Cape Verde, Calheta de São Miguel workshop III

The development of the Portuguese Language reading and writing

Cape Verde, Calheta de São Miguel - Escola Velhinho Rodrigues

27th of March - 2nd of April

The main objective of this 6 day workshop was to help these 15 children develop the Portuguese Language reading and writing skills and although it may have seemed fairly unrealistic to attempt to do it in just one week, the fact is the end results speak for themselves.

These children did not only develop their reading and writing capability but also a much more important aspect – the will to further continue developing their learning skills. I do strongly believe that the way the learning “facilitators” encourage the children and the methodology they use within the classroom is what really determines one’s will to further continue learning, in and outside the school.

The selected book “The three little pigs” sums up the commitment one has to have regarding the learning foundations. If one does not thoroughly dedicate oneself to building up strong learning pillars, the whole learning process will fall apart as in the fairy tale. The one house which stood the outside impact was that which had been built with the stronger materials and thoroughly finished.


“The skills it takes to make a puzzle are some of the same ones children need for learning to read”, as according to a well known child psychologist, this being the reason why some of the classroom activities included puzzle making. Because one of the underlying goals was to reinforce the football team spirit as well, the selected puzzles and games were mostly sports oriented (3D football puzzles; puzzles depicting team work or friendship and several team and individual patience oriented games).

The fact that the group was not homogeneous in regards to the reading and writing skills had no bearing in the overall approach within the classroom, once it was possible to adapt it to each student’s individual capability, taking into account their strengths and difficulties. Whilst some were average readers, two or three stood out as being very slow readers and one of them even showed to have been previously damaged on his sense of self worth as a reader.

Our daily routine throughout the whole week included interactive reading; comprehension; vocabulary development; phonetic awareness and intonation exercises; writing and phrase repetition practice, whenever it was considered necessary; colouring the reading book pages, which were in black and white, so as to personalize their studying books, as well as some complementary exercises and games.

By having maintained a positive attitude and selected an approach that accommodated every child learning speed, the slow readers ended up succeeding. By being enthusiastic, the children were too and the fact that they practised reading as if they were reading for an audience, further helped them in successfully playing the various roles they were assigned in the theatrical play, developing characters and plots.

Having a theatrical play done at the end of the workshop based on the fairy tale enhanced the importance of each one as an individual and a group, and contributed towards the development of the self esteem of each of the intervening characters. It ultimately led to the “visualization” of the book they had been studying, under a different perspective, involving each and every one of them, whether they were narrating, puppet acting, carrying out the “mise en cène” or simply making the background noises.


I believe that all the participating children experienced the sense of accomplishment and so did I. The fact that half way through the week we were granted the visit of Drª Graça Sanches, Head of the Pre-school and Elementary Education in Cape Verde together with the Education Delegate in Calheta, following an invitation, further encouraged me to continue. They were impressed with what they saw and whether one may say that people’s opinions don’t count when one is committed to doing something, the truth is they do (they did).

A few parents attended the closing ceremony, which was quite surprising, bearing in mind the fact that many of these children come from single parental families. They all looked proud after the theatrical play, and as children were being applauded and given some school material, I felt, in the way they looked, they themselves would have liked to have had the same opportunities their children were now being given.

I owe Beat Clerc my special thanks for having invited, trusted and supported me all the way through; I should also thank Sibylle, Duche and Beat for having been with me in the classroom every day helping out in whichever activities they were required to; Bernardino should be named as well, once he collaborated whenever his timetable allowed him to.