Volunteering with Heartware Learning Together Programme

Feb 26, 2022   |   Amber Goh

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Amber has always enjoyed working with children, so when the opportunity arose for her to help a less-privileged student, she jumped at the chance.  As a naturally caring person who is able make others feel at ease, she was soon able to build a friendly relationship with tutee and make her comfortable during out reading sessions.

Being in a self-initiated programme like Heartware Learning Together Programme, she relished being able to plan the experience from the start to finish. From signing up as a volunteer, to liaising with her tutee’s parents regarding the sessions and the planning of reading sessions, she managed all of these independently.

After every book reading, areas for improvement would be consolidated for her tutee and Amber would follow up on revisions with her.  Lessons were also planned out such that they would have sufficient time to recap new things learnt. These included the type of alphabets that are vowels, the difference between past and present tense, as well as the effect of “-ing” on verbs. Amber also took time to look through the NLB online catalogue to search for appropriate books that commensurate with her tutee’s abilities.

The biggest challenge she faced when carrying out the reading sessions was dealing with her tutee’s short attention span. To tackle that, Amber came up with creative ways to get her tutee to focus on reading books for longer stretches of time. By reading ahead and preparing for conversation topics related to the books that they were reading, she was able to engaged her tutee by probing her with questions on topics of interest to her. Amber found that this method works in keeping her tutee more engaged and interested. Through this experience, Amber learnt to improve her problem-solving skills in an innovative way.

“An area that I hoped to grow in is patience as I often lack it. I feel that this programme really gave me the opportunity for me to improve on this. For example, when my tutee kept forgetting how to read a certain word, I had to remain calm and coach her repeatedly on how to pronounce it. These kinds of occurrences have really helped me become a more patient person,” shared Amber as she recounts her experience.

Amber’s hard work finally paid off when her tutee can now read sentences on her own and longer words like “superheroes” don’t faze her at all despite her initial shyness and having not been able to read many words at first. Not bad for a child who can only read simple words like “the” and “from”, and sometimes confused words like “of” and “for” at the start!

A testament to their budding relationship would be a card that Amber’s tutee made for her with a drawing depicting both of them in a jungle, similar to the one in a book they read before! Feeling rewarded upon seeing her tutee’s tremendous improvement, Amber felt thankful in her heart that her sessions sparked a love for reading in her tutee.

Said Amber, “I am so proud of her progress, and I am glad that I was able to help her. I feel like I have gained so much from this programme already. Even though at times, I felt like giving up and cancelling the reading sessions when I was swarmed with school work, especially during the periods leading up to tests and exams, I did not give in to the temptations and remained dedicated to the programme. I really look forward to our reading sessions together.”

If you like to make a difference like Amber, join us for Heartware Learning Together Programme to spark and rekindle the love for reading in a child’s life to improve their literacy skills!

Sign up now on Youthbank at https://www.youthbank.sg/.