Group Reading

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

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

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

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

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:

1. Stimulus word e.g. walk
2. Sentence e.g. Can you walk over to the store now?
3. Stimulus word e.g. walk
4. 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

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:

1. To conduct monthly story telling sessions for combined classes.
2. To measure the child's progress through the kidsREAD program is a more structured manner.
3. 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

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

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

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

www.flickr.com

Character Development Workshop

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.