CHALLENING HEIGHTS PROJECT

By Katie Gipe

Introduction
This summer I had the amazing opportunity to go on a seven-week servicelearning trip to Ghana, West Africa. During my time there, I had the chance to work with
Challenging Heights, a non-profit that works to rescue trafficked children from the
fishing industry in Ghana. When the children are rescued, Challenging Heights takes
them to Hovde House, a rehabilitation shelter, before safe homes to return to can be
found for the children. At the shelter, the children are given time to recover physically,
emotionally and mentally. During their stay, the children go to school for half days,
participate in art therapy and counseling, and are given time to play and develop social
skills. Two other Grand Valley students and I were given the opportunity to work at
Hovde House where we interacted with the children, worked in the classrooms, and
helped with art therapy activities.

Project Ambitions and Future Intentions

My intent for this project is to offer new teaching approaches and strategies for
the teachers at Hovde House to benefit the childrens learning. The activities and
teaching approaches in this project will not replace any Ghanaian curriculum, but rather
help enrich it. I am in contact with one of the teachers at the shelter, George Baffoe, and
have sent him this curriculum and will continue to send him materials I think would
benefit the children at Hovde House as I continue my education classes this year. I am
also seeking out an individual, particularly an education major, to go on next years
Ghana trip to follow up with the implementation of the approaches and activities in this
project to see how they are working.

Shelter Observations
During the month we got to work at the shelter, we experienced what daily life
was like for the rescued children. They had a safe place to stay, a roof over their head,
food to put in their belly, and a bed to lay their head down at night. Compared to the
conditions they were used to on Lake Volta where they were trafficked, Hovde was
wonderful. Indeed, Hovde is a wonderful place. There the children are able to be
children again: play games, laugh and learn and grow in a healthy environment.
There were many aspects of life at the shelter that I was interested in learning
more about, one specifically being how school was conducted. As an aspiring English
teacher, I am very interested in how the children learn English, thus I spent as much time
as possible in the classroom. There are four classrooms in which students are divided
based on their ability to speak English. Students in Class 1 speak little to no English and
students in Class 4 are required to speak solely in English during school hours. As
students are divided based on their knowledge of English, all the classes have a wide
range in student age. Student ability is also varied, particularly in Class 1, as students in
Class 1 range from knowing some of the alphabet and a few English words, to knowing
no English at all. Some of these students have never even been in a school setting before,
thus simply sitting still at a desk, holding a pencil, and paying attention for extended
periods of time is difficult.

Upon walking into Class 1 on the first day, I was shortly informed that about half
the class had also just walked in for their first day. A rescue had just been conducted and
thus the highest achieving students in Class 1 were moved up to Class 2 that morning to
make room for the new children that had arrived at the shelter the previous day. This
transition of students divided Class 1 into students who had already learned the alphabet,
but had not yet been able to master it and students who had just arrived to school and had
not learned any of the alphabet yet. As all students either needed to review or learn their
ABCs, George began class introducing the alphabet.
In the classroom, all 26 letters and numbers 1 20 have been cut out of
construction paper and are pasted on either side of the whiteboard at the front of the
room. George started introducing the alphabet by referencing these cut out letters as he
explained the concept of the letters to students. Students didnt have any textbooks or
handwriting books, thus they learned all content by copying down what George wrote on
the whiteboard in their small notebooks. Each student is issued a writing notebook, a
math notebook, and a homework notebook. Thus to learn each letter, George would
pronounce the letter, point to it in the alphabet, and then write the letter on the board.
Some students would come up to the board to practice writing the letter and then the class
would repeat the name of the letter a few more times. Then each child was given their
writing notebook and asked to write the letter multiple times until they mastered it.
Throughout the next week and a half, the students went through the whole alphabet in
this manner. They then went through numbers 1 20 in this manner as well.
As students practiced writing the alphabet and numbers 1 20, they also practiced
how to pronounce each letter and number. To practice the alphabet and numbers orally,
George used the letters and numbers on the wall as a formative assessment. Most
mornings, he would call students up to the board, give them a pointer, and ask them to go
through the alphabet, pointing at each letter and reciting its name. If students could
demonstrate mastery of the whole alphabet, they moved on to pointing at and reciting
each of the numbers 1 20. By doing this assessment frequently, students who didnt
know the letters were getting lots of exposure and students who already knew the letters
were participating in a consistent review.
Students would get a few tries if they messed up the alphabet, but if they missed
too many letters they had to sit down. There were some children who could not seem to
get through the alphabet successfully. After multiple days of messing up, these students
were punished. Sometimes they were forced to stand by the ABC wall for the rest of the
class to practice or they had their ear pinched and then had to stay in on their break to
practice more. These punishments were intended to serve as motivators to prompt
students to be more studious. It is important to note that corporal punishment is not
condoned in schools operated by Challenging Heights, thus students are never caned as
punishment (Challenging Heights, 2016). Unfortunately for a few students though, not
knowing the alphabet and being punished in turn, developed into a vicious cycle. George
expressed his concern about these students, saying that he believed they were being lazy,
which is why they were being punished.
Despite these students who hadnt quite been able to master the alphabet after two
weeks, everyone else in class had, thus George moved onto two-letter words. To
introduce the words, George would write each word on the board and then point to each
letter, stating each letter individually before stating the whole word. For example at

