By Babatunde Ayedoju 

The Ondo State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), in conjunction with the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), has organised a one week training for Ondo State public primary school teachers on jolly phonics. 

The training which began in Ondo State in 2012 is conducted under the Teachers Professional Development Programme of UBEC.

Speaking with The Hope at the flag-off of the training in Akure on Monday, the Director of Training in SUBEB, Mrs. Comfort Monilari, said that the training which covers 1,250 teachers across the three senatorial districts in Ondo State was designed to make reading and writing both easy and enjoyable for public school pupils in the state.

Mrs. Monilari said that the programme which takes place yearly has been very effective and has yielded tremendous results in Ondo State public schools, especially in the rural areas.

The Jolly Phonics Desk Officer, Mrs. Olayinka Ogundare, explained that jolly phonics is about using letter sounds to teach pupils reading and writing, instead of alphabetic letters, saying that it improves learners’ reading and writing skills.

She said, “In jolly phonics, pupils learn to spell according to sound, not according to letters, because letters are a bit confusing to lower learners. When pupils spell with sounds, reading and writing become easy and interesting to them. The essence of this training, therefore, is to train teachers who will in turn teach their pupils, using jolly phonics. 

We are currently training 1,250 teachers; 250 from kindergarten, 500 from primary one and 500 from primary two”

While stating that reading and writing skills of pupils had improved across public schools in Ondo State since the state keyed into the programme in 2012, Mrs. Ogundare added, “hardly will you find primary one and two pupils in Ondo State public schools who cannot read and write.”

One of the facilitators, Seyi Alake, from Universal Learning Solutions Initiatives, described jolly phonics as a concept of teaching pupils letter sounds so that reading and writing become easy for them because children decode letter sounds easily.

“The selection of participants was done by SUBEB and the training is taking place in Akure, Ondo town, Owo, Ikare and Okitipupa. For the first three days, we are training teachers in Akure, Ondo and Owo, then from Thursday to Saturday Okitipupa and Ikare,” he added.

One of the participants, Mrs. Esther Fajenyo, who said that she had applied everything she learnt in the previous edition and got positive feedback from her pupils, added that she was poised to learn more from this edition so that she could impart more knowledge in her pupils.