Increasing Knowledge of Blind Students through Spelling Quizzes and Group Revisions
Oysters & Pearls-Uganda has initiated a weekly quiz competition at Gulu High School to improve the grades of Blind Annex students.
The initiative, which was kicked off this year by Ojukul Francis (O&P-UG Project Coordinator), sets students in groups of four. Each group is comprised of students chosen from senior one up to senior six. The winning group gets a prize at the end of the session.
Students who are educated using a Brailler typically do not receive corrective feedback on the writing skills, including grammer and spelling, because their sighted teachers often cannot read Braille. Their spelling is poor as a result and words are written phonetically.
Nonetheless, they are enthusiastically joining in on quiz day to sharpen spelling and compete to answer questions from past exams to ensure the best possible performance on exams.
Francis says he received numerous complaints from the blind students that sighted teachers were not spelling words for them during class which is majority sighted, ignoring the fact that they cannot see the blackboard.
“The spelling quiz competition is not only making the students improve their spellings, but also to think fast, because each group is given only ten seconds to answer a question,” Francis said.
Odoch Daniel, Head of the Special Needs Unit at Gulu High School reaffirms the advantages of the spelling quizzes to the blind students. Daniel says the exercise is vital to blind students who use advanced braille, grade II.
The Grade ll braille contracts words for quicker typing. For instance, the word knowledge is written as K, and pronounced in full. The word people is written as P, but pronounced as a full word.
Daniel notes that the spelling quizzes are enabling students to be in constant touch with words, so that their national examination grades are not affected because of misspellings.
He adds that; “Since we introduced ICT, we expect students to spell out words in full, not in contracted form”.
He states that the spelling exercises are encouraging the shy students to speak up, and with confidence.
“Putting the students in small groups encourages participation and team work. Since the groups are very small, each of them is forced to talk”.
“And of course, the prize encourages each member to cooperate, so that their group wins”.
Daniel says the unit also plans to form debating teams of the blind and visually impaired students soon. He believes that the debating competitions will enable the students to sharpen critical thinking skills and articulate issues without fear, and also perfect their public speaking skills.
Group Revisions
The organization has also come up with a group-revision system. During the group revisions, the students respond to questions taken from past national examinations in order to prepare them for forthcoming national examinations.
Francis Ojukul said the practice reduces the anxiety and fear of national examinations by acquainting the students with the kind of questions set in national examinations.
Odoch Daniel said the group revision can also include questions from subjects they are not studying, to encourage them to read widely and to be well informed.
In Uganda, blind students are kept from studying subjects like Chemistry, Geography, Biology and Physics due to lack of access to academic material such as map reading and advanced talking calculators. Blind students with interest and natural aptitude for these subjects study them in other countries where assistive materials and devices make the content accessible.