would be learned by saying a, t, at over and over. The students would repeat these
words everyday and practice writing them in their notebooks until they mastered
recognizing the word. Once the class finished memorizing two letter words, they then
moved onto three letter words.

Teaching Focus Areas

While observing the students and Georges teaching approach, I discovered, as
can be seen from the lessons described above, that the students at Hovde House learn
English through rote memorization. Rote memorization is learning based on the premise
of repetition, believing that the more a student repeats something, the more easily they
will be able to recall it in the future. At Hovde House, students are expected to practice
what the teacher does until they can do it on their own. After the teacher teaches the
material, the responsibility is placed on the students to learn it. The students are expected
to practice rehearsing or writing the material until they can demonstrate full mastery.
The premise of learning strictly through repetition, however, is not beneficial for lowliteracy learners. Marrapodi (2013) expresses that the ability to memorize and recall
information is underdeveloped in low-literacy learners (p. 14). Abadzi (as cited in
Marrapodi, 2013) elaborates that, the unschooled perform less well most in memory
tasks [such as] remembering lists of words, reproducing a short story, reproducing
complex figures that were presented, [and]remembering sequences (p. 14). With the
minimal exposure many of these students have had in school settings, using rote
memorization as the primary form of instruction is problematic. The National Reading
Panel advocates for an eclectic component-blending and explicit strategies for teaching
discrete skills to English language learners (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 8). I believe that by
infusing the Ghanaian curriculum with some component-blending, explicit instructional
strategies students can begin to develop a deeper understanding of the English language.
The strategies and activities that I describe in this project incorporate instructional
approaches that work to address the following focus areas: minimal text exposure, a lack
of phonological knowledge, and minimal interaction in the class. These areas of concern
were what stood out to me the most while at Hovde House and are described in greater
detail below, followed by response activities to address them.
Minimal Text Exposure
One of the first areas of concern that jumped out at me when working in the
classrooms was that the students had extremely minimal exposure to text. There are no
wall posters or textbooks for the students to read in Class 1, thus students only learn from
what is written on the white board and what they manage to write down in their
notebooks. Giving students material to work from is critical in the classroom so students
have a meaningful context in which to learn English. The linguist Michael Halliday (as
cited in Wallace, 2008) describes how function drives form which means that words and
sentences cannot be readily interpreted outside of situational or textual context (p.92).
Thus, if a word is pulled out of a sentence in a story, potentially next to a picture,
students will be able to remember and recall the word with greater ease because the
context in which it came from had meaning. Vygotsky (as cited in Wallace, 2008)
further notes that understanding cannot be reduced to naming the word, thus having

