading.

I started the class with spelling as a warm-up activity as some of the children had not arrived yet at 11.30 a.m. We did team-spelling for a while and then went straight into small group reading of 4 groups each. K took the 2 boys (S, R), A taught HL and Z, YJ taught YZ and A while I took S and J. (Sorry, abbreviations are used for the childrens' names as a safety precaution. We wouldn't want strangers turning up at our centre and looking for specific children. As we all know, the net can be dangerous!)

The books used were part of the 48 books identified by NLB as those recommended to be used in the kidsREAD classes. Some titles included, "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" (Laura Numeroff), "That's What Friends Are For" and so on.

The children are improving a bit. Even I could detect a slight improvement in J as she tries to read more words. I would have to be more deliberate in my group reading allocations as I learnt during the kidsREAD training by NLB later on the day about trying to provide some consistency in the children's kidsREAD volunteer so that the environment is less volatile for them. Children who may not have a stable family environment would benefit for having the same volunteers teaching them most days. This would also help in my getting feedback from the tutors about the children's performance periodically. More about the training in another post.

Hairy Scary Spider

2007-02-12T11:26:00.000+08:00

Date: 10 February 2007
Class: 9/11
Volunteers: 5/5

This was the first kidsREAD classroom session for me this year as I had other commitments on the previous two Saturdays and it was delightful to see the class again!

The class has suffered some slight attrition since our pre-test and now we have eleven children in the class. Six of my last year's batch (J, Z, C, S, LM, YZ) from Primary 1 and now with me while I have five new children (JT, R, A, MS, HL) making a total of eleven.

As some of the children were new and in Primary 1, I decided to use one of Judy Ling's big books titled, "Hairy Scary Spider" for the class. The story reading segment in part 1 is usually how I warm up the class to the reading activities for the 1-hour session. The room's ventilation was not very good although there was air conditioning and I found myself perspiring profusely while reading to the children. One of the girls, Z was curious as to why I was sweating and I jokingly told her that it was "hard work" teaching them...*hahah*... :-)

The turnout for volunteers was fantastic as I had (D, K, YJ, A) to help me for the class when I broke the class up into smaller groups for the small group reading session. There will be some difference in reading proficiencies in this class as the primary 2 children are already one year ahead of the primary 1s. In addition, some of my primary 2 children were quite advanced readers who could be challenged with more interesting reading assignments.

After the group reading, I did a simple word game where there were rows and columns of letters all jumbled up in a six by six table and the class competed in two groups to see who could guess the most number of words either horizontally, vertically or diagonally in the table.

I see the plan forward is to develop group reading activities that involve all the children and then to have smaller group reading by abilities to help coach the children who need more help.

To cap off the session, the children were given some souvenir bags sponsored by MHA/CNB with the anti-drug message. They were given each 1 knapsack, 1 water bottle, card-case and file case plus a $5 Popular Voucher as well as some brochures on "Saying No to Drugs." I thought the message was more suitable for older children but the souvenirs were useful. A pity volunteers did not get anything. I guess that is the price of volunteering... Knowing that you have made a difference is reward enough.

Our kidsREAD session will take a break during the Lunar New Year Holidays and resume on 24 February Saturday.

Here's wishing all my fellow volunteers and CDAC HQ staff,

"A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS LUNAR NEW YEAR
FILLED WITH LOVE, PEACE AND JOY!"

kidsREAD 2007: Pre-Test

2007-01-22T10:52:00.000+08:00

Date: 20 January 2007

kidsREAD has officially restarted for 2007 with us conducting the pre-test for assessing the children's reading age. This helps us assess the reading level for the children so that we can group them into classes condusive for their development needs.

We have about twenty plus children in the programme this year which is slightly less than less year. This is normal because a number of parents learn about the program from other parents or when they drop by the student service centre to use the library or attend the tuition programmes.

Most of my original class of nine from last year are still in this year's class as they were aged 7 then and have become 1 year older at 8 this year. The kidsREAD program caters for children aged from 4 to 8 and hence Primary 2 is the last year for most students.

It was refreshing to see them again and their energy and enthusiasm certainly made the morning enjoyable for me as I conducted the pre-test. The pre-test is a written test where the children are required to circle the correct stimulus word that I read out in the following sequence:

Stimulus word e.g. walk
Sentence e.g. Can you walk over to the store now?
Stimulus word e.g. walk
Choices: work talk walk wok

It reminded me of listening comprehension but tested the child's understanding and recognition of words. The older children (primary 2) breezed through the test though the younger ones (primary 1) took a bit longer since they were 1 year behind the older children.

The class looks to be promising as I have some of my very good readers with me for the second year plus some of the younger children that I need to help bring up to speed. I have to remind myself that this is not an academic programme and the main objective is to inculcate in the children a life-long love for reading and not just reading to score "A"s in their English (though that is a good by-product of this programme!). :-)

I am also thankful that many of last year's volunteers are continuing for another year and we even have new volunteers coming on board. This will give the programme the foundation to touch more lives of the children in our community for better.

kidsREAD 2007 - Ladies and Gentlemen, please start your engines! *vrooom*!!!!

