Episode 3: Helping Others Read

Summary Keywords

Read, children, volunteers, primary school, Singapore, students, phonics, home, kids, families, ReadAble, teachers, books, literacy, class, parents, problem, learn, education

0:13 Host, Loh Chin Ee

For most of us, reading a book or newspaper is a simple daily task. Learning to read, however, is not easy. Neither is it natural. We learned in Episode 2, that the reading brain is a complicated work of nature, developed over time to make meaning out of marks on a page. In an ideal scenario, children master English and start to read proficiently between the ages of 7 to 9. However, not all children come from literacy rich home backgrounds that support the acquisition of English reading skills.

0:48 Host, Loh Chin Ee

In this episode, I’m going to explore how educators and volunteers help children from underprivileged homes learn to read. I’m Loh Chin Ee. Welcome to the How We Read Podcast.

1:03 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Chapter One: ReadAble.

1:08 Host, Loh Chin Ee

In Singapore, several non-profit organizations help disadvantaged children learn to read. ReadAble, co-founded in 2014 by Michelle Yeo, Amanda Chong and Jonathan Muk provides reading classes for socially disadvantaged children in the Chin Swee neighborhood. Families in the area live in public rental apartments. To qualify to rent these one- or two-bedroom HDB apartments at subsidized rates, the family household income must be less than $1500 per month. A further subsidy is available, if household income is $800 or less, each month.

1:47 Host, Loh Chin Ee

ReadAble’s tagline is, “a community of passionate people who believe in beating poverty, one word at a time”. I asked Michelle Yeo, one of the co-founders of ReadAble why and how they started ReadAble.

2:06 Michelle Yeo

One of my co-founders, Jon, he invited me to help out with his church food distribution. I've always liked working with kids and reading to kids and things like that. I've always liked teaching, after a few weeks of distributing food, I started thinking about children's education, the educational system, where it's lacking and how so many of the kids we met during food distribution are perfectly bright, but really couldn't read. I was feeling a very great burden for literacy because it made me think quite deeply about how advantageous it is, especially in Singapore, and I feel disproportionately so. To be good at language, especially English, and to be good at reading and being able to absorb and analyze and use the written word meaningfully, there's a huge advantage in Singapore and conversely, it’s a huge disadvantage if we don't have it. I dropped Jon a message: “shall we see if we can start a program for the kids in this area?”

3:03 Host, Loh Chin Ee

The programme started with a small group of volunteers in 2014 and a few children in two HDB apartments.

3:11 Michelle Yeo

We started with two kids in two HDB flats. In one of HDB flats, the kid, there was a six year old boy who could not read the word dog or shop. He could recognize the word ‘I’ and ‘you’ and nothing else, and he was going to primary one the next year. For another HDB flat, there was a few primary school kids – primary three and primary four. So we did very different things with the two of them. With him, we did start on Phonics. It was a good decision, using young children's books and it was easier because he was younger also. He hadn't started primary school, and once kids start primary school, the task gets way harder, we found. He's also naturally extremely bright, and I mean extremely. So, within four months he was reading simple, like, Roald Dahl books. He went from not knowing the word ‘shop’ to reading, like, simple Roald Dahl books so he's an exceptional child.

4:05 Host, Loh Chin Ee

The volunteers brainstormed and researched, coming up with different ideas and games to help the children learn.

4:11 Michelle Yeo

We ran weekly phonics lessons with him, using some games, using attractive kiddy things. With the primary school kids, we tried to do a bit more speech and drama. We tried to make it interesting by bringing props every week, having the kids write scripts, look at scripts, put on dramas and they enjoyed that. But we did come to realize after a while that there was, like, a lot (of) other things to work on and we needed some kind of better structure in working with them. We also had one more kid, actually. There was a primary one girl who we strongly suspected might have dyslexia. This was never diagnosed, but for this, a number of volunteers looked up strategies to do with dyslexia. Kind of like, internet research, talking to people, and then every week, kind of like, did interventions with her. I remember Amanda played spelling-catching with her. I also worked quite intensively on phonics with her but using whole-of-body movement rather than sitting down at a table and reading and writing and she actually got it right after a bit.

5:12 Host, Loh Chin Ee

ReadAble has since grown to about 50 volunteers working with 70 children from the ages of 4 to 15. The weekly Saturday classes are conducted at premises provided by the Bukit Merah Family Services Center, located at the bottom of one of the blocks of rental flats. The first class starts at 9:30am and the last class ends at 5pm.

