The ReadSpell Literacy Foundation has equipped hundreds of teachers in the Bono Region with practical tools for effective teaching and learning, Madam Salomey Kwabea Agyei, its founder has said.

She explained that the foundation was launched out of the “Salomey Read-A-Thon”, a Guinness World Record attempt for the ‘Longest Marathon Reading Aloud’ held in May and June 2024.

“After reading for 203 hours, 41 minutes, and 2 seconds and completing 50 books, the founder, Mad Agyei, dedicated her passion to transforming literacy in basic schools”, she stated.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani, Mad Agyei said her foundation believed that empowering teachers created confident readers.

She said the foundation had since organised free literacy workshops for teachers spread across the various districts and municipalities in the Bono and parts of the Bono East Regions.

These workshops equip teachers with modern phonics-based approaches, practical methods, and teaching materials to make reading easier for pupils, she explained.

Besides, she said the foundation had also supplied beneficiary teachers with Readspell Phonics Teacher’s Guide, Readspell Stories (graded readers) and Flashcards for classroom practice.

The Readspell Phonics Programme was specially designed purposely for this project, to make teaching reading and spelling simple, practical, and effective for teachers in the country.

Mad Agyei said over 19,000 learners had benefited indirectly through the trained teachers adding that with the support of the Ghana Education Service (GES), the foundation had established reading clubs in some basic schools in the region.

She said the foundation remained committed to improving the reading skills of learners, saying it intended to extend its services to all schools in the Bono Region and beyond.

Mad Agyei appealed for sponsorship support and partnerships in providing more teaching materials for teachers and expanding its workshops to cover every district in the region, saying “with sponsorship our foundation will be able to establish more reading clubs in schools in deprived communities”.

She said the foundation also remained committed to inculcate the habit of reading into every Ghanaian child and to make reading easy and accessible too.

“In fact, our services are provided for free for both private and public schools and we seek support from the government, NGOs, corporate and religious bodies to help build on the reading skills and talents of our young children”, Mad Agyei appealed.

She indicated that some of the services offered by the foundation include exploring words, sounds, and simple spelling patterns, building vocabulary, sentence skills, and stronger spelling ability.

Other services include mastering fluency, comprehension, and accurate spelling and advancing reading with confidence and excellence in spelling.