Parents involved in Writing Programme

For the last four scholastic years Guzè Galea Boys Secondary School at Qormi has been running a literacy programme.

In consolidation with this programme, since 2001, small groups of students have been encouraged to experience organised writing workshops, based on the "writing process".

This initiative resulted after the participation of two staff members in the second writing programme organised by the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Malta together with the University of Arizona. This Writing Programme eventually was propagated by the Foundation for Educational Services.

The Writing Workshops held at Guzè Galea helped motivate reluctant students at all learning levels to read and write, while obtaining the necessary writing skills entrenched in the Writing Process.

Meanwhile reading lessons in small groups helped law achievers to gain more fluency in both Maltese and English, while learning reinforcement interventions helped certain students keep up with other students. Meanwhile numeracy lessons for small groups are also being organised, thus helping students cope with mathematical concepts.

For the last two years, meetings with parents have been held at school to promote the concept of mutual participation in writing programmes. Parents together with teachers share skills of how any parent, even if illiterate, can help and enhance the child's education.

The use of reading material commonly found at home together with all the parents' strengths, like the cultural background knowledge and their life experience, are being promoted to help achieve this.

Parents are gaining parental skills, which would enhance their child's literacy: they also participate in activities based on the Writing Process, thus gaining hands-on experience of the skills gained by their children at school.

In the coming weeks, parents are being invited to participate in Writing Workshops set to orientate them better with basic skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking.

This would provide a framework in which the concept of parents disseminating learning among themselves would be promoted. It is also intended that in the future, numeracy workshops would also be introduced for this parent-to-parent programme.

These targets could be achieved only through the full co-operation between the school's headteacher, Mr T. Caruana Smith and the administration together with a group of teachers whose zealous initiatives to organise these programmes are Ms Louise Schembri, Mr Reno Saliba, Ms Maryann Caruana for literacy and Mr John Fenech for numeracy.