5:36 Host, Loh Chin Ee

To understand more about what the volunteers do each week, I asked if I could visit a class. I arrive early to observe the kindergarten class. Michelle has just finished with her preschool class and is waiting for parents to collect their children. There's another volunteer there, an allied educator at a Singapore primary school, who helps with some of the special needs children. We walk to Catch-plus, housed two blocks away. Catch-plus is a non-profit centre that provides free after-school care and tuition for neighborhood children, and they have kindly allocated a space for ReadAble to house a mini library and some of their resources. Joy Tan is the volunteer hosting me. She's there to collect the readers that they use with the children. Typically, she selects one book for each of the six children they will be working with. I help her to select some books from the library shelves, where the books have been arranged according to various reading levels, and we walk back to the FSC premises.

6:50 Host, Loh Chin Ee

The kindergarten session begins with circle time and is followed by the reading of a storybook. That day, there were hot dogs for the children to eat, in keeping with the theme of that day's story reading. The children are reading a book called, “Hot Rod Hot Dog” by Todd H. Doodler.

7:07 Storyteller

[Reading aloud]

7:15 Host, Loh Chin Ee

If the storytelling sounds familiar, it's because you've heard it before in Episode One of How We Read: The Bedtime Story. Children who are read to at home have opportunities to listen to the language and enjoy the reading experience. These volunteers try to replicate the ideal reading experience for these children. But unlike regular bedtime stories, it can only be done once a week.

7:45 Storyteller

[Reading aloud]

7:50 Host, Loh Chin Ee

After the snack break, the children follow the allocated volunteers into separate rooms for individual lessons. Every child has one volunteer to work with them.

8:01 Joy Tan

Usually we'll try to arrange (a) regular teacher for each of the children. The regular teacher will be able to monitor and see the progress of the child that they’re teaching. With one-on-one, we teach them a special syllabus called Fitzroy. The children read the Fitzroy book and then they do the Fitzroy worksheets.

8:18 ReadAble volunteer and beneficiary

[One-on-one reading lesson]

8:28 Joy Tan

After one-on-one, sometimes we'll have closing sessions. The parents come and pick up the kids, and the regular teachers can also pull out the parents and let them know, like, what’s the progress of the child.

8:46 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Chapter Two: A Culture of Volunteerism.

8:51 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Preparing the children to read early, encourages them for when they start primary school. Many children from non-English speaking homes lack exposure to the language. Poverty limits access to books and enrichment activities. The gift of reading opens doors to lifelong learning, and the volunteers believe that all children should have equal chances to learn to read in enjoyable ways. Dr. Tan Chee Soon is an educational psychologist currently lecturing at the Psychology and Child and Human Development Academic Group at the National Institute of Education. She explains why exposure to a target language is vital for learning to read.

9:31 Dr. Tan Chee Soon

Language is actually a very important building block when you talk about reading, because underlying reading is also the understanding of meaning and vocabulary. If a child comes from a home where there's not much literacy exposure or language exposure, then the child may not have the development of the spoken language, as well as listening skills may not be developed. So I think motivation is very important. If you think about it, if a child comes from a home where the parents don't encourage them to read, and then they're not taught to read, this is really a double whammy. This love of reading is not developed. Then they don't have enough practice, and when they don't have enough practice they don't progress as much as their peers. So over time, what’s going to happen is that the gap between them and their peers will be greater and greater. And that to me is very worrying.

10:23 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Michelle affirms Chee Soon’s view of the importance of the home environment. As English is the official language of education and business in Singapore, being able to read and communicate in English is vital.

10:37 Michelle Yeo

That’s a major, major disadvantage. It gets so much harder once they start primary school. If they start primary school without proper intervention right, so they go in, not really being able to speak English, not having any reading skills, they feel like failures from the first day. They don't understand what's going on. They get worksheets, they can’t read the instructions. Sometimes teachers are not so understanding, and then they receive the message every day, not just from the classroom setup but sometimes also from the adults in their lives, that they are bad, that they are stupid. All kinds of negative beliefs about themselves and their abilities start to seep in, and they take root very quickly.

