Children in the kindergarten classes at the Adrian T. Hazell Primary School are excited over a newly-introduced Reading & Language Arts Programme, known as Starfall.com, which has been developed in thirty school districts across the United States over the past five years.

Kindergarten children at Adrian T. Hazel School

The system has been described as “A Reading/Language Arts curriculum that is magical, creative, sequential, integrated and combines content area instruction in Social Studies and Science.”

The programme, accessible by the young children using the well-stocked Dell computer lab at the school, was a US$1,600-gift. It was the first made available by the Anguilla Community Foundation through the Teacher Nooni Fund established in memory of the mother of Mrs. Rhona Richardson-Roydon, an early teacher at the school.

The online programme was explained by Chief Education Officer, Rhonda Connor, at a presentation ceremony on Monday this week. In attendance were Mrs. Richardson-Roydon, founder of the Nooni Fund; the recently-appointed Executive Director of the Community Foundation, Arlene Bailey-Franklin; Education Officer (Preschool and Primary), Veda Harrigan; Susan Smith, Primary School Guidance, Councillor; and Janice Connor, who sat in for the Principal, Mavis Fleming, who was otherwise education.

The dynamic Kindergarten Language Arts Programme includes opportunities for child-directed learning; target skills that are introduced and then meaningfully applied integrated and practiced repeatedly throughout the year; specially-designed lesson plans to meet the needs of English learners and struggling readers alongside their peers; interactive technology incorporating visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning; materials appropriate for kindergarten classrooms and homeschoolers; a curriculum that is teacher-tested, researched-based and meets learning standards and motivation for children to learn and have fun at the same time.

Mrs. Rhona Richardson-Roydon making presentation to Teacher Janice Connor

The Chief Education Officer, who gave a very comprehensive rundown of the programme, said in part: “It is a holistic language programme in that it covers all the different areas of language – listening, speaking, reading and writing for the kindergarten class. In addition, it incorporates some science and social studies.” She noted that the programme was used by the schools before the Community Foundation was approached for the actual curriculum.

The programme comes with non-fiction books to support science, games, stories and other reading materials, all attainable on the website at more.starfall.com.

Mrs. Connor said there were plans to introduce the online curriculum to three of the other schools.

Ms. Harrigan, the Education Officer for Preschool and Primary Education, said the reading programme would go a long way towards assisting the teachers to teach reading in a fun way to the students.

She added: “Literacy reading is one of the priority areas of the curriculum for all of the schools. The Starfall Reading Programme is an initiative of the Education Department and the schools are ensuring that each kindergarten child has an opportunity for reading.”

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