Why is Ms Julia’s class so good at reading?

Catch our recent back-to-school quiz? We mentioned World Vision’s groundbreaking Unlock Literacy approach, which carries the fun of literacy from classroom to community and back again. It also inspired this article about literacy development in your own home here in Canada.

Or perhaps Unlock Literacy is a totally new concept for you, and you could use an explanation!

Wherever you sit, we welcome you to Ms Julia Mwewa’s classroom at Katona Primary School in Zambia. Many rural schools like this one find that despite their passion for education, literacy levels remain low for the girls and boys in attendance.

Unlock Literacy was designed to turn that around. World Vision first piloted the model almost 15 years ago. Since then, it has revolutionized primary learning for tens of thousands of girls and boys in nations around the world.

Moreover, it’s burst open doors to endless opportunities, for kids who would otherwise have been locked out of the futures they deserve.

Welcome to Katona Primary School

Using Unlock Literacy approaches, Ms Julia has adapted her teaching methods to make reading and writing more engaging, more relatable for the children in her class. For one thing, she’s written her own stories incorporating local events, pictures and happenings.

(We have yet to confirm this, but it’s likely that one of her own students is featured in the story she’s holding above!)

With Unlock Literacy, children do more than just say the words they see on the page or chalkboard. They come to understand what sentences, paragraphs and stories actually mean. They learn basic blocks of reading, such as:

• Alphabetization
• Phonemes (the sounds letters make when combined)
• Vocabular building
• Sentence construction

With the help of Ms Julia (whose Unlock Literacy training is ongoing, with monthly refreshers and frequent monitoring by World Vision and Zambia’s ministry of education) children also create their own stories, based on life experiences.

Outside of school, students can tap into reading workshops, learning camps and reading buddy programs outside of school, in programs owned by their communities and involving parents.

A program that gives back—big time

Here are more points about Unlock Literacy (picture me writing this on the chalkboard now):

We designed it to help teachers, families, caregivers and communities make learning fun, creative and centred on the needs of the child. Here’s what we’ve learned along the way:

• We have evidence that Unlock Literacy helps primary-aged children learn foundational literacy skills— even in emergency contexts where armed conflict and natural disasters have kept children out of school.
• We conducted a cost-benefit analysis of nearly 300,000 children across 28 countries to measure fluency and reading comprehension.
• We determined that for every dollar invested in our literacy programs more than $7 is generated back to local communities, such as lifetime learnings for children who participate.

Rejoicing for young learners

We celebrate that children thrive with Unlock Literacy, growing in their love of learning and dreaming big dreams for the future.

Ms Julia reports that since she implemented Unlock Literacy, her learners have become more confident, more enthusiastic and more connected to their culture. They laugh more in class and ask more questions. They talk more about “when I grow up.”

“Before the training, I found it hard to teach reading,” she says, of learning the model. “Now, I use new ways to help my pupils learn. I also write my own stories using things from our village. The children love it and they learn faster.”

With strong literacy skills and a love for study, children like these are building brighter futures for themselves and their communities.

“I enjoy learning with Ms Julia,” says 11-year-old Minim (in the middle photo above). “I want to be a teacher when I grow up, so I can help others learn too.”

I can’t wait to read that story one day.

This Christmas, not everyone will have a Ms Julia to help them learn to read. A book of their own can make all the difference to a child. See how your gift multiplies 5X in value!