ST. THOMAS, JAMAICA: Big improvement Morant Bay Primary literacy up 33 per cent following initiative to help slow learners to read... moved from 54 per cent five years ago, to 81 per cent. FIND OUT HOW THEY DID IT.

BY INGRID BROWN Associate editor - special assignment browni@jamaicaobserver.com  Monday, June 09, 2014    

THE literacy rate at Morant Bay Primary School in the St Thomas capital has moved from 54 per cent five years ago, to 81 per cent.

Teacher and students reading session

This, according to Principal Esther McGowan, is a direct result of the decision to hire a literacy specialist to help the hundreds of students who were struggling with reading. It is not mandatory, but given her school's own experience, McGowan swears by the skill of the specialist educator.

"A couple years ago I realised that literacy was not where we would have liked it to be and so we came together as a staff and decided we had to do something," she told the Jamaica Observer North East.

So, despite limited resources, McGowan and her team got creative and transformed a vacant teacher's cottage into a resource centre and engaged the services of a literacy specialist in 2008.

This student gets ready to begin
 reading this book.

The intervention has been so successful that the school is projecting its literacy rate will move up to 90 per cent when this year's Grade Four Literacy Test results are announced.

The literacy specialist Fay Lindsay told the newspaper that the class size of 40-plus students was too large for some of the students.

"So, we decided that a pull-out session would be better so I could work with smaller groups," she said.

Explaining how the programme works, Lindsay said class teachers of grades two to five are asked to identify students who are really struggling and refer them to the resource centre. At least 36 students from each grade are enrolled in the programme.

These boys enjoy reading books at
 the literacy fair.

"We would try to keep each session small with no more than 12 students at a time, as taking them out of a bigger group helps to cater to their different learning styles," Lindsay explained, adding that the students are exposed to 50-minute reading sessions three times weekly.

Diagnostic testing, according to Lindsay, has revealed that some of the students have serious learning disabilities, including autism. But, she said, even those who have been so diagnosed are doing well, even if they are not succeeding in standardised tests. more