Local educator, Kate Munro, is working to promote the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation’s ‘Literacy is Free-dom’ campaign, which targets literacy in remote and indigenous communities and also among refugees.
“Their strategy is to try and provide early literacy training to staff and intervention for children that need it,” Kate told The Cobar Weekly.
“We know that for children who start school and don’t have previous literacy skills, gener-ally it’s very hard for them to catch up.”
Kate has 20 years of teaching experience, seven of which has been spent in the area of learning support.
The ‘Literacy is Freedom’ campaign ties in with the work that Kate’s been doing in Cobar with the Ngalii Preschool and Cobar Preschool and also at Bourke.
“Usually people think preschool is all about play so over the years there’s been a little bit of resistance to actually bring in structured programs.
“I think as time’s gone along, the curriculum is starting to change and there is starting to be the recognition amongst early educators that these pre literacy skills are really important and they can be taught in a really fun way,” Kate said.
“Cobar Preschool used the program last year and it provides training on things like breaking words into syllables, being able to recognise words in sentences, being able to count them, hearing the first sound in words, rhyming— all those really early pre literacy skills.
“We did some testing at the beginning of the year and the bulk of the kids had really picked up those skills really well.”
Kate said the feedback she’s received from the primary schools has been very favourable.
In particular, she said Cobar Public School had been so impressed with the results, they have now taken on the program and are using it in their classrooms as a follow on from what the students learnt at preschool.
“If you get in early, less children will need that literacy intervention over time,” she said.
For the past 12 months Kate has also been working on a project with the Connected Be-ginnings Bourke Early Childhood Capacity Facilitator Nichole Jenkins and the Connected Beginnings Bourke Team.
Kate wrote the content for the ‘Bourke Kids—Ready Set Read’ book and was in Bourke yesterday for the launch of the book at the Bourke and District Children’s Services as part of this year’s National Reconciliation Week activities.
Kate encourages parents to start developing literacy skills in their children early.
“If parents aren’t sure they can talk to a pre-school teacher or talk to a kindergarten teacher about things they could be potentially doing at home, and a lot of them are really easy.”