Beginnings: KidsREAD 2007

2007-01-03T16:22:00.000+08:00

Our kidsREAD program will be starting on 20 January 2007 with a pre-test for the children whose parents have enrolled them in our program for 2007.

Currently we have 17 applicants and it looks like we will have 3 classes this year instead of 4 last year. I am hopeful that we will have a better student-volunteer ratio this year so that we can try more innovative programs and get some 1-to-1 coaching to some of the students whose foundation in English is weak.

My aspirations for kidsREAD 2007 at Jurong Student Service Centre:

To conduct monthly story telling sessions for combined classes.
To measure the child's progress through the kidsREAD program is a more structured manner.
To be patient with the children and to inject enthusiasm and fun into reading.

Let's see how the program turns out this year. I am happy that there could be new (young and enthusiastic) volunteers joining us this year and hope that the existing experienced volunteers (who are young at heart and equally enthusiastic!) would continue on as that would make it a more dynamic and sustainable program.

KidsREAD 2007, here we go. :-)

Reflections for 2006

2006-12-12T00:14:00.000+08:00

The kidsREAD programme is taking a break until school reopens in 2007. It is timely to reflect on what has transpired and for me to examine how kidsREACH has touched the lives of those in my class.

Our objective has been to inculcate in the children under our care a lifelong love for reading. The non-academic nature of kidsREAD has made it less stressful for the children and so far the general enthusiasm level of the children in my class has been all right. I am fortunate in that my class is populated by well behaved, bright and promising children.

In terms of improvement, we have not measured in a very scientific basis, the incremental levels of interest or reading proficiency. Anecdotally, I have noted in the case of one or two children who were weaker that at least they were more enthusiatic about wanting to read when it came to their turn.

Those children who were already strong in reading impressed me with some of them reading very well for their age. The small class size of 9 children and 2 volunteers meant that my class generally had a ratio of 1:4.5 when both myself and K were around. I aim to increase this ratio to 1:3.5 by trying to invite more potential volunteers to try out kidsREAD in my class. So far, I have some success as a JC student and some of my toastmasters acquaintances have expressed in interest in the program. Of course, I have a vested interest in that each new volunteer to my class also frees me up to look more into volunteer development and skills enhancement as I empower more volunteers to be trained in reading and story-telling skills. The capacity of our kidsREAD classes is largely dependent on the breadth and depth of our volunteer base.

Some ideas that I am mulling over include more regular kidsREAD volunteer sharing and training. A book donation drive is also on the cards as I think it will be something useful to help boost up the book resources for our kidsREAD programme without having to strain CDAC's budget. I for one have many children's books in my cupboard that I have hardly touched since I became an adult. :-) The recent CDAC kidsREAD volunteers training also generated a number of interest ideas for us to take forward in 2007.

kidsREAD has allowed me to pour a bit of myself into our future: the children! I am very grateful to CDAC for this opportunity to practice my toastmasters skills to read and communicate with children. The potential in us to touch lives for the better is tremendous, I am starting to realise the power of giving and it truly is more blessed to give than to receive.

Here is a collage of some of the kidsREAD images that will stay in my memories for eternity.

CDAC kidsREAD Volunteers Training

2006-12-03T17:04:00.000+08:00

20-odd volunteers from CDAC's kidsREAD programme converged on the basement of the National Library on 3 December 2006 @ B1 Multi-Purpose Room along Victoria Street on an early Sunday morning to learn and share experiences about their kidsREAD volunteer journey.

It was a learning journey for myself too although I was also the trainer for this event! :-)

I learnt that within the CDAC family, we have kidsREAD programmes running at five locations spread out in the student service centres located at Jurong, Redhill, Tampines, Woodlands, Punggol.

Being the trainer, I was mortified when my alarm clock failed to buzz me at 7.00 a.m. and I ended up waking up at 8.33 a.m. and needing to be at Victoria Street by 9.00 a.m.! Fortunately, my national service experience helped me wash up, grab my gear and call the cab all the same time and the relatively clear roads allowed me to reach NLB at 9.10 a.m. - phew! - only ten minutes late. There were still some volunteers who had not arrived yet so my tardiness was not overly evident...Lesson learnt though.. always set 2 alarms for important events when one is the trainer or facilitator. It's not too bad to be late as a participant but a definite no-no for a trainer.

I covered the following areas in the training from around 9.20 am plus till 12 pm.

- Icebreakers
- KidsREAD Jurong SSC Experience Sharing
- KidsREAD fundamental skills
- Discussion and feedback from kidsREAD volunteers/HQ staff
- Ideas Generation – Going forward

We had a good mix of volunteers from the different centres and we got warmed up by introducing ourselves by writing our names / centres / 3 things about ourselves on post-it pads and then got to know three other persons and exchanged tags with them. I got the participants to then introduce the person whose last tag they had and I think it got the crowd going a bit.