11:18 Host, Loh Chin Ee

I've seen just how dedicated the volunteers at ReadAble are from my visit. Joy, who hosted my visit shared how and why she started volunteering at ReadAble.

11:28 Joy Tan

In 2017, I saw a Channel NewsAsia article on early children's education, and they are running a volunteer program here at Jalan Kukoh for children who come from poor and needy families. I've always been quite passionate about children's education, and I believe that education is the way that children can come out of poverty. I feel that this is a calling. This is really what I've always wanted to do. My biggest joy is to see them being able to grow and to become, like, not only better in literacy, but also as a person, and with their own values, and to become their own person.

12:13 Host, Loh Chin Ee

ReadAble is far more sprawling now, and it's heartening to hear how so many individuals volunteered their time and expertise to help. Michelle tells us about how different volunteers bring their expertise, ideas, and time to the group.

12:27 Michelle Yeo

We have far more volunteers, far more kids of all ages. We have kids from four to fifteen years old. So we have many classes. All the classes are differently set up. I've got one Reggio practitioner on board. That's the Reggio Emilia method, which I'm a big fan of, for early childhood education. She's great. She is very, very helpful. She gives us ideas on programmes and experiences we can create for the kids. And we've also got a lady who works with children with autism, and then a bunch of other volunteers who aren't necessarily early childhood or education experts. We listen to the people who know best and get them to advise and give us ideas on what to do with the kids. That's kind of how we've always been running, I feel.

13:15 Host, Loh Chin Ee

It's all about teamwork. In each member, knowing that what they do, can help someone read.

13:23 Michelle Yeo

Our other members of our core team, some of these volunteers are extremely dedicated. We have one lady. She helped us to start up the numeracy arm of ReadAble. It’s called CountAble. And this lady, she's the headmistress in a Thai international school and she moved back to Singapore. She just reached out to us cold, and with her we started CountAble. She is extremely dedicated. She's just pulled the whole thing together and if she wants something to be done and no one else is doing it, she’ll just do it. I think what I'm trying to say is, we really rely on the hands of many people. And for the co-founders, we just need to ensure proper communication and coordination. The community's amazing.

14:02 Host, Loh Chin Ee

From her years of volunteering, Michelle knows early intervention is key for underprivileged children in learning to read. The students who start with ReadAble before entering primary school have the best chances of being school-ready.

14:21 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Chapter Three: Helping Others Read

14:25 Host, Loh Chin Ee

In 1965, the year of its independence, Singapore's literacy rate was 60%. In 1980. It was above 80%. And since 2016. It's been over 97%. Singapore has been extraordinarily successful at teaching Singaporeans to read. Here's more evidence of how successful the education system has been. The PISA OECD 2018 data shows that Singapore's socio-economically disadvantaged students score higher on the literacy test than the international average. The number of students who have the necessary core competencies to participate fully in society are almost twice the OECD average at 43%. That's the good news. The not-so-good news is that since 2009, these socio-economically disadvantaged students continue to underperform compared to advantaged students by a wide margin. This is not surprising. Students from higher income homes typically have better educated parents who can provide literacy support and greater access to resources. Chee Soon suggests some ways to help children who aren't reading well. Identifying the problem correctly and providing teachers with the knowledge and skills to help children is one way to start.

15:49 Dr. Tan Chee Soon

First of all you have to figure out where their problem is. So, assuming that their problem is reading fluency. If they have have developed phonics skills, for example, they are able to recognize, make the letter-sound correspondence, they can blend words, but their problem is only in the area of oral reading fluency, there are many things that schools and parents can do. What is most important is that we give the students many opportunities to read and to practice. A lot of times I see in the classrooms where teachers ask the students to read in chorus, choral reading. That may boost the confidence of students who are afraid to read, but sometimes when I'm observing the students, they are just opening and closing their mouths, and they really don't know what is on the shared book that is being projected on the screen. It's important for such students to get more personal attention from the teacher, where the teacher can actually model the reading, so the child knows what is the target areas. And when the child begins to read, the teacher actually gives immediate feedback and makes error corrections immediately.

16:54 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Learning to read is not just the responsibility of the English teacher, all teachers can help. The social studies teacher, the science teacher, and even the math teacher.

