READING ROCKS!

A STORY-TELLING hour that started as a volunteer activity for children of the Pakistan School has developed into a pioneering community project thanks to a group of dedicated volunteer mums.

The programme entitled 'Reading Rocks' is in its second year at the Isa Town-based school and has injected a love of reading among pupils and has now attracted the attention of literacy professionals on the island ... and a group of St Christopher's School senior students have also joined hands to help.

Pakistani volunteer and mother-of-three, Farah Khan is actively involved with the programme. In fact, she and new mum Sadia Mian, are the architects of Reading Rocks.

Farah explained: "It all started when some of us members of Pakistan Women's Association (PWA) visited the school last year to see where we could contribute to help raise the standard of the institution.

"PWA regularly runs a drive to collect book donations for the school's library and we noticed that these books were not being used.

"So we decided to start working at the library and soon discovered that young children were not making the most of the facility.

"We saw the need to improve the English reading skills of the younger children and channelled our energy in that direction.

"In a class of 30 to 35 pupils it is very difficult for the teacher to focus on every single student individually and we decided to fill that gap."

Spurred by the desire to make a difference, 12 volunteering mothers who have children going to leading British and American schools on the island started visiting the school once a week to read story books to pupils of Year 1.

Initially they started story-telling to get the children involved. They catalogued the books donated by the community and developed their own early readers programme custom-made for the six-year-olds.

Despite being short on professional reading aids, the group gradually incorporated flash cards and guided creative expression by drawing pictures about each book to encourage the young ones to become excited about reading.

Some of the volunteers are trained teachers while others are part of the parent reading programme at St Christopher's School in Saar and drew from their experience to help the children develop their reading skills.

Reading Rocks caught the attention of education consultant, Amanda Collins who works for Nord Anglia, a UK-based education consulting company, in Bahrain.

She lent her expertise by guiding on how to best implement the programme with available resources. She set up two teacher training workshops and another workshop for the volunteer mothers and helps with the programme when required.

Ayesha Khan, resident of Saar and one of the early volunteers, said: "The library period was a time when children mostly watched television as downtime from their textbooks. So when we started the programme and put beautifully illustrated books in front of the children they didn't know what to do with it. They only associated books with textbooks. Initially they were confused as to why they should read a book that is not included as part of their learning curriculum."

A year into the Reading Rocks exercise, the attitudes of these 110 pupils, who moved into Year 2 in April, towards story books, has remarkably changed from indifference to enjoyment.

Apart from developing a love for reading the programme has broadened their horizons. The children are beginning to think 'out of the box' and are coming up with their versions of storybook endings. Reading Rocks also subscribes to an educational website for teacher support in literacy.

Farah, who has taken the responsibility of co-ordinating and running the scheme at the school, added: "We wanted to stay with the same year group and take them up to see the difference. This year we had students ask if they could take their favourite book home to show their parents. So this week was the first time when children have actually taken books out from the library. They are very excited. It is a moment of success for us!"

The excitement was palpable among the young ones as they clutched their colourful tomes while waiting for their books to be checked out at the library's reception.

Zainab Habibullah, seven, said that she would take her favourite Cinderella book home to read.

Most of the students at the Pakistan School, which runs an English curriculum, come from large families with limited economic resources; some parents have limited English language skills and cannot afford new books.

The neighbouring St Christopher's Senior School found out about the scheme through one of the volunteer mothers and wanted to join hands to help.

The school was forthcoming in sharing its resources with the reading group especially its human resources.

Since October, 15 International Baccalaureate students have been working alongside the volunteer group as part of their Community Action Service (CAS) course work. The school has trained the young boys and girls for the weekly interactive literacy session. The programme has become so popular that even some A' levels students have given up their free time to help.

Pakistan School pupils have also benefited in more ways than reading. Year 1 pupil, Haleema Faqir, seven, has a hearing disability and suffers from permanent nerve damage in both ears.

Her hearing aid had become outdated and was doing her more harm than good. Her condition went unnoticed at home and at school but was picked up by volunteer mum, Uzma Yousuf who drew the group's attention to the little girl's plight.

Farah said: "Despite the hearing aid, Haleema had never heard a consonant sound in living memory and her limited speech comprised of vowels only. After consultations with doctors, Haleema now has a BD600 digital hearing aid that was funded through PWA.

"After receiving speech therapy she can now hear between 80-90 per cent of a normal hearing person's capacity. Similarly, we have another boy who we feel may need glasses and we are planning to take him for a consultation."

The Reading Rocks team feels that although their focus remains solely on helping students develop a love for reading, cases like Haleema are impossible to ignore.

The volunteers are now discussing the need to implement 'Health Rocks', a campaign that will enable them to source the voluntary services of health professionals to carry out basic health, eye and hearing checks on students.

But the success of any community effort depends on the commitment and the consistency of volunteers. The team plans on taking a new group of Year 1 students at the start of the next academic school year in April.

"You need to start early if you want children to develop a reading habit which will stay with them for the rest of their lives," said Farah.