READERSachievers Background

How READERSachievers came about.

I worked part-time at a child development center for several years while pursuing my degree in B.Ed (Primary TEFL) but only started teaching formally ten months back. At the child development centre, I learned the basics of quality childcare and early language development. I was fortunate enough to have been given the opportunity to work with children as young as three up till those in lower secondary. Upon graduation, I was posted to SJKT Saraswathy in Sungai Buloh and have been teaching there in the last ten months.

I am currently teaching three Year 1 classes and two Year 4 classes. Most of my young learners are of the lower proficiency level and many of them come from non-English speaking homes. Being a new teacher, I first entered class with much zest and many ideas for fun language-building activies. I soon learned that many of my learners have very poor reading skills, and was even more horrified to find out that a handful of my Year 1 learners did not receive proper kindergarten education.


Not being able to read soon became a huge stumbling block in my learners' development of English. We could not do many of the activities suggested in the curriculum because they do not have even the basic language needed for the activities. I decided to go back to square one and to try building on the reading skills.

The challenges however, grew. Among others, I face;

Time constraint
Teaching in a vernacular school, I have shorter teaching and learning hours with the learners. I only see my Year 1 classes twice a week, an hour for each session. Even so, I usually have to set aside 5-10 minds for housekeeping and behaviour management.

Learners of diverse competency levels
Although the learners are streamed into different classes according to their competency levels (across all subjects), the diverse in each class is still overwhelming. In the 'end' classes especially, I realize that the gap is tremendous. Some learners are able to read a few words, some are just able to recognise sounds of letters while a few are still having problems with letter shapes. The learners also have different levels of exposure towards English at home. Those who listen to English being spoken regularly (from parents or television) usually understand instructions better and are more ready to read than those who only 'hear' and 'see' English in school.

The need to catch up with syllabus
At the end of every term, I have to prepare my learners for examinations so there is a need for me to catch up with the syllabus. If I spend too much time building on the basics of reading, I will not have the time to expose my learners to all the items outlined in the syllabus. Yet, there is no point in whizzing through the syllabus if my learners cannot read and understand what is taught.

The non-existence of an intensive remedial program
Where I teach, there are no intervention programs to help learners who are illiterate in English. Many of those who cannot read and who receive little help with reading at home progress through their primary school years without much progress in English. As a result, we have twelve-year olds who struggle when reading even simple sentences. I would like to design and conduct my own remedial program with my learners but first I will have to find a way around the challenge of time constraint.


Do you face any other challenges when it comes to the teaching of reading skills to young learners? Drop a comment and share them with everyone!

I hope that through READERSachievers , I will be able to overcome the challenges above. From this project, I hope to collect useful and practical tips for teaching basic reading skills and document them for beginning ESL practitioners. Imagine having a manual of tried and tested, detailed instructions on exactly HOW TO TEACH CHILDREN TO READ, from letters to words to phrases to sentences to paragraphs to compositions to short stories to novels.