lessons created from meaningful contexts, such as lessons based on books or thematic
units, is extremely beneficial (p.92).
Lack of Phonological Knowledge
Some problems that ensue a rote memorization approach when teaching a
language include students lack of phonological knowledge. Rather than develop tools
that will allow students to read words in different contexts, rote memorization sets
students up to read specific words and passages in specific contexts. As English does not
have a strong letter-sound association due to all of the variations in the graphemephoneme relationships, strictly using a phonics approach is problematic for low literacy
learners (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 9). However, completely taking the phonics approach
away leaves readers no longer equipped with word attack skills to break new words into
their component pieces because they [have] no letter-sound associations (Marrapodi,
2013, p. 12). Thus, there must be a happy medium. This happy medium can be found in
using a whole-part-whole teaching method, which is described later on in the project.
Minimal Interaction
The lack of immersive learning due to the extremely limited exposure to
contextualized words, text, pictures, and visuals, creates a somewhat stifling environment
in which the students struggle to learn and actively stay engaged. The students are forced
to have a passive role in their learning as they listen to George and then do what he
requests of them. In order to add some responsibility and critical thinking to the lessons,
I will share a few teaching strategies to get the students to interact with each other,
George, and the content in a more reciprocal and active way.

Responses to Increase Exposure to Text

The activities in this section are based on the idea that language development
involves a continuing process of meaning making (Gibbons, 2015, p. 9). This belief is
rooted in the work of Michael Halliday who argue[s] that language is involved in almost
everything we do, emphasizing the role social context plays in language learning
(Gibbons, 2015, p. 4). From this sociolinguistic approach, it is believed that grammar,
vocabulary, and other traditional aspects of language learning are best focused on in the
context of authentic meaning making, and that learning about language is most
meaningful when it occurs in the context of actual language use (Gibbons, 2015, p. 9).
Thus, the following activities work to introduce language to students in relevant,
authentic texts.
It is important to note, however, that Marrapodi (2013) emphasizes that print
concepts will not be in place unless [students have had] exposure to them, and as few
students have had this exposure to text, their print awareness will need to be explicitly
developed (p. 14). To develop a childs print awareness, students need to understand
that words represent linguistic constructs and that individual words may be broken down
into letters and sounds (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 14). In order to develop this understanding,
students need phonological knowledge, which is why taking an explicit, componentblending approach to teaching and incorporating phonics into lessons is crucial.
Activities to explicitly teach phonics are in the next section, and although the
instructional practices in this project are divided into three focus areas for organization,

aspects from each focus area should always be taught concurrently. Referencing back to
students need to gain print awareness, students will also need to be taught that English is
read left-to-right and top-to-bottom on a page (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 13). In order for this
print awareness to be developed, teachers need to be sure they are offering students
plenty of text in which to learn from. Lessons based in rich and meaningful text can be
implemented through the following instructional practices.

Book-Based Learning
o As it sounds, book-based learning is when lessons are rooted in the
reading of passages from the students new textbooks (which were
purchased for them through fundraising), or storybooks from the shelter
library. This whole language approach increases students exposure to
text, but it must be in an intentional way. Simply reading a story isnt
effective as most language learners recognize only a percentage of a
spoken conversation, so during the reading of a story, they may miss ideas
and concepts (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 15). Books should be evaluated
before being used. The text should be reviewed and key vocabulary words
that will need to be explicitly taught prior to reading the book should be
pulled out and discussed. Books with photographs are also preferred as
photographs offer much better visuals than drawn pictures and can make a
sizable difference in students understanding (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 15).
Its also important that there isnt too much text per page so that students
arent overwhelmed and that reading and discussing the text are done in
small chunks to provide a comprehension check and allow the learners to
ask questions and catch up with the storyline (Marrapodi, 2013, 15).
Picking a story with intention, priming students with key vocabulary prior
to reading, and then periodically checking students comprehension while
reading leads to meaningful reading that is conducive to book-based
lessons. Learning language in the context of stories that are relatable to
students also adds purpose and relevancy to language learning, while
simultaneously increasing student motivation.
o Its important to pick out books that are conducive to the lessons the
teacher needs to teach. Books can be picked due to specific language
used, such as word families or sound patterns, or it can be picked for a
specific topic, as it likely introduces key vocabulary. Picking vocabulary
words from a text is very beneficial because students can first hear and see
the vocabulary word in a context in which the word might actually be
used. An example text that introduces important vocabulary by discussing
a specific topic - going to school - can be found by clicking on this link
(Bow Valley College, 2010). The text was created by Bow Valley College
in corporation with the ESL Literacy Network. Reproduction of the
material is permitted for noncommercial, educational use only. The
vocabulary words that the teacher could pull out from the example text for
students to preview prior to reading are below.
school
home
pencils

