I am Khosi Mofolisa, known as Teacher Khosi. I am a qualified primary school teacher. My first teaching experience was at preschool; this is where my potential was unleashed. It came to my realization that teaching foundation phase is so close to mind, and I did whatever I could do to help the development of the young learners. The was a growing thirst in me to help children read and write from the early years of their lives. I found on google that the is a programme called Jolly Phonics, which is the effective approach to teaching children reading and writing.
Luckily I found an offer to do this course online, and before I could fully implement it to the school, I move to Thaba-Tseka district with my family. Now my new home had challenges as I knew no one to share my knowledge and skills with. Surprisingly I found a child of my neighbour doing some Jolly Phonics letter sounds and and actions. I was so curious to know how she got this, she told me about the Welsh teacher at their school who teaches them. I made arrangements to meet her.
From that time on, she has been inviting me to schools she visits, and introduced me to teachers. I started to volunteer at one school teaching grade 2 learners Jolly Phonics, that gave me an experience. Dolen Cymru Wales Lesotho link supported me with some materials and skills to carry on with my volunteering.
Eventually I signed a contract with Dolen to be a Literacy Officer, to liaise with Jolly Learning to support Jolly Phonics interventions in the country, including developing audio lessons and digital resources, support teachers with methods and strategies to teach English literacy in their schools. 42 letter sounds radio show were recorded and aired to reach teachers, parents and children in Lesotho.
What is Jolly Phonics?
Jolly Phonics is the medicine that cures illiteracy, and any child gone through this programme, excels, not only in English literacy but in other subjects. Jolly Phonics teaches the 42 letter sounds, and each sound is introduced with a story, an action, flash card, letter formation and a song. It is fun, child-centred approach and multisensory; children love it!
Radio shows
Jolly Phonics radio shows aired on Radio Lesotho and it had more listeners than we had anticipated. Vision Street, a local company that offers services in photography, video, audio recording, film and television pro has done a great job to help with the recordings and editing of Jolly Phonics radio shows.
Every week I made a summary of lessons played during that week, the summary was in the form of videos to reinforce what was learned. The videos were shared via Whatsapp, Facebook pages, Twitter, and on other platforms. They had more views. Almost everyone that knows me says when they meet me, “Teacher Khosi I heard you teaching on radio,” one would say, “Hi this is Teacher Khosi! Welcome to the Jolly Phonics show when you can learn the skills needed to read and write…”
My former English teacher said to me, “Khosi now you are a teacher! I saw you on Facebook teaching us. We struggle here, secondary students cry when they are asked to read a paragraph, they can’t decode words. I think this programme can be great for them. How can you help us?” I used to visit reception schools, and when I entered two schools respectively, teacher asks children, “who taught us Jolly Phonics on Radio Lesotho?” with all excitement and joy, they say “Teacher Khosi!” then teacher says, this is teacher Khosi. All their faces were full of joy and asked to read some letter sounds and do some actions. It was so impressive to see the impact of Jolly Phonics radio shows. We are getting radio shows surveys from people from different districts. We are expecting to receive more. And they are all positive. “Yes Jolly Phonics is the future; all learners should be taught Jolly Phonics.”
You can listen to the radio shows here
In the future I would like to do a lot of educational videos to help teachers with varies approaches to teach English literacy and recruit more teachers to become effective Jolly Phonics teachers .
