STEPS:
One: Set a welcoming and safe classroom environment. Children learn best in a setting where they are free to explore, ask questions, create ideas or build things, take risks, make mistakes. Mistake is not failure. It is the first step to learning.
Smile and use a friendly tone and kind language.
Children learn best when they invest in the process emotionally. This happens when the teacher has built genuine rapport with the students. Teachers, you don’t need to go overboard. Just be yourself. Be sincere. Be loving. You may not be a loving and warm person, but at least try. The children need to feel that their teacher is on their side. Someone once said: most adults don't remember what a favorite teacher in their childhood has taught them, but they remember how that teacher made them feel.
Step two: Invite the children to tell their story about something specific (focused), like, their favorite past time, or favorite sport. Encourage the children to tell their story in their mother tongue (have a translator if need be). Help the children provide details by using any of the 5 W questions (What, Who, When Where? Why?).
Step three: Invite the students to put into writing the story they just shared (In this example, the children were telling a story about their weekend activities). Provide meta cards; write the words that would likely trip them over - challenge words like “paborito, patintero, basketbol" on
individual index cards. These are words that may contain multiple syllables and silent vowels like “tuwing umaga.”
Provide as much needed support as possible.
College student interns or volunteers such as pre-service teachers or education majors doing extension work, may help struggling readers. Continue to ask them prompt questions using the 5 Ws but try ot to suggest ideas like: Kalaro mo ba ang kaibigan mo? Instead, ask: Sino ang kalaro mo ? Madalas mo ba syang kalaro o may iba ka pang kalaro?
Remind them that this is going to be a draft, and that there are no right or wrong answer, and that it’s ok to make mistakes.
After a friendly conversation with them where they generate ideas freely, the children
tend to write more with confidence.
Step four: Invite them to read their finished draft. Be encouraging and celebrate every attempt of every child to write, read and speak. The more they write, read and speak, in any order, the better they will be in any literacy activity that is meaningful for them (that is,
literacy that is about them).
Step five: Invite them to re-write their story on a booklet prepared for this activity. They will write and illustrate the cover, with their name as author!
Step Six: Display the booklets that the students wrote and illustrated. This will build their reading fluency and pride as reader and writer, especially if the children start reading each other’s work! The more opportunities they have to read and write, the better readers and writers they will become.
Step Seven: Get them to read their booklet to anyone who would care to listen and appreciate every child as a capable learner!
Cherish the look of confidence in every learner's face!
Step Eight: Invite the children to participate in more storytelling and story writing sessions until each kid has authored 8-10 kids during the school year.
Step Nine: Document the process. Make copies of each non- reader’s homemade book and let them share their books at home. Keep track of progress like willingness to speak and share ideas, quality or complexity of ideas being shared; improvement in confidence to read; fluency to read, list of new words that the kids can spell and read correctly, and later, if same words are being used in other story writing activities.
The PRB Customized Literacy Module