Ar­row Foun­da­tion com­plet­ed yet an­oth­er suc­cess­ful project in Feb­ru­ary when 20 stu­dents from Wood­brook Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School grad­u­at­ed from its lit­er­a­cy in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme.

Ar­row's im­pact was clear­ly ev­i­dent from the ex­u­ber­ant smiles on the faces of the stu­dents, as sev­er­al were able to im­prove their vir­tu­al read­ing and spelling ages by 12 months or more, af­ter on­ly eight hours of Ar­row train­ing.

As stu­dent Am­ber Fran­cis ex­plained, "Us­ing the com­put­er to learn was a lot of fun, es­pe­cial­ly hear­ing my own voice and I can read and write much bet­ter now. I am very proud that I am do­ing bet­ter in class and I wish that every child could get this chance to im­prove."

De­vel­oped over 40 years ago in the Unit­ed King­dom by Dr Col­in Lane, Ar­row stands for Au­r­al-Read-Re­spond-Oral -Write, a re­lease said. The tech­nique is fo­cused on read­ing, spelling, dic­ta­tion, speech and lis­ten­ing skills which pro­duce sig­nif­i­cant re­sults in per­sons with learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties. The com­put­er-based learn­ing al­so ap­plies use of the self-voice–a record­ing of the learn­er's own voice–which forms the ba­sis of the mul­ti-sen­so­ry learn­ing ap­proach.

The lo­cal Ar­row Foun­da­tion is a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion op­er­at­ing for the past decade and has es­tab­lished an en­vi­able record of ac­com­plish­ment, hav­ing trans­formed the lives of thou­sands of chil­dren in schools across T&T. The ben­e­fits de­rived in­clude sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creas­ing lit­er­a­cy lev­els, speech im­prove­ment, build­ing self-es­teem and im­prov­ing be­hav­iour.

The Foun­da­tion has be­come a key part­ner for var­i­ous pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor cor­po­ra­tions that in­vest in ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing BP T&T, Methanex Trinidad Lim­it­ed, Cit­i­zen's Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme and At­lantic, which spon­sored the train­ing at Wood­brook Pres­by­ter­ian.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Ar­row Foun­da­tion, Christo­pher Bon­terre, praised the ef­forts of the spon­sors in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the de­liv­ery of the pro­gramme to the stu­dents. "Hav­ing that lev­el of sup­port pro­vides us with the im­pe­tus to con­tin­ue to meet the ed­u­ca­tion­al needs of the na­tion's chil­dren. These spon­sors share our vi­sion for trans­form­ing the na­tion one child at a time, and they dra­mat­i­cal­ly ex­pand our abil­i­ty to help stu­dents across Trinidad and the sis­ter isle of To­ba­go," Bon­terre point­ed out.

One of Ar­row's main ar­eas of fo­cus is rais­ing self-es­teem through lit­er­a­cy im­prove­ment which has proved to be a vi­tal bench­mark in ad­dress­ing be­hav­iour­al prob­lems in stu­dents. Bon­terre not­ed that in­ter­na­tion­al re­search has shown that much of the ag­gres­sive be­hav­iour found in schools is root­ed in stu­dents' aca­d­e­m­ic fail­ure and the frus­tra­tion this man­i­fests. "When stu­dents are able to read and write prop­er­ly, they feel bet­ter about them­selves, en­abling them to en­gage in more pur­pose­ful and ful­fill­ing ac­tiv­i­ties," he ex­plained.

This trend was con­firmed by Wood­brook Pres­by­ter­ian's act­ing prin­ci­pal, Ter­rence Choutie, who in­di­cat­ed that from his ex­pe­ri­ence in ed­u­ca­tion, many stu­dents who need to be cor­rect­ed or dis­ci­plined for in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour at school of­ten have lit­er­a­cy prob­lems. Choutie not­ed that rais­ing lit­er­a­cy lev­els was a pos­i­tive way of curb­ing un­want­ed be­hav­iour in stu­dents.

MORE

On the work be­ing done by the Ar­row Foun­da­tion, vis­it on­line at www.ar­rowtt.com or call 624-9063.