 erasers
markers
pens
o After a learner understands a story, they can then be asked to respond to
the story. Initially responses can be in pictures to teach students that
pictures are symbolic representations of ideas. Eventually students can
add words to their art as they develop the language to do so. The teacher
can assist students in adding words by helping students spell desired
words, directing them to the class word wall (discussed later), or printing a
model for the students to follow. This process of responding to text helps
students learn that writing is an expressive form of meaning making in
response to their own ideas (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 16). Responding to
books also gives students an outlet to become more expressive, giving
them the freedom to generate meaning on their own as they gain
experience with letters and words.
o Personal Successes: I have implemented book-based learning with
English language learners in America and have found great success in it.
Students are motivated to learn words as I read, curious about the story
and the characters. Sometimes I use books with common word chunks,
which allows me to introduce a phonics activity about that specific word
family. Students remember the patterns we discuss and often when
reading a new book, they might point to a word that belongs in a word
family weve already learned and say Miss Gipe look word family! I
also have had students respond to stories through drawing pictures.
Drawing helps students develop understanding and meaning which is a
critical precursor to language production. Once students have drawn a
picture response, I try to talk with them about it and encourage them to
reference words in the story to either label the picture or write a word or
two describing what is happening in the picture. Slowly building these
responses up until students are capable of writing phrases is a great way to
develop a students writing.

Thematic Learning
o Using books as a base to pull vocabulary from is best, but if books dont
have all the words a teacher wants to introduce to the class, thematic
vocabulary lists can be made. Teaching information in content themes is a
good way to contextualize information through conversation. For
instance, teachers can enhance students learning of vocabulary words by
describing the setting in which an individual would find all the objects or
creating a story that incorporates the words and acting it out. In doing
this, the teacher can add important context around the vocabulary words so
students will have a better understanding of when and how the words are
used when a text incorporating the words isnt available.
o Examples of content vocabulary lists are below.
School: paper, pencil, desk, chair, marker, board, teacher, student
Food: eat, bowl, plate, fork, spoon, cup, meat, bread, fruit

 Waking Up: bed, pillow, toothbrush, toothpaste, sun

Meeting People: hello, wave, smile, friend
Animals: bird, cat, dog, fish, chicken
Weather: sun, sky, rain, cloud, cold, warm
Action Words: run, walk, talk, think, learn, fall
o Ensuring that the vocabulary from books and themed lists that is being
introduced is constantly being practiced is crucial to students learning.
Labeling objects that students see or use often is a great way to expose
students to words. Especially with the frequency in which students see the
objects in the classroom, offering them the ability to see the English word
next to the object will help them learn the word faster. Once students gain
familiarity with some of the words, adding these English words into
conversation in the classroom is a great way to increase oral practice of
the English language. For example, asking students to sit in their
chairs, stay at their desk, take the marker, sharpen their pencil,
or write on their paper are great phrases to begin to incorporate
vocabulary words into everyday class conversation. This will help
students move from simply recognizing words to applying them in their
daily lives.

