The publisher of an innovative programme for teaching reading, which is having remarkable results around the world, is visiting the Caribbean in April and May. Chris Jolly, publisher of Jolly Phonics, is visiting Trinidad, Grenada, Barbabos, Antigua and St Kitts from 28 April to 2 May to talk to education officials and teachers about the synthetic phonics programme. Research shows children taught with the multisensory programme are up to three years ahead of other children in reading levels when they leave primary school. The programme is already used by government schools in Trinidad and was taken countrywide by St Vincent from September. It is also used extensively in schools in Jamaica and Grenada. Schools in Grenada have noted some remarkable results with the programme which teaches children the 42 letter sounds in English using songs, actions and movement. As they learn the sounds they are taught to blend the sounds together into words and to hear the individual sounds in words so they can write them down. In Grenada the first schools to use the programme were in Carriacou and Petite Martinique. Eileen Measey, a school volunteer working on Carriacou, decided to do something after hearing of concerns about secondary school pupils' levels of reading. She had read about synthetic phonics and thought that it would be perfect for Carriacou. She says: "My idea was to persuade synthetic phonic trainers that Carriacou has a population size which is exactly right for a research project. This would enable the trainers to see how a whole community could benefit from intensive improved teaching methods, without a large financial burden to Grenada." If the project succeeded, she thought, it could be extended to Grenada and make it "the most literate country in the world". Other Caribbean countries could then work with Grenadian teachers to train their own staff. This would turn Grenada into, in her words, "a Centre of Excellence for literacy throughout the whole world". She contacted the Reading Reform Foundation, England, in March 2006 and Nonweiler, a literacy consultant, agreed to meet Gertrude Niles, Education Officer for Carriacou and Petite Martinique. Niles tried out Jolly Phonics, a phonics programme aimed at very young children, on her four-year-old daughter and was impressed. Training sessions were set up with teachers at the islands' primary and secondary schools as well as nursery staff, volunteers and parents. Money was raised from local people, churches and businesses, organisations in the UK and phonics publishers. The results have come to national attention and have also had an impact in other Caribbean countries, such as St Vincent. Research in the UK shows that children's reading improves greatly with phonics. The research fed into the UK government's review of literacy teaching and had an impact on its decision to roll out a synthetics phonics-based programme for all primary schools. Its Letters and Sounds guidance to teachers was introduced in all state primary schools from September 2007. Nonweiler says that before synthetic phonics was introduced, children in Carriacou and Petite Martinique used a range of strategies to work out how to read words, such as guessing from the picture or the first letter. Some children managed to learn to read in this way, but others were unable to 'read' anything except the stories they knew by heart. At first, some of the teachers were sceptical about phonics, but this soon gave way to enthusiasm due to the results. Niles enthusiastically backed the programme, telling principals at one training session: "I apologise to the older children of Carriacou and Petite Martinique that we did not teach them to read as well as we could have. But then I did not know the best way to teach children to read." Reprinted from Caribbean Net News caribbeannetnews.com