2024 Phonics Update Jolly Phonics offers a fun, child-centred approach to teaching English through letter sounds, which is especially important in Ethiopia where all secondary school subjects are taught in English — yet students often lack even the basic foundations under traditional methods focused on alphabets and dictation. Together We Learn began working with Jolly …
2023 Phonics Update Together We Learn started working with Jolly Phonics in 2013 (formerly as Link Ethiopia), initially as our ‘Libraries and Literacy’ project. The project’s aim has always been to improve the English literacy skills of children in Ethiopia by training their teachers in the Jolly Phonics teaching method. Jolly phonics helps teachers to teach English …
Why use phonics? Teaching English using phonics teaches children to read by recognising the sounds that makeup words instead of memorising whole words or learning letter names. For example, cat has three sounds ‘c’ ‘a’ and ’t’ and chair has two sounds ‘ch’ and ‘air’. This method is now part of the national curriculum in …
Book Distribution and Library Training in Gondar Access to reading materials is very important to the lives of the young people we work with. Across the country, many children do not have books at home. Those that do have access to books learn to read earlier, have a better chance of staying in school and …
What is phonics? Together We Learn has been partnering with Jolly Phonics to train Ethiopian teachers to use the phonics method of teaching English. Instead of memorising words, children are taught the 42 sounds of English, which include the 26 alphabet sounds plus sounds such as ‘ch’ ‘sh’ ‘ee’ and ‘ay’. Teaching children these sounds …
Our 2021 Update Gendit is a small village 35km outside of Gondar in rural Amhara. When Together We Learn first began working with Gendit school, it consisted of one mud and wood classroom with a blackboard but no desks or chairs. In Ethiopia, the government is committed to universal primary education and works with communities …
Our 2020 Update Gendit is a small village 35km outside of Gondar in rural Amhara. When Together We Learn first began working with Gendit school, it consisted of one mud and wood classroom with a blackboard but no desks or chairs. In Ethiopia, the government is committed to universal primary education and works with communities …
An Update on our Early Years English Improvement Project Teaching English makes you think a lot about how words are spelt and how they sound. Words like tough, bough, cough and dough look similar but sound completely different. And starting from the other direction, words like sight and site sound the same but don’t look …
Teacher Training: Fenta’s Story In a national assessment, the Ethiopian Ministry of Education found that six in ten grade 4 students have a ‘below basic’ proficiency in English. This is a problem because when students move to secondary school, all lessons are taught in English. Many teachers themselves struggle with English as their second language …
Written by Alan Taylor. I was delighted to be back in Gondar to attend the ceremony which formally closed Link’s Library Improvement Programme after three successful years. The Library Improvement Programme was launched in 2014 to help libraries in local schools which were often not well used to support teaching and learning. 26 schools from …