Word Wall
o A word wall is a collection of words that are displayed in large visible
letters on a wall. The words are organized alphabetically and put under
the letter that they start with, as pictured. A word wall is an interactive
tool for students as words should constantly be added to the wall as
students learn them and taken down as students master them. A word wall
is a permanent space in the class where students can reference words
theyve already learned during reading and writing activities.
o When first starting a word wall, adding words that the students are already
familiar with is a great idea. For example, adding students names or twoand three-letter words that a majority of the kids know is a good start.
Then as the students learn more words, they can be added, such as the
vocabulary from the
themed lists or from
books. A list of
great words to
eventually teach and
add to the wall is
below. The list can
be found here and
contains Dolch sight
words, which are
the most commonly
used words in the
English language
(Sight Words:

Teach your Child to Read, 2016). The words are divided into different
grade level lists and many of the words on the list are not pronounced
phonetically, meaning the letters dont make the same sounds they
typically do in other words. For this reason, Dolch sight words cant be
sounded out, but typically have to be learned by sight, hence sight
words. Displaying some of these high-frequency words on the word wall
is a great way for students to learn these words by focusing on how the
word looks and how it sounds, and avoid simple memorization (Clay as
cited in Williams, 2009, p. 574) The more students are exposed to words
that hold meaning, the faster they will learn them.
o Word walls give students a sense of empowerment in the classroom as the
words are based on what students are learning currently. As students
begin to use the words on the wall more and more in their speech and in
their drawing/writing responses, the words will gradually be committed to
long-term memory and the students will no longer need to reference the
wall before using the word. When this begins to occur the word can be
taken off the wall, and a new word that has been encountered in a book or
themed lesson can be added to the wall. This constant cycle of student
learning made visible on the wall is often motivating for students as it
allows them to use English independently, as well as slowly master words.
o As a note: Contextualizing letters and words is crucial as we have
discussed. Thus, when introducing these Dolch words, its important to
put them in a sentence and say the sentence frequently so students
understand when and where they might hear them. For example, look at
the problem or come over here are common phrases students might
hear these Dolch words in.

Responses to Increase Phonological Knowledge:

Phonological knowledge is imperative for students to learn how to read as it
allows them to develop word-decoding abilities. I witnessed the importance of teaching
students phonological knowledge when working with an older student from Class 4 one
morning at the shelter. The young boy and I were reading a passage he had written the
previous day in school and we came across a word he didnt remember. I started to try
and help him sound it out, but he simply kept guessing random words that he knew were
in the passage until he ended up guessing the right one. He wasnt able to use any of the
sounds or patterns in the word to give him clues as to what the word was, thus his best
method to figure out the unknown word was blindly guessing. I realized then that
explicitly developing these students phonological knowledge enables them to develop
the building blocks to read and write, rather than just memorizing words and passages. In
this section, I will explain what phonological knowledge is and then offer different ways
to build up a persons phonological knowledge. Prior to explaining the basics of
phonological knowledge though I will first address the two prerequisite steps that
Marrapodi states are necessary before a phonics instructional approach can be beneficial
for English language learners.
The first of these prerequisite steps is visual literacy, as it is an undeveloped skill
for preliterate people (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 10). Doak, Doak & Root (as cited in

