Basseterre: St. Kitts, Tuesday, August 31st, 2021: Teachers from across the varying primary schools within the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, received their certificate on Thursday, August 26th signaling a successful completion of the University of West Indies (UWI) 12-week course: ‘The Teaching of reading in the Primary Grades’. The awards ceremony was delayed due to the restrictions brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The course, which ran from March 2020 to July 2020 was sponsored by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Early Learners Programme in collaboration with the Eastern Caribbean Joint Board of Teacher Education and administered through the UWI. Of the 150 teachers from across the OECS, St. Kitts and Nevis had a combined total of 25 teachers enrolled. One Reading Intervention Teacher from each primary school across the Federation, 17 from St. Kitts and eight from Nevis.
Mrs. Jacqueline Bassue, Reading Coordinator at the Curriculum Development Unit (CDU), expressed the benefit of the course to both the Reading Intervention Teachers and students.
“The course, ‘The Teaching of reading in Primary Grades’, has somewhat prepared our Reading Intervention Teachers to cope with the challenges involved in reading intervention. The experience and the knowledge acquired during the 12-week period from March to June 2020, are now being used to assess struggling readers, to determine their strengths and weaknesses and to plan instructions to cater to these students’ needs, thus, improving the student’s ability to access the curriculum and work independently,” expressed Mrs. Bassue.
The Reading Intervention Programme was established in September 2020 and is designed to boost the development of reading and Literacy skills in low achieving students for whom regular classroom instruction is insufficient, so that their level of progress and achievement improves, thus increasing their ability to access the curriculum and work independently.