 |
| Koriki Uniskript Alphabet |
Teaching literacy to kids using a new alphabet in a language
I do not speak was always going to be a full on but fun time… and it was! Over 18
days of classes, we played games, practised writing using water on the floor
(finger painting!), built words with flash cards and read books to the class.
We covered eight of the sounds in the alphabet and were working on building and
recognising words, with surprising success. I had to leave before the summer
school ended (Highlands meetings and transport challenges), so am still waiting
to hear the final report from Debbie and Robbie who finished the sessions with
my class.
The primary idea behind Uniskript is to make the connection
between sounds and symbols easier for beginning learners to grasp. This is done
through the bridge of what your mouth is doing and the shape of the symbol on
the page. The Koriki Uniskript alphabet uses familiar shapes from local life.
Instead of talking about vowels, we taught about arrows. Other
shapes were based on bows, fish traps and an armband. The number of arrows in a
symbol reflects how wide open your mouth is when you say a sound. [i] is one
arrow as the mouth is long and skinny
when you say [i], skinny enough to be covered by one finger and [e] is two
arrows as it can be covered with two fingers. In teaching these sounds we
taught the children to use their fingers to measure their mouths and used
stories about one arrow in the ‘ivi’ (local fruit) to help make the connection
between the [i] sound and the sounds in ‘ivi’. Along the way I learnt how to
count to three in Koriki as well as assorted other helpful words. We also all
ended up talking with our hands, as we mimed sounds and connected them to
symbols.
 |
| Writing practise... or fingerpainting |
We created sentence length ‘stories’ for all the letters, to
hopefully help beginning learners build the bridge between sound and shape. The
goal was to connect the item the shape was based on, the sound in the word and
to sometimes include what the mouth is doing when it makes that sound. The
prime example of this is the sentence which meant ‘When I put the mango on my
lips, it got on my nose’. Ma’a is the word for mango and [m] is a sound (and a
shape) made with the lips and the nose… a bilabial nasal for the phonetically
inclined. These stories, and others we’d used in the teaching process, all came
together in a locally illustrated book, created to encourage further reading
and given out as a gift at the final graduation.
 |
| Home office... the generator must be off, as all the people have disappeared! |
We spent a lot of time creating books for the language
group, as what point is literacy without reading materials? Most of the books
we created were from a framework known as shell books. These come with
illustrations and a story in place, we ‘just’ had to translate them. Robbie had
several pre-translated books on file, but we also worked with our trainee
teachers to translate, check and edit several more. The other books we made
were the stories-for-teaching and an alphabet dictionary. As we worked on these
books, we were incredibly thankful for the people behind shell books and
clipart, as well as for software, laptops, scanners, printers and generators
that made book production possible and fans that stopped us workers from
melting down. In a few weeks we created over ten titles and several hundred printed
books.
When working at a beginning level in a new programme, it can
be hard to see what we achieved. We can count attendance days and books
printed. We can record training hours for both our teachers and our students,
but the long term impact on literacy in Koriki, and eventually in English, is
as yet unknown. I can see great potential for Uniskript, as long as teachers
continually make the symbol-sound-mouth connection that is the strength of this
approach. If they do not, it is just another alphabet and justifies the
questioning by those who ask how an additional step in learning can possibly by
beneficial in becoming literate. |
| Weighed down by generosity |
One benefit of Uniskript that I did not expect was the
community pride in having their very own script and being the first in the
country to have a Uniskript programme in place. This community from the
jungle-swamp of Gulf Province held their heads up and their language in high
regard.
One overwhelming thing, which cannot truly be measured, was
the generosity of the parents towards
us. Melanie* and I were weighed down with gifts when it was time for us to
depart. Bags, spoons, pineapples, coconuts, bananas, head-dresses, pig tusks…
so many things that were given to us to say thank you for giving our time,
skills and resources to helping their children become literate and their
language be unique. It is a subjective assessment, but I think the parents
liked what we did with Uniskript. The kids certainly enjoyed the books!
*Somehow I have failed to name Melanie until nearly the end.
My fellow swimmer in the literacy/Uniskript deep end, she looked after one of
the more advanced classes, mentoring trainee teachers and working long and hard
on book production. She was the fourth member of our team, the people behind
the ‘we’ in this blog post.
