Sharing Knowledge on Building Early Literacy and Numeracy

The Bincang Inspiratif Live on Stage podcast is back. This podcast, initiated by Tanoto Foundation, serves