The Ministry of Education on Friday launched a series of locally produced textbooks designed to accelerate literacy acquisition at the primary level.
According to a Department of Public Information (DPI) report, the Atlantic Reader Series Books 1-6 were launched at the Redeemer Primary School, where Minister of Education Priya Manickhand said that it will contribute to the overarching goal of ensuring literate children by Grade 4
“So today, we hope with the launch of this Atlantic Reader series, we hope to remove ourselves quickly from that 52 per cent of children around the world who are not reading at an appropriate grade level,” she was quoted as saying by DPI.
Chief Education Officer Dr Marcel Huston also stated that the series of books was produced after brief research was done years ago to determine the level of literate students in the early primary education programme
“So, this is not something today, it’s a work in progress, and minister asked us to do that. Now after that happened, we had to now search for ways to mitigate the poor performance, we had to now search for ways to improve this poor performance and so it was the brainchild of the minister, she commissioned the writing of the Atlantic Readers in 2012,” he added.
According to the report, Manickchand also announced that the Atlantic Reader series will be translated into Spanish to accommodate the Spanish speakers in Guyana, and also into Wapichan and other locally-spoken indigenous languages.
Assistant Chief Education Officer (Literacy) Samantha Williams explained that the idea of the Atlantic Reader series was born in 2012 and entrusted to local writers to meet the “cultural complexities” of Guyana, while considering the “demographic uniqueness” of all Guyanese children.
“They are designed to move the Guyanese learners across a reading continuum to enable them to become skillful readers,” she stated.
The report said the book series used a thematic approach to address the challenges with reading while maintaining critical life skills development by incorporating elements of health and family life education. Additionally, the books show teachers how to integrate reading with the other subject areas to provide multiple opportunities for learners to acquire similar concepts.
