My Corner for Education

We run an extra-curricular activity twice a week after school forstudents who are not strong in reading. It was made clear to us that it is impossible to improve their reading abilities in two months (20 hours);however, we hope that their attitude towards reading will bechanged at the end of this two-month program. All the students admitted to the program are lacking behind their peers in reading. Some ofthem are also showing behavior problems in class.

According to some research, boys tend to learn differently thangirls. Many testing results also proved that boys’ readingperformances lack behind girls’ at the elementary school (K toGrade 8) level; therefore, we decided to group all boys togetherinto groups of five or six. We focus on media literacy thatencompasses reading materials full of a variety of topicsand interests. Students are taught to read instructions foractivities such as games, recipes, science experiments, tourbrochures, and arts and craft.

So far, I could tell that boys in the small group learn welltogether. In fact, they are better listeners than girls in thesmall group. Girls tend to socialize a lot through out the sessionand forget that their task at hand is to read the instruction andcomplete the activity. Boys, on the other hand, are very taskoriented. They want to finish reading the instruction and get tothe hands-on activity as soon as possible. It was very obvious thatboys are very interested in this type of reading program followedwith hands-on activity.

We did a survey before launching the program to find out theirattitude towards reading and how they see themselves as a reader.Before the end of this program in June, we will conduct another oneto measure if there is any significant change in their attitudetowards reading. It would be interesting to see the result. We hopethis program will make a difference to inspire a few more studentsto enjoy reading.



Program Time: two hours a week (total 20 sessions)
Target Group: Boys and Girls from Grade 2 to Grade 5 with readingdifficulty
Number of Students: 48 (24 for primary panel and 24 for junior panel)
Number of Teachers: 8 (4 for primary and 4 for junior)
Rotation: students stay with each teacher for two sessions (two hours) and rotate through all four teachers. Total of two rotations for the two month period


Theme: Media Literacy
Content: reading instructions accompanying with hands-onactivities
• Script for Readers’ Theater
• Recipe for cooking
• Experiment for Science
• Board game
• Arts and Crafts
• Comics
• Tour Brochure
• Jokes
• Coupons or Flyers
• Other reading materials that children may be exposed to on adaily basis

Daily Agenda:
10 minutes for Small snack and drink
40 minutes for instructional and activity time
15 minutes for reflection journal writing
5 minutes for clean up and dismissal