By Chukwuma Ajakah

In her new book titled, “Teaching Kids to Read: A Step By Step Guide”, Educational consultant and prolific author, Josephine Oghenekevbe Ogufere provides practical tips towards surmounting the perennial problem of lackluster attitude to reading among young people.

Published in 2022 by African Writers Tribe, Teaching Kids to Read appears to be the panacea to some age-long obstacles, confronting both learners and teachers. The non-fictional easy-to- read material is designed to spice up the interest of young learners in reading activities. The book contains 10 colourfully illustrated chapters with subtitles such as: 3 Ways to Encourage Kids to Read, Phonics: an Effective Approach to Teaching Reading, Steps to Teaching Kids to Read, Decoding the Sounds of the Alphabet, Blending Phonics Sounds, Decoding Words: Using the CVC Pattern, Decoding Consonant Clusters, Sounding Words with Vowel Diagraphs and Encoding, Spelling and Reading.

Speaking on what motivated her to write the book, Josephine says: “In this book, I talk about my experience of making kids to read from as early as two years. The book will be of great help to educators, parents and teachers who desire to help kids to read.”

Apart from the junior readers and caregivers whom the phenomenal writer desires to inspire, she tells her personal story to encourage those in the teaching profession who seek job satiisfaction. Narrating her initial experience as a classroom teacher, the author writes: “I did not feel up to the task. It was one of those days that I found myself staring into thin air. The noise in the classroom that enveloped me seemed like it came from ten miles away. The weather was extremely hot, the cries from the kids were outstandingly loud and the urgent need to meet my target was enormously high. My target for the term was making my head pound like yam being beaten in a mortar. How was I going to teach all these kids to read in one term? They all seemed uninterested. I was in a world all by myself. It did not concern my boss how I made it happen, all she wanted was result at the end of the term.”

Josephine heaved a sigh of relief, albeit temporarily when-in answer to her prayers, she was deployed to the Ministry of Education to serve as a secretary to the director of accounts during her youth service year. However, on returning to the labour market after having a stint as an administrator, she found herself taking up a teaching job: “Finally, I couldn’t escape from what I had run away from all my life. Now, I had no choice. I was forced to work with kids in early years ‘by fire by force’ and since I did not have an option, I surrendered.”

As revealed in this inspiring book, Josephine did not only overcome the phobia of teaching children, she learnt how to enjoy her job to the extent that she now teaches other teachers how to be effective and to maximize the many benefits of teaching children.

The author shares her enthusiasm with readers thus: “Writing this book affords me the opportunity to teach more people how to not just teach kids to read, but to fall in love with reading and make it a skill that pays off in the end. Today, that little skill I acquired has become so great a skill that it pays some of my bills.”

Apart from being recommended as a must read for early child educators, Teaching Kids to Read should be in every home and school where young learners need to improve their reading skills.