Marrapodi, 2013) identifies visual literacy as having four main steps: reading a text,
finding the message, finding important details, and interpreting the information (p. 10).
A great way to do this is through responding to stories as described in the book-based
learning. Prompting students to draw pictures and eventually use words will prompt
them to come to the understanding that pictures are symbolic representations of ideas and
words also convey meaning and ideas (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 16). Over time students will
begin to understand the power of pictures and words to display concepts.
Marrapodis second prerequisite step is isolating and identifying sounds.
Marrapodi (2013) explains that beginning language learners have a very hard time
hearing the differences between new sounds not found in their native language (p. 11).
Teachers need to provide activities for learners to practice hearing discrete differences in
phonemes to help the learner with the auditory discrimination skills required to identify,
differentiate, and reproduce new sounds (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 11). A great way to
practice differentiating sounds is through minimal pairs exercises. These exercises along
with others will be described in the phonemic awareness section below.
Prior to jumping into these exercises though, lets clarify a little more background
knowledge what is phonological knowledge exactly?
What is phonological knowledge?
Phonological knowledge is defined as the awareness that spoken language is
made of sound units that can be manipulated to make new sounds. These sound units are
divided into four categories and having awareness of each of these sound units develops
in a sequential order (Fisher, J., 2016).
The first sound unit to gain an awareness of is words. When students have
developed word awareness they are able to distinguish where words stop and start in a
sentence.
After students can distinguish where words start and stop, they then develop
syllable awareness. Words are made up of syllables and each syllable contains a vowel
sound. Thus, words with one vowel sound only have one syllable, words with two vowel
sounds have two syllables, and so forth. For instance, hat and read are one-syllable
words because they each have one vowel sound (ea in read makes one sound even
though both e and a are vowels; this is referred to as a vowel team). Words such as
marker and pencil are two syllable words as they each have two vowel sounds. If I were
to divide these words into their syllables, they would be divided like this: mar ker and
pen cil.
After students have developed word and syllable awareness, they are prepared to
identify onsets and rimes. Each syllable can be divided into an onset and rime. The
onset is the first sound of the syllable all the way up to the vowel. Then the rime starts at
the vowel and includes everything after. Examples of words being divided into their
onsets and rimes are below. The onset is bolded and the rime is underlined. Onsets and
rimes are particularly helpful to understand when learning about word families and words
that rhyme. Words that have the same rime fall in the same word family and often
rhyme. For example, hat, bat, mat, flat, and sat are all in the same word family and all
rhyme because they all have the same rime (at). Other examples of words divided into
their onsets and rimes are:
hat
read
mar ker
pen cil
strong

After developing word, syllable and onset and rime awareness, the last category
of sound units is phonemes. Phonemes are individual sounds. Often each letter
corresponds with one sound, but sometimes thats not always true. There can be one to
one associations such as t making the t sound. Sometimes two letters can make one
sound, such as sh making the sh sound. Other times a group of letters can make a
sound, such as tion sounding like shun. A students ability to recognize the
associations between sounds and symbols is referred to as their phonemic awareness
(Fisher, J., 2016).
In order to sound out and decode words, students need to develop awareness of
all these sound units. Students move through these stages sequentially, thus its
important to scaffold students understanding so that they can continue to move through
the stages. The table below demonstrates the order of the stages for reference.
Word
Awareness

Syllable
Awareness

Onset/Rime
Awareness

Phonemic
Awareness

Prior to implementing the following phonics activities, its important to note the
whole-part-whole teaching method that phonics should always be taught within. The
whole-part-whole teaching method is an approach that works to incorporate phonics into
lessons in a contextualized way. Patsy Vinogradov (2009) explains that phonics by its
very nature removes your lesson from focusing on meaning (p. 1). Vinogradov
highlights how important it is to begin with meaning in our lessons, thus she suggests
starting lessons with a relevant topic or an interesting text, focusing on a whole text that
is relevant to students. Once students are comfortable with the story or the themed unit
and understand the point of the lesson, teachers can move into focusing on part of the
text to do some phonics work (p. 1). The words analyzed in the phonics lesson are pulled
from the text to build leaners phonemic awareness in a contextualized way. Then once
the phonics instruction has been delivered, the teacher refers back to the text to practice
using the words that were just phonetically analyzed in a context in which the word
would actually appear. By referring back to the whole text again, the teacher shows
how the phonics work [students are] doing is connected to their progress with the larger
topic (Vinogradov, 2009, p. 1). Vinogradov continues by stating that the time you spend
on phonics should be secondary to the meaning of the lesson (p. 1). Thus, in keeping
with this whole-part-whole teaching method, the following phonics activities should
always be implemented with words that are from a story or themed unit AFTER the story
has been read or the themed unit has been introduced. The context should then be
referred to AGAIN after the phonics instruction.
Building Word Awareness
To aid students in developing word awareness, talking slowly in English while
reading and explicitly pointing to each word in the text is a beneficial practice. Writing
out phrases that are said frequently, pointing to each word as it is said, and then ensuring
to repeat the phrases often are also great ways to give students more exposure to oral
language and help them gain word awareness.