“When I did my research in 2017, I found out that a lot of Elementary school teachers want to teach and give the best to the children but the problem was that they did not have the proper materials.”
“I also found out that teachers are not teaching phonics in schools because they either don’t know how to teach phonics or don’t have the resources. “
These were the words of Ms Elizabeth Tandoa, a high school teacher who is planning on running holiday early learning classes in the month of December.
Ms Tandoa, who currently teaches Grades 9 and 10 students at Gerehu Secondary School saw that there was a great need for early learning so she started providing holiday classes since 2017.
Ms Tandoa said that as a high school teacher, she is challenged everyday with students in Grade 9 not being able to construct proper sentences and making so many grammatical mistakes.
She said that a child’s future is determined by his or her early years so parents need to be very concerned and assist their children as the foundation of learning starts effectively when they have great teachers.
Through the holiday early learning sessions, the children will learn reading, writing and numeracy and is open for children between the ages of 5 – 10 years old.
The classes will be great for children who will be starting school next year and also for students who are already enrolled in school but need that extra help in reading and writing.
Ms Tandoa said the classes will cost K200 per child and will start on 6th December, 2021 and run through the whole month of December.
She said that even though she has received over 120 registrations, she can only take in 50 students so she can effectively teach them as she only has 3 assistants to help her.
Ms Tandoa has encouraged parents to give at least 10 minutes of their time after each schooling day to check their children’s work so that they know how they are doing in school and get help for them early on if they need help before they get into primary and secondary school.
Meanwhile, parents from Kokopo, Alotau and Madang have reached out to Ms Tandoa to travel to their locations to conduct early learning classes for their children in the respective provinces.
Ms Tandoa said that one of the things she is looking forward to is publishing her book on early learning for children with the support from the Papua New Guinea Education Department which can be used to teach early learning in schools throughout the country.