The presentation proper was divided into 3 major segments. Firstly, I shared with the participants what I learnt from my Jurong SSC experiences. Secondly, after a break, I leveraged on my toastmasters experience to share about fundamental kidsREAD skills in story reading and story telling. :-) Yes, there is a difference between the two. We wrapped up the session by breaking into 4 groups and brainstormed about:

- Things you like about kidsREAD (Which we should reinforce)
- Things you think works for your centre/class (Which we should share with each other)
- Things that help you achieve objectives (Which we could share with each other)
- Things that hinder you (Which we would need to avoid / mitigate)
- Ideas / suggestions / complaints

Overall it was an interesting session as I learnt more about the other kidsREAD centres within CDAC and got to make contacts with like-minded volunteers.

I will be compiling and submitting the points raised by all the groups as well as sending a report on what is the action plan based on a SWOT analysis of the ideas and suggestions raised.

Onward to kidsREAD 2007!

SMRT Read-n-Ride StoryTelling Train : A Volunteer's Tale

2006-11-20T11:38:00.000+08:00

Date: 19 November 2006 (Sunday)

The penultimate event in the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC) Jurong Student Service Centre's kidsREAD programme was the SMRT Read-N-Ride Storytelling Train that was jointly organised by the SMRT, National Library Board and supported by the various kidsREAD centres all over Singapore.

17 of the children plus volunteers from Jurong Junior College as well as the regular kidsREAD volunteers came together early in the morning at 8.00 am for the bus that would take us on this story-telling journey on an express MRT train. Hogswarts Express this was not but the experience was similarly magical!

I was made the "In-Charge" and I promptly employed the skills taught to be in my reservist to empower (aka delegate) the volunteers to take care of 4-5 children among 2-3 volunteers. Our ratio of volunteers-to-children was adequate for command and control and off we went with 2 parents and an elder brother of one of the participants in tow.

The children were reasonably enthusiastic at the start of the program, but as we had arrived early at the staging area - Jurong East MRT station and had to wait for the other groups to arrive as ALL were taking the same train.

In the harsh rays of the morning sun, the children inevitable asked, "Why must wait? Who are we waiting for," as they fidgeted and sighed for the journey to begin.

Before long, most of the other groups had arrived and we did something we had never done before. Gettig a free ride on the mrt station without tapping the farecard! :-) The SMRT staff facilitated our entry through a permanently open fare-gate and we got up onto the plaform level and waited for the "KidsREAD Express".

Unlike the Hogswart Express, the KidsREAD express was a regular MRT carriage and did not sprout any smoke as it did not have any chimney and run on electricity. We were ushered into the train and the children were arranged to sit with Woodlands kidsREAD children and the magic began.

Roving teams of story tellers from the NLB and SMRT staff took turns to do story reading as well as enacting some of the stories being read to the children. The acoustics for the MRT train was abysmal. As a result, portable microphone and speakers were issued to the story-tellers to overcome the loud background noise that is common on the subway. Most of the children were engrossed in the stories because there was nowhere to go but also due to the novelty of the experience.

The express nature of the train took us from Jurong East to Expo in less than 45 minutes as we did not stop anywhere for anyone. Before the 3rd story could begin, we had arrived at the Changi Expo.

We disembarked from the train and trooped to the Asian Children's Festival that was happening. The organisers had arranged for the children to have their lunch, view the performances which included story telling as well as Sudanese Silat. The children also tried the heritage games and asian costumes that were available at the Asian Children's Festival.

Time flies when you are chaperoning 17 children and it was a relief that we were able to account for all the children and volunteers at the end of the program. The same bus that took us to Jurong East MRT fetched us back from the Expo to Jurong SSC.

It was an enjoyable experience as I managed to capture (in a MTV-jerky style) on video on my Treo 650 most of the performances by the two story tellers as well as photos of the event which I have uploaded via flickr!

Next week, kidsREAD graduation and the end of the program and I'll have to say goodbye to some of the children that I have grown fond of. Some of the children who joined us half-way will get to carry on another year with us but I will see new children in the kidsREAD class next year.

SMRT Read-n-Ride StoryTelling Train : Pictures on Flickr

2006-11-20T11:34:00.000+08:00

www.flickr.com

Character Development Workshop

2006-11-14T14:51:00.000+08:00

Date: 11 November 2006
Class Attendance: 8/9
Volunteers: YQ and friends + me

This character development workshop was organised by YQ and two of her friends who came down to help out with a combined two hour session for the classes for the older children.

They started with the reading of two stories, interspersed with doing worksheets with questions based on the story given in the books. The questions were fairly straightforward for the children but some were unable to answer them because they were not concentrating on the books. It was a larger class and given the classroom sitting arrangement, some of the children who sat further away from the volunteer who was reading to them had some problems following the story.

