Reading Resources = Improved Vocabulary

Esther reads the word ‘mark’ as ‘make’. And Doreen reads, ‘curious’ as ‘carious’. The two courageous girls are among the best readers at Ibanda Primary school in the Kikuube district of mid-western Uganda. They can read but mechanically for their colleagues, with much confidence and love although they cannot explain the meaning of most of the words they can read. They are new words, they say. One of STEPi’s Engagement Community Coordinators, Uncle Books, in a respectful manner, takes on the phonetics of the new hard words, collaboratively with the entire class, using a game of reading that connects letters and sounds to generate words and their right pronunciations. And in a blink of an eye, the entire class can read curious as curious and mark as mark. This is what we are doing in the rural schools we are working in. Transformative reading.

Using STEPi books to generate learning opportunities for all children. We are inspiring children to enjoy story books while creating vocabulary banks. We task them to learn every word they can read and be able to use it in their daily communication. We read to learn and grow. In schools where there are no dictionaries, our books like Amani the Boda-Boda Rider have glossaries so we refer them to use it and above all seek the help of their teachers. Children everywhere love books and love reading, but it is evident that they have not been exposed to reading resources with as many English words as possible to expand on their vocabulary base. Imagine if they would read only five new words every day, research these words and learn their meanings. This would translate into accumulative 1825 words per year and by the time they finish primary school, they would have mastered most of the words in the English language and would improve their communication, comprehension and learning outcomes and thus better academic performance. We are encouraging these transformative actions through our accelerated reading programs.

Written By:
Micheal Nelson Byaruhanga “AKA Uncle Books”
STEPi Engagement Coordinator: Uganda