Reading Competition

Stand up if your group has the right answer!

How do you encourage children to read? How do you encourage teachers to teach reading (instead of repeating)? It is not so easy to do this, but one of the strategies we use as Knowledge for Children is that we organise a Reading Competition. And it seems like it works, as pupils and teachers are really passionate and eager to win.

So, what does this Reading Competition look like? First, every school is organising a competition within their school, to select the best readers for level one (class 1-2), level two (class 3-4) and level three (class 5-6). Currently, we are busy with our zonal finals. That means the schools gather in eleven different venues to select the best school of a zone. This will lead to eleven finalists who will compete in the big Knowledge for Children Finals in Kumbo, on the fourth of March.

Answering the questions

So, what does it look like, a Reading Competition? Every school is represented by three pupils (one for each level). In some activities, they work as a team. For example, they get a word with mixed letters; glaf. The children have to work together to find the word flag. Or, we give a very long word and they should form the longest word they can make. Or we give them sentences in mixed order and they have to construct a real sentence. Also, they have to do individual assignments. For example, they read a word and construct a sentence with it. Pupils also read a text and answer questions (reading comprehension).

By the end of the day, we know which pupils are the best readers for their own level and which schools perform best in each zone. Of course the winning school will come to the finals in Kumbo.

It is quite interesting to me to see the difference among schools and also among pupils. We see quite some children who score no points at all, schools that end up with 35 points while the winner has 150 points etc.

What strikes me often is that many pupils can read, but don’t really understand. That gets clear with the text they need to read, but also when pupils need to read words and construct a sentence with that word. For example, I saw pupils (class 6) reading the word ‘direct’ and constructing the sentence; ‘We have many directs in our house’. (Interesting for me; ‘Our cat is eating a very big banana’. I was laughing but according to my colleague cats here eat a lot of bananas).

Read!

For many schools, this Reading Competition seems to be a wakeup call. Often, all children pass the exams (as fraud is very common), but here they are really comparing themselves to other schools. We tell the teachers; if a pupils performs well we congratulate the child, if a pupil performs poor we blame the teacher. Teachers feel really bad if their pupils loose. So hopefully they will take it more seriously! At least, the schools can now see that they are behind similar schools. Winning schools want to make sure they win again next year.

I believe teachers will really try to teach better now. However, yesterday, a very smart little girl of class 2 won a prize in her level. When my colleague asked her where she learnt to write, she said; I taught myself. So my colleague asked about her teacher and she said; we have many children in our class, but only very few can read and write. So it is not because of my teacher because then all of us should be able to do it!

Dust!

In the rainy season, we all complain about mud. Mud makes it difficult to travel, potholes fill with water and you can’t see any more how deep they are. Now, it is the dry season and we complain about dust.

In the Netherlands, people always talk about the weather. Here we all talk about the dust. It is very normal to meet someone and ask; how are you? How are you managing the dust? Half of Kumbo is coughing and complaining about catarrh.

Dust is really everywhere. Dust enters the house, if you touch a curtain you start coughing. Dust covers the floor, the tables, every time you touch something your color changes. If you buy something people first clean it but before you reach home it is covered in dust again.

People here say the dust gives free powder to women so we look more beautiful. I always say I feel more like a traditional warrior with it, you can draw patterns on your face! Your shoes are immediately covered and people go around with towels to clean them before entering an important office. Bike guys wear hats that cover their entire heads, women put a wrapper around their heads and clothes, we try everything to protect ourselves from dust.

The dust is the biggest problem when we travel. If you happen to have a truck in front of you, you can’t see anything because of the dust. When you drive you can’t open the windows because of the dust, but the sun shines so the car becomes like an oven. The ventilation of the car also brings in clouds of dust. So we try to leave very early before the sun really shines. In some parts the dust is so thick that we need our four-wheel drive to be able to climb the hills in it, or we just start sliding like in the mud.

My own road is manageable from my house down to the market. A small stream passes so people water the road every day; they take buckets of water from the stream and throw it on the road (yes, causing mud that makes you slip). But in places where no stream passes, or where no people live right beside the roads, the dust wins all battles. The only thing we can do is to wait for rain, and mud…