YQ and friends spent time preparing and selecting the two stories as well as drawing out large pictures from the stories on vanguard sheets to help the children visualise the scenes in the story books. It is gratifying to see young people being so enthusiastic about helping the children in the kidsREAD programme without any tangible reward! This is what I call passion! :-)

There were also some role playing given to the children to act out circumstances about helping a friend and so on. Some rabbit brand milk candy plus ferraro roche chocolates were given to those who participated. The children also completed the worksheet which had some english questions e.g. good ______ best, beautiful ______, _______.

Jigsaw puzzles were the last activity for the children as they were challenged to work cooperatively to help complete a picture of a teddy bear and scene of a house.

I think the children emjoyed the session though I believe the story reading was a tad too fast for some of the children to follow. I applaud the spirit and enthusiasm of YQ and friends and encouarged them to come down to help out at kidsREAD more often. :-)

Next week, 19 November - SMRT Ride and Read activity!

The Peacock and the Coucal

2006-11-04T23:07:00.000+08:00

Date: 4 Nov 2006
Class Attendance: 6/9
Volunteers: 2/2

The children have all finished their examinations and we see more of the children back at kidsREAD this session. Six (YX, R, YZ, J, LM, C) of them turned up made up of three boys and three girls matched equally of 1 male and 1 female volunteer (myself and K).

I continued with the Judy Ling series of big books and today I did a story with the children on a Peacock who mocked the Coucal. It turns out from Wikipedia that the Coucal is a type of cuckoo bird and it was interesting that all the children thought the peacock was a male bird! Perhaps due to the fact that with all its beautiful tail feathers, the children associated the peacock with female characteristics i.e. beauty = female.

The children said that liked the story after I had gone through it with them. This book teaches us about not being proud just because we have some talent/attribute such as beauty. In the book, the peacock mocked the coucal and made him feel small because the coucal had the colour of mud, tree trunk and the forest floor - brown while the peacock's tail feathers were as beautfiul as the rainbow. However, the peacock gets him comeuppance when a hunter shoots the peacock's tail feathers while the Coucal survived because he was able to camouflage himself and blend in with the forest without being spotted.

After learning the moral of the peacock story, we divided into two groups with K taking the girls when I led the boys in group reading. The boys were back to their boisterous and active ways moving from chair to table and back to the chair during the group reading. I sometimes get tired just looking at them..haha.. R has musical inclinations as he sang out the book "Joseph and the Jacket".

Next week we will be having a character development workshop led by one of the enthusiastic volunteers (YQ). Can get to take a break from our reading and do something different for a change.

Who said "BOO" to the Kangaroo?

2006-10-16T11:33:00.000+08:00

Date: 14 October 2006
Class Attendance: 6/9
Volunteers: 1/2 (me)

There were some attritions to the class as some parents decided to let their children focus on exams while others were concerned about the haze.

This session was better than the previous one as 2 boys (YX, R) and 4 girls (LM, S, J, Z) turned up.

Judy Ling's big print books are nowadays my staple for the first 20-30 minutes of reading. She collaborates with many illustrators and I chose the book, "Who Said BOO to the Kangaroo" which was illustrated by a well-known person (his name escapes me for now...).

It is a simple story about the Kangaroo being scared by something and all the animals such as the rat, cat, cock, cow, crow being asked by the kookabura for the reason Kangaroo was running away. It allows each of the animal sounds to be read out by the children who get to learn to associate what sound does each animal make.

As a toastmaster, reading children's books trains one's vocal variety or the ability to vary one's pitch, volume, tone, speed and to articulate cleary the rhymes and rhythmic words used in the book. My class allows me to practice my vocal variety as children are very good at picking up sounds and imitating you. So if you can pronounce the word correctly for them, there is a high chance they can pick it up correctly through listening and reading it out themselves.

I think I'm quite relaxed with the children as I allow them to climb up onto the table during class. One of my girls was gently chided by the counter staff for clambering onto the table, "Is that the way a lady sits?" she remarked.

So long as safety of the children is not an issue, I typically allow them to stand up and clamber to be able to see the big print book that I hold out during the group reading session. As a child, I also hated sitting still and kidsREAD would be fun if children were not overly constrained by our "normal" rules of class.

It's interesting to see how my own reading skills have improved over the past year or so that I have been leading the kidsREAD class. I start to be more conscious on who vocal variety is such a powerful device one has at his disposal if we take the time and effort to train it effectively.

The classes will be ending soon with school holidays looming in the horizon. We will officially break either on 4 Nov or 11 Nov. That will be the time for me identify successors to lead the class and I am trying to see if I can bring up some young varsity or JC student who would be keen to work with children.

Mr Li and his Teapots

2006-08-28T11:28:00.000+08:00

Date: 27 August 2006 Sunday

We changed our older class of kidsREAD to Sunday as the Jurong Student Service Centre (SSC) was celebrating its tenth year anniversary Mr. Lim Boon Heng, Minister (PMO) and MP for Jurong GRC was the Guest-of-Honour for this event.

