My Nonprofit Reviews

We would like to thank Hands Across the Sea for their unwavering support of our remedial and special needs programs at our school; Sir Ira Simmons Secondary School. The provision of the remedial kits inclusive of the Decode and Develop readings books and the other resources such as the word tiles , bingo games and banana grams have been very beneficial to our remedial and special needs students thus far. After assessing our students and grouping them according to remedial and special needs, our teachers try to design lessons that address their challenges; this of course includes developing resources that can aid in the delivery of the lesson and or the understanding of language concepts. The resources donated by Hands Across the Sea make our jobs so much easier since we can just select one of the resources that apply to our lesson and at the same time give our students the opportunity to engage in hands on manipulatives that appeal to their interest and attention span.
The Decode and Develop books are used to teach every part of speech in the English language, comprehension strategies, vocabulary development, sentence structure and punctuation. The books are even used to develop thinking and writing skills as students can be allowed to continue the stories within their own context. The topics explored in the books attract teenagers attention and appeal to their interest. The Bingo games are a favorite. Apart from teaching vocabulary and consolidating sight words, it allows students the opportunity to collaborate and communicate with their peers depending of course on how dynamic the teacher becomes with his/her activities. The banana grams and word tiles are becoming very popular among student activities, as we have recently been using them more often to develop our students writing skills specifically spelling and sentence structure.
The provisions made by Hands Across the Sea are invaluable to our students literacy development a.nd we anticipate the further progress of our remedial students in oral, reading and writing development We hope that our relationship with this non profit organization continues to grow in the hope of curbing the poor literacy skills of our secondary school students.

Regards
Janin John - Gaillard
Literacy Specialist (SISSS)