Baacha Khan Trust Educational Foundation

Teachers’ training for Reading Skills Development

The Baacha Khan Trust Educational Foundation organized five days teachers’ training workshop at the BKTEF head office from April 16, 2018 to April 20, 2018 for the second batch of teachers of reading program.  A total of 18 teachers attended the training. Through the training, the teachers were equipped with skills, strategies, tools and techniques of reading tactics and its importance in everyday life.

Teachers of Baacha Khan School Kohat, Baacha Khan School Swabi and Baacha Khan Mardan participated in the training workshop. Dr. Khadim Hussain, Ms. Jamila Gilani and Mr. Imran Khan were the resource persons of the training workshop.

The training started with a brief overview of the participants’ expectations from the training and their responsibilities.

The modules of the training included;

1. Why Reading? Components of Reading.
2. Phonemic awareness, teaching strategy and assessment.
3. Phonics, teaching strategy and assessment.
4. Vocabulary, teaching strategy and assessment.
5. Fluency, teaching strategy and assessment.
6. Comprehension, teaching strategy and assessment.
7. Comprehension, teaching strategy and assessment.
8. Writing to learn, teaching strategy and assessment.

The training also included activities, videos, presentations and group work within the sessions. Through this training, the BKTEF aimed to equip the teachers with basic reading skills to benefit adolescent girls studying at Baacha Khan School as well as those students studying in the surrounding schools.

On the last day of the training, the participants expressed gratitude that they were able to understand the deeper concepts of reading. Furthermore, they expressed their views as stated;

• Through the training, they realized the importance of reading in the intellectual growth of a person, which they took for granted before.
• The training helped them understand the deeper concepts of reading such as aspects of reading and its impacts on a human psychology.
• The components of reading, which were essential to understand before teaching reading were well put and easily imparted.
• The resource persons created a friendly environment where everyone had the right to question and clear their concepts.
• The participants said they were going to apply the same strategies in their classes as they saw in the videos during the session.
• Overall, the participants agreed that the five days training filled them in with maximum information and served its purpose.

By the end of the training, the teachers were equipped with importance of reading , nature of reading, aspects of reading, components of reading, development of reading habits, development of reading culture, teaching strategies for reading, assessment of reading and the relationship between reading and critical thinking. It was noted that the participants had largely absorbed reading methodologies and teaching tactics in order to teach reading in their classes comprehensively. Also, the participants had been able to take in themes of the training and were satisfied with all the sessions conducted.

The training was ended with distribution of certificates and a vote of thanks by the Managing Director, Dr.Khadim Hussain.

The BKTEF was able to carry out the program with the support of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).