As some of the children could not make it for the Sunday class, we had a combined class of both IIA and IIB. I was fortunate that YJ and K were also present to help with the class. We had selected a few of Judy Ling's large picture books on "Mr Li and His Teapots" as well as a couple of others. As the Minister would be dropping by, we timed our session for the children about the time he went on his tour of the Jurong SSC activities and classrooms. He popped in when I was about two-thirds into the book with the children. I think he "stayed" for a total of 1 minute :-)

Before that, to prevent boredom from settling into the children, we played games like Simon says, hunter/squirrel/tree to get them warmed up. The children enjoyed it immensely and I believe they were more than warmed up.... Hyper is the word I would use. :-)

Here are some shots of the cute children of kidsREAD.

Group Activities

2006-08-14T11:22:00.000+08:00

Date: 12 August 2006
Class Attendance: 9/9
Volunteers: 2/2 (K and me)

We took a break from the usual format of reading a story to the entire class and instead split the class up into two groups (LM, Z, J, YZ, R) which was led by K while I handled (YX, WR, S, C). The first part was getting the children to read in turn as well as reading together. Following that, we gave the children some simple English worksheets that required them to match signs to the phrases e.g. sign of skulls and crossbones matched to "Poison!" etc.

Reading wise, I believe there is some improvement as we have been teaching them for the past year or so (from September 2005 to August 2006). The children's interest to books is getting better as I get less ugly looks and whining from them when we do group reading. The kidsREAD activity book is very popular with the children as they love to do the puzzles and games there. Children like to learn through having fun and that is an important element I need to remember.

For next week, we will read to the entire class again but also work on one or two of the children to perhaps showcase their reading skills during the open house on 26 August. Unfortunately, I would not be able to make it as there is a toastmasters contest happening on the same day and time.

I Went Shopping

2006-08-07T16:58:00.000+08:00

Date: 5 August 2006

After a one-week break from my class, it was quite refreshing to see all the cute faces again this Saturday! :-)

We had full attendance of 9 children and I was again fortunate to have K help me for this session.

HM had bought some large print picture books written and illustrated by local Singaporean writers/illustrators and I took the opportunity to use one of them titled, "I Went Shopping" to read to the children this time.

The fun part about large picture books is that engaging the children with the relatively simple sentences as well as colourful pictures was easy. Children tend to be visual and large colourful pictures help them to focus on the storyline without being over-challenged by the print. This book was about a girl going to shop for toys, clothes etc and lent itself easily to asking the childrem about the toys, hats, clothes that they have or like. I asked the children a question on what they would do if they were given $50 and the responses varied from buying cakes, to bracelets to keeping the money to the standard "I don't know" answer.

After the book, the class clamoured to do their activity book which is the one that is mapped to the kidsREAD reading plan. K was a wee bit concerned that we were not following the sequence, i.e. we should read the recommended book, and then get the children to do the associated activity. However, I was more inclined to let the children be engaged in the word and puzzles in the book. But K has a point. I will be searching for Frederick the mice book to see if I can at least get this book for the children. There will also be an open house at Jurong SSC on 27 August and I should start thinking about getting my class to do some reading plus some "solo" performances by the advanced readers.

I tried something different too today, recorded with my Creative Zen the children reading the same passage to get an unscientific benchmark of their reading ability. Still transcribing the results into an individual scoresheet for the children for my own reference.

The results will not be posted here for obvious confidentiality issues. :-)

More next week!

Colour Your World

2006-07-24T10:41:00.000+08:00

Date: 22 July 2006
Class: IIB
Attendance: 8/9

The children carried on with the colouring of their drawings of animals from last week. Those who had completed their colouring were given simple handout comprising a puzzle and a P2 english sentence matching exercise.

As planned, I decided to break the children into two groups. S, R, WR, YX were coached by me while K helped to take care of LM, C, NZ and J. Z was not here today. We got the children to read the book in turns this round as compared to the normal class story reading session to break up the monotony and to give the children a chance to read.

My group had only 1 good reader while the others needed more coaching. What touched me today was S's performance. She is a delightful child, full of smiles and very fun loving. Her favourite thing in kidsREAD is not reading but drawing on the whyteboard when she has the chance! Today was different, I coached her a little more intensively on her reading while alternating with the 3 boys and found she actually tried very hard to read although some of the words were beyond her. Her weak vocabulary means that she needs plenty of coaching for polysyllabic words. I could detect the interest in her to learn if it was made interesting to her!

While reading the book, I corrected their pronunciation and tried to inject life into the passages by varying my voice for the bits of dialogue in the story. It's a bit of a challenge to get them to read the story with life since getting them to read the sentences without a mistake was a big achievement at their level (Primary 1).

Once we were done with the book, I got them to do a simple spelling exercise based on the words found in the book. Interestingly enough, S was quite enthusiastic and even wanted more words to spell once we were done with the initial 5 words. That really motivated me to try to give her even more attention as I think she is starting to show more interest in kidsREAD.

The volunteer-student ratio in my class now is 9:2 with the help of K. Thanks K for going an additional hour beyond the 10.30 am class! I will approach HM to see if I can wrangle 1/2 of the JC students to help in my class!

