Teaching And Learning Materials Spark A Love Of Reading At Agona Amanful ADA Pre-School

When The Kunke Foundation, now the Michael Kunke Foundation, donated a set of Teaching and Learning Materials to Agona Amanful ADA Pre-School in December 2009, it was a small, practical gift: hands-on aids to help young children read and count. A follow-up visit by the Foundation’s team, alongside journalists from Accra, showed just how far that gift had travelled.

Formed in 2006 and focused on communities in and around Mensakrom in the Agona East District, the Foundation had noticed how little Agona Amanful ADA Pre-School’s kindergarten classrooms had to work with. Teachers were teaching literacy using individual letter cards that had to be stuck together with cellotape or starch just to form a word on the blackboard, a slow, improvised method that limited how much pupils could practise.

The donated Teaching and Learning Materials (TLMs) changed that almost immediately. Children could now form objects such as chairs and tables and build two-letter words on their own, turning abstract lessons into something they could touch and manipulate.

“Formerly what we were using to teach the kids were letter cards which was time consuming. These letter cards did not help the pupils that much because we always had to go in search of cello tapes or starch to stick two letters together on the blackboard to allow the pupils read and learn,” said Mary Afful, KG 2 teacher at the school.

Another kindergarten teacher, Felicia Essuman, described the change in similar terms: with the new materials, many pupils were now able to read alphabets and numerals confidently, something that had been a struggle before. Pupils felt the difference too. Theophilus Benyin, a KG2 pupil, put it simply: “I am able to read the numerals and form objects all on my own. This has been made possible because of the teaching and learning items we received from The Kunke Foundation.”

Michael Kunke, founder of the Foundation, said he was glad to see the donation “bear good fruits,” and used the visit to announce plans to extend similar support to other schools in the region, alongside a longer-term ambition: a community library in Mensakrom, to be shared by the town’s three basic schools and four surrounding villages.

With Agona Amanful ADA Pre-School, the Foundation’s education work in the Agona East District was just getting started.

Give your skills. Share your heart. Partner with us, volunteer or donate to help bring hands-on learning materials to more classrooms across Ghana.