Rihana’s Story

I am Rihana Nowfar from Oddamavady Zahira Vidyalaya. I got my teaching appointment in 2017. But In my career, I only got a chance to attend my first workshop in Trincomalee in 2018. It was conducted by the PMID team. That was my first workshop in English. That was the turning point in my teaching career.

I learnt so many new things from them. During the COVID time they also conducted workshops via Zoom where I learnt phonics and how to implement this in the class room.

After that , I started to apply the method in my classroom. First I practiced phonemic awareness activities based on the sixteen themes in Activity based oral English. At the end of grade 2 I started the eight weeks Lotus phonics program. And then, I revised the phonics when they came to grade three.

Then, I continue phonics lessons while doing let’s learn English too. For example in ‘Our beautiful garden’  I give extra activities related to phonics too. Also I guide my students to decode new words to read, finding new words and high frequency words from the text.

When I started teaching phonics the very first time some parents were confused. Because they couldn’t understand what I was doing in my classroom. Previously students learnt letter names in alphabet order even in pre-schools too. So, I gave an awareness talk on phonics for parents when their children come to grade three.

So, teaching phonics has been an incredibly fulfilling experience. It’s exciting to see my students develop the skills they need to become confident, independent readers, and I’m eager to continue supporting their literacy journey. My heartiest thank to the PIMD team for make my teaching journey wonderful!