Volunteering in kidsREAD surprises me each session with something new I learn about myself or the children. I leave you with this poem!

kidsREAD History

2006-07-17T14:08:00.000+08:00

SPEECH BY DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER LEE HSIEN LOONG, FOR THE LAUNCH OF kidsREAD AT WOODLANDS REGIONAL LIBRARY 23 APRIL 2004, 10am

SPEECH BY MRS LIM HWEE HUA,MINISTER OF STATE FOR FINANCE AND TRANSPORT, AT KIDSREAD'S 2ND ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS, 23 APRIL 2006, 11.00 AM AT THE NATIONAL LIBRARY

KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY MR THARMAN SHANMUGARATNAM, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AT PAP COMMUNITY FOUNDATION’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION DINNER ON FRIDAY, 19 MAY 2006, AT 8.30 PM, AT SUNTEC CITY

KidsREAD: MRT Read & Ride
儿童启蒙阅读计划：乘地铁，读故事

kidsREAD Community in Singapore

2006-07-17T11:31:00.000+08:00

The power of search engines and the internet!

Here are some of our counterparts doing kidsREAD in CDAC centres:

CDAC kidsREAD Links
[1] Woodlands SSC has their own Yahoogroups here:
[2] Jurong SSC's own Yahoogroups
[3] CDAC HQ's webpage on kidsREAD

National Volunteer and Philantrophy Centre Website (NVPC)
Community Involvement Program (CIP)

kidsREAD Experiences by Individual Volunteers or Institutions
[1] Republic Polytechnic's kidsREAD session in their RP library
[2] Yayasan Mendaki gets started on kidsREAD in their May 2004 newsletter article
[3] Whispering Hearts Student Care Centre kidsREAD programme
[4] Girzilla blogger's experience with kidsREAD
[5] My personal experiences with kidsREAD at Jurong Student Service Centre (CDAC)

Mama Do You Love Me?

2006-07-17T11:04:00.000+08:00

Date: 15 July 2006 Class IIB

Today I had C to help me with the class which has now grown bigger.

The book that I chose today was "Mama Do You Love Me?" by Barbara M. Joose and illustrated by Barbara Lavallee. The more I get into the kidsREAD program and read more children's books to my class, the more I realise that illustrations play a very important role in children's reading. While adults can read a novel consisting entirely of words, words and more words, young children need to have some visual stimulation through pictures, graphics and illustrations to help give them visual cues in which to build their imaginations.

The same goes for blogging to some extent. Blogs on serious issues that are persistently non-political require the exercise of the little grey cells we have in abundance in our head. However, the blogs that literally catches our eyes more are the ones that have pictures or images that capture our attention. Human beings are for the most part visual creatures and we react to visual cues the fastest.

But I digress... :-)

This books tells the reader about how much an Inuit mother's love for her daughter transcends all the naughty things the daughter can think of doing e.g. dropping eggs on the floor, messing up her mother's clothes etc. The setting is based on Inuit (aka eskimoes/natives of Alaska, Artic region) culture where they touch on ptarmingans (a type of small artic fowl), walruses, whales, musk-ox and the like. Good illustrations but the book is not very big so the group has to be relatively close to be able to see the illustrations clearly.

I think most of them enjoyed this book which has a simple message, i.e. 妈妈的爱是最伟大的！(mother's love is the greatest!) in a non-patronising way to the children.

After reading the book to the children, I moved on to playing some simple logic games by asking them to match the animal in the book to a phrase e.g. a puffin - eats fish, a wolf - howls at the moon. We then spent the remaining 25 minutes asking the children to draw their favourite animals that were found in the book.

Will post up some of their pictures up here once I get them scanned in.

Overall, another reasonable class though I need to ramp up my preparation for the classes more and make use of the kidsREAD volunteers' reading guide and select one of books from the guide.

Next week, I will break up into smaller groups for group reading as I have been doing a number of story-reading sessions with them. Some of the children are itching to be able to read and I think I need to spend more time on the students who are not reading as well as their peers.

kidsREAD grows!

2006-07-10T00:04:00.000+08:00

My class has grown since the June holiday break and now I have 9 children in my class compared to 6 previously! Welcome to YZ, LM and C to Class 2B!

I took the class through the Book "Once in a Blue Moon" (can't remember who is the author). The story is about a lady auntie Floydie who forgot to plan her birthday party and felt sad but her friends the mailman, the countess and the mayor, got together to throw her a surprise party and she was so happy!

The class enjoyed the book as the illustrations of the characters in was colourful and exaggerated, like a cartoon. The illustrations allowed me to draw the children's attention to the details of the characters and allowed them to learn phrases such as "dressed to the nines", "once in a blue moon" and "foot in the mouth".

Following the story-reading, we played word games using the alphabet flash cards with alphabets and pictures of things starting with the letter e.g. A - picture of apple, W - picture of watch. We wrapped up the session by getting them to do pages 1 and 2 of the kidsREAD workbook.