17:07 Dr. Tan Chee Soon

When a child doesn't do well in the word problem, the problem may not be the child has problems with the calculations. The problem is the child may not be able to first read what the word problem is about, and then after that figure out what does the word problem want them to do. For such teachers, if you have such students in class, you may want to read the problem to all the students. Or if you think that not everyone in the class requires that kind of help then read to that particular student who needs extra help, and then check that the student understands what the problem is. So ask the child to repeat. Okay, what is it that I need to do for this problem? And then after that just monitor and see whether they can solve. So don't let the child work independently until you're sure the child knows and understands the problem.

17:56 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Working in smaller groups or in one-to-one settings can also benefit some children.

18:01 Dr. Tan Chee Soon

For children from less advantaged families or who don't come from English-speaking homes, you will teach them systematically how to read. The progress that they make is actually very encouraging. It is when children have a learning disability, that's where their progress comes more difficult. Therefore, they need more intensive support. For some children, instead of working in a large group like eight students, they can receive support in a smaller group like two or three students.

18:30 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Michelle explains why it's often so challenging to work with students who come from disadvantaged homes.

18:37 Michelle Yeo

The environments that the kids come from are quite challenging. Their homes tend to be quite small, housing large families. We can be looking at seven family members in a 25 square meter room, which is really insufficient for anyone, let alone for growing children. We have to take a more holistic approach with them. Because a kid is not going to learn the letter C, /k/-/k/-cat, if they don't know what a cat is. Especially with the younger kids, we have to use strategies with them that you might not use as much. With children from middle-income family backgrounds or English-speaking family backgrounds, where they could maybe launch straight into phonics learning. I know kids from well-off families who speak very well but don't read. And so the mother signed them up for a three-month phonics crash course and then by the end of it, they're reading books. That's not how it works with our kids. With our kids, we do need to start with interacting with them, talking to them, playing with them. So then they learn holistically.

19:43 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Reading well today is not just about being able to score good grades. It's about acquiring a skill necessary for navigating the online world of mass media and information, and being able to bootstrap one’s lifelong learning. Some children have a head start, especially when their parents are highly educated or have the resources to pump into extra classes. In my own research, I've coined the term “intensive immersion” to describe the home practices that middle-class, often well-educated parents engage in to develop their children’s literacy skills. They surround their children with books, bring them to the library, and role-model reading by being readers themselves. However, parents who are less educated or work long hours may not be able to provide the same kinds of resources. This is why the work of volunteers, such as Michelle and Joy, is crucial to plugging the reading gap before and during their primary school years. After six years of running ReadAble, Michelle is convinced that volunteer work alone is not enough to solve the learning needs of children from disadvantaged homes.

20:53 Michelle Yeo

Our volunteers are often not used to this, including the ones who are professional educators. A takeaway from all this has been that the needs that we face are quite deep and broad, and when you're just relying on people who are doing this out of goodwill right, I don't know that it’s enough to plug the systemic gaps, you know. The families need way more than volunteers can offer. We are only working with a small neighborhood, a small cross section of children in Singapore but there are so many more families out there, it will really take systemic movement to reach. There are huge forces out there that volunteerism can’t deal with. There are way too many forces operating in the kids’ lives that people who come in once a week to teach them the ABCs can't do anything about. That's actually my big takeaway from ReadAble, that our efforts are not enough.

21:41 Host, Loh Chin Ee

A compassionate society should create equitable opportunities for learning to read. We are all familiar with the term equality. It means that all students can aspire to the same goals. But such a view forgets that not all children have the same starting point. Equity is a term we may be less familiar with. In an equitable society, special care is taken to ensure that resources are distributed in such a way that those with less are given the same opportunities to enable them to reach similar goals as the rest of us. Children with fewer books and reading support at home should receive more help so they can start Primary School well. The question I want to leave you with today is: how can we, as individuals, as a community, as an education system, do better to help all our children learn to read well?

22:40 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Thank you for listening to the How We Read podcast episode Reading For All. This episode was written and hosted by me, Loh Chin Ee, and my thanks go to my guests for their candid sharing. For more about dyslexia, tune in to our bonus episode where we interview Edmen Leong from the Dyslexia Association of Singapore. Join me next week as we delve into the world of comic reading and explore what children and teenagers like to read. This episode was produced by Kenn Delbridge of Splice Studios. Swipe on the cover art to see show notes with links and references. We’re available on all major podcast apps. Please subscribe to be notified of new episodes and take a moment to give us a five-star review. For more information, please visit lohchinee.com.