Read for the Top

I attended a training session on Friday with Rod & Patricia for teachers who will be hosting the "Read for the Top" programme at their schools.  Patricia received a Rotary Grant to provide the programme in a number of schools and is having excellent results.  How it works:

All students from class 6, for example, break into teams of 5 or 6 students.  Each team is given 6 books -- 4 in English and 2 in Swahili.  All the kids read all of the books and then there is a competition, jeopardy style, with bells and all, at the end.  The teams are given new t-shirts, each team has a different colour, and there are prizes for the winning team at the end.  The school gets to keep the books and the bells and the children keep the t-shirts.

One teacher had this to say about Read for the Top when the idea was first presented by Patricia, the crazy Canadian lady, "When robbers rob somewhere, you rarely hear that a bookstore has been robbed.  Nobody likes books, isn't it?"  Kenya is not a reading culture.  Another teacher wanted to know, "how do I teach my content?"

Patricia assured the teachers that they can use the story books to teach all of their language content -- grammar, vocabulary, spelling, comprehension.  I continue to shake my head at how things are done here... how else would you teach English than by reading?

Three teachers were present from schools that have hosted the programme and all reports are extremely positive.  Not only did scores in English and Swahili rise, but truancy went down (everyone was present on Read for the Top days), and scores in other subjects increased as well.  One girl, who had been a poor student, scored 100 in math after her class participated in Read for the Top.  It was because she could now understand the question.   Some schools have adapted the programme on their own to include Social Studies, CRE (religious studies), even Science. 

The programme teaches team work and leadership skills, "the better ones boost up the self esteem of the weak ones."  A teacher told the group about a boy and a girl who "were not even able to say their names, they were too shy, but now they speak."  One school saw an improvement in their KCPE (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education) scores of 40 points, which is incredible, unheard of.

A highly competitive teacher on the Elephant Team

 As part of the training, the teachers were divided into two teams and given three short stories to read and then come up with questions.  They were the Lion team and the Elephant team.  They ran a mock competition to experience what the kids would experience and see some of the potential problems.  The competition was fierce and the teachers behaved exactly how you might think the children would -- the weaker students sitting back and letting the stronger ones answer all of the questions, arguing with the judge when a question was incorrect, giving a team member the stink eye for answering a question wrong, ringing the bell before the question is finished... it was priceless.  There was lots of laughing mixed in with the fierce competition!

It costs between $350 and $500 to deliver Read for the Top in a school depending on the size of the class.  The rewards continue well beyond the competition. 


I can't wait to see the real thing with the kids in March!

To see more, TEMBO has a video of the kids in action.