I am starting to get the routine better organised as we will use the 1st half-hour to carry out the story reading followed by the 2nd half-hour focussed on activities or games. This allows the 1 hour session to proceed with very little time for the children to be bored or restless though at the starting of the book, not all the children were fully engaged in the book as some were day-dreaming.

Next week's lesson will see a change as I will get them to read now especially the newer children to get a feel of their reading proficiency. I plan to do some group work if I can snag one of the JC volunteers over to help in my class.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines...kidsREAD on 1 July 2006 11:30 am Session

2006-07-05T17:08:00.000+08:00

Those of you who have played the arcade game "Daytona" will remember the announcer making this statement prior to the game starting.

I felt as if I was walking back into the "battleground" of hyperactive children clamouring for attention and to be fed the ultimate antidote to the illness of "boredom"!

Yes, kidsREAD! starts again at Jurong Student Service Centre and I found myself leading the neighbouring class as some of the regular volunteers were not available. HM felt that as my regular class was slightly less hyperactive than this bunch, she suggested that I take on this challenge. This class had about the same number as my class except they were more active in some aspects. After surviving 9 months of the program, I was more prepared and led them through the book, "If you Give A Pig a Pancake" by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond.

I chose this book partly because during one of the National Library Board's training sessions for kidsREAD! volunteers, the trainer had used this book to illustrate the techniques for reading to children. As most of the children had read the other books, I decided to use this one as I could still recall some of the elements of the story.

I gathered the children in front with their chairs facing me in a loose type of semi-circle and launched into the story-reading session. This is one of the recommended books in the kidsREAD program and I can see why. The illustrations of the cute pig and the adventures she goes through with her owner are attractive and easy to follow. How I do the story reading is to start off by asking the children - who likes pancakes or even knows what is a pancake. This gets the children interested about finding out more of the relationship between the pancake and the pig.

The book leds the readers along a journey on each step, i.e. if you give a pig a pancake, she will want syrup to go with it. That leads to the syrup - which is sticky - leading to the pig asking for a bath...and so on and so forth. It teaches the children to follow a certain sequence of events and at the same time helps them remember sequence of the facts. Of course, being a children's book, the illustrations make it fun to follow and I use the pictures to ask the children - do you see the syrup ? Who has tasted syrup before?

I learnt from my kidsREAD experience that story reading has to be interactive to children as reading to them like a newsreporter will result in a very fidgety and bored audience. By asking them questions, asking them to point out objects in the pictures and asking them to repeat certain words and phrases, they become more interested in the story and start to use their listening skills, speaking (repeating words and phrases). Also, allowances can be made for the children to interrupt as some will want to share their experience e.g. "Teacher, I have eaten pancakes at McDonalds before."

Most of the children responded well to this book and I concluded the session after spending about twenty five minutes on the book. After that, we broke up into smaller groups as there were two new potential volunteers who were helping. Thanks for your help! We played some word games with the children such as "Hangman" and "Guess the murderer" (though I am not sure how that game is played as the other volunteer was leading his group).

Pretty soon, the one hour for kidsREAD was completed and the children quickly packed up to go home. Another good session of kidsREAD where I practiced my story reading skills. Onward to next week's session on the 8th July 2006!

Return of kidsREAD! 1 July 2006

2006-06-20T12:31:00.000+08:00

kidsREAD will resume on 1 July 2006 with MORE books, MORE volunteers and the most important element, MORE fun! :-)

We are gearing up to see the children again for the weekly hour long session of story-reading, craft activities and games. Hwee Min has informed us of the additional resources being provided for the next of 2006 which includes more big cover books, story books provided by the National Library Board as well as some young enthusiastic JC volunteers to help sustain us for the next 20+ weekends.

For the next half-of the year, I will concentrate more on story-telling once every month as well as to introduce more word games to the children so that they can associate learning reading and English as FUN and not another academic topic they have to learn. Capturing the attention span of 7-8 year olds is still a challenge without resorting to screaming at them and scolding them *sigh*. I am so glad I am not a primary school teacher!

2006-05-25T23:03:00.000+08:00

kidsREAD at Jurong Student Service Centre (JSSC) Takes a Break!

We are giving our children (and our volunteers!) a well-deserved break until 1 July 2006 when the program will resume at JSSC. In the meantime, we are still looking out for volunteers as our sister club at Punggol requires many volunteers (aged 15 and above, fluent in spoken English, available on Saturday mornings) given the long waiting list for children who wish to enrol in the program. Our centre at Jurong SSC also needs volunteers so that we can give achieve a better volunteer-child ratio to enhance the kidsREAD experience.

Leave a comment here and I will get back to you!

2nd Anniversary Celebrations for kidsREAD organised on 23 April 2006

2006-05-16T13:15:00.000+08:00

I was tasked with bringing the magnificent seven children from JSSC-kidsREAD all the way from the west to the spanking new National Library at Bras Basah for the 2nd Anniversary Celebrations for kidsREAD organised on 23 April 2006 for kidsREAD children and volunteers from all over Singapore.

