Education minister Don Morgan may have been the special guest at Connaught School in North Battleford, but it was a lovable-looking reptile that stole the kids’ attention.
The reptile was Aski the Turtle, a puppet used in kindergarten classes as part of the Help Me Tell My Story tool used in school divisions in Saskatchewan.
This was an opportunity for Morgan to see “how the Help Me Tell My Story program was working in one of the schools that was using it,” he said.
“I was really pleased to see the commitment of the teachers and the engagement of the students.”
He and a number of Living Sky School Division officials saw Aski in action in Monica Perehudoff’s kindergarten class on Thursday afternoon. Connaught School uses Aski for both its kindergarten and pre-kindergarten education.
While Perehudoff held Aski in one hand, she read from a picture book that showed members of Aski’s turtle family, complete with pictures.
The lovable puppet held the attention of everyone in the room, including the grownups.
“I was amazed,” said Morgan. “You almost want to get down on the floor and play with the kids because the kids were so totally absorbed with it.” He noticed the kids started drawing pictures of their own family members and also of Aski.
One of the kids noticed the hexagon-shapes on Aski’s shell and wanted to draw those.
The turtle puppet was developed in-house by the education department in 2013 in Regina.
It was implemented in 175 classrooms in 62 schools, including at Connaught.
In 2014 that rose to 300 classrooms in 117 schools, with 17 First Nations schools participating.
In addition to being a tool to engage students, Morgan “the secondary part of it is to try and build a relationship not just with the student but with the parents, so that we’re able to get students engaged in learning and literacy at the earliest level.”
The Aski books go home with the kids, and the hope is that parents or older siblings will read the books to them.
There is also a cultural component to Aski; the turtle was designed to appeal to the various Indigenous populations in Saskatchewan. The name Aski is Cree for “earth.”
“The cultural component is significant because there is a large First Nations population in the schools, especially in this area,” said Morgan.
The idea is to improve the literacy of the young students at the earliest levels, to ensure they hit graduation level targets down the road.
Morgan cited the importance of making sure students are reading at grade level by Grade 3 because, otherwise, they are likely to face difficulties throughout their academic life.
“This is the type of tool we want to use as early as we can to make sure that they get to grade level by Grade 3,” said Morgan.
Principal Jay Nichol of Connaught noted the idea was to “build a foundation so our kids become good readers and academics becomes easy for them.”
The impact of Aski is being noticed.
“It’s just making the kids more comfortable in talking about and sharing in their learning process, and talking about their families and everything,” said Nichol.
The response has been positive from families.
“The families are very supportive, too, and I think they enjoy coming in and participating and seeing their children.”
In addition to his Connaught visit, which included a tour of the entire facility, Morgan also held meetings with the Living Sky School Division to find out their needs.
He acknowledged the “challenging times” his department faces from financial standpoint due to the decline in resource revenue.
“We worked with the school divisions to try and do everything we can to give them the supports that they need financially, and, obviously, we’d like to have more, so we’re watching oil prices on a day to day basis, to see if we’ll have more money next year.”