The feedback from the children was that it was boring except for the bits where a magician came on to entertain them as well as the balloon sculpture given out by the nice lady. However, many little hearts were a bit sad that despite them raising their hands umpteen times, they did not manage to be picked for the free balloon sculpture.

Ms. Lim Hwee Hua came to speak about the kidsREAD programme but other than the NLB and other invited guests sitting in front, not many of the children were interested in her speech. At least none of my seven charges were keen and I do not blame them. Trying to get my children interested in a nicely illustrated storybook is already a challenge what more a full-blown ministerial speech that even adults may find it tough to listen with unbridled enthusiasm.

The goodie bag distributed at the event was good though. They gave out finger puppets of sea creatures (crab, fish, seahorse), lexan type small water bottles, a story book, notepad and pencil and a kidsREAD handy bag to keep all the goodies together. :-)

It appears that this event has also generated more inquiries and parents' interest in signing up their children for kidsREAD at our centre. That is certainly good news but we also need more volunteers to help with the programme. As it is, I feel that my 1 volunteer split among my class of 5-7 children does not give them the sufficient attention.

kidsREAD Snapshots on 1 April 2006

2006-04-03T10:45:00.000+08:00

My class was as active and boisterous as ever with the super-seven (minus 1) stupendously serving out their slice of sustainable shouts during our session!

These snapshots capture the essence of their energetic endeavours coupled with my consistently crafted comments...hehehe :-)

If you think you have what it takes the do story reading and group based english activities, leave a comment with your contact email and we will get back to you.

Volunteer Now: KidsRead! at CDAC Jurong Student Service Centre

2006-01-25T12:20:00.000+08:00

If you are interested in participating in the Chinese Assistance Development Council (CDAC) KidsRead programme that is held:

Date: Every Saturday
Time: 10.30 am to 11.30 am (Class I) 11.30 am to 12.30 pm (Class II)
Venue: CDAC Jurong Student Service Centre (SSC)
Blk 421 Jurong West St 42 #01-1045 Singapore 640421

Pre-requisites:
Age: 15 and above
Commitment: 1 hour per week for 6 months
Main tasks: Reading to children aged 4-8, inculcating good reading habits and helping children discover the joy of reading

Please contact Huimin for more details if you are interested in joining this program.

How to Volunteer for KidsREAD?

2006-01-20T18:03:00.000+08:00

kidsREAD is a nationwide reading programme officially launched on 23 April 2004 by then Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. kidsREAD is a collaborative effort by the National Library Board (NLB) together with the People's Association (PA) and five self-help groups to promote the love of reading and cultivate good reading habits among all young Singaporeans, in particular children from low-income families. The target audience of kidsREAD is children between the ages of 4 and 8, regardless of race or religion.

The objectives of kidsREAD are

To leverage on the strengths of various partners to create a reading programme for all children between the ages of 4 and 8 in Singapore.
To promote the love of reading and cultivate good reading habits among all young Singaporeans, in particular, children from low-income families.
To provide an avenue for children from various races to interact from an early age.
To help enhance the quality of life of the children and their families.

kidsREAD Participants

kidsREAD is open to children between the ages of 4 and 8 regardless of race, language or religion. Priority is given to children from less well-to-do families i.e. children from families with gross monthly household income not exceeding $2,000 or per capita income not exceeding $500

kidsREAD Volunteers
Volunteers are vital to sustaining the reading programme. Anyone can be a volunteer as long as they are 15 years and above. The time commitment is at least one hour per week for a period of 6 months. The main task of a volunteer is to read aloud stories to children so as to inculcate good reading habits from young and help them discover the joy of reading. Training will be provided for volunteers on basic storytelling skills, and use of the kidsREAD Starter Kit.

kidsREAD Programme

A kidsREAD Starter Kit comprising a recommended reading list, a poetry and rhymes list, and an activities list serves as a resource guide for volunteers to use in running the Reading Clubs. Volunteers are trained on how to use the kit and other skills to work with children. Participating children can expect reading to be made more enjoyable through a fun-filled interactive setting. Word puzzles, board games and craft making are some of the elements incorporated to make reading an exciting journey.

kidsREAD Reading Clubs

Each Reading Club can take up to a maximum of 25 children with 5 volunteers managing the session. The programme is conducted for a year and each session is conducted once a week for 1 hour. For the first half hour, volunteers read aloud stories from books to the participants. For the next half hour, the children is further divided into smaller groups of about 5 according to their reading skills or age range. A volunteer attached to each group would then engage the children in an interesting variety of reading and related activities such as craft, board games, poetry and songs.

For further queries, please contact:

kidsREAD Secretariat

278 Marine Parade Road #B1-01

Marine Parade Community Building

Singapore 449282

Telephone: 63424205

Fax: 63424411

Email: kidsread@nlb.gov.sg

For those interested to volunteer with Chinese Development Assistance Council's kidsREAD clubs, please contact:

Email: rod.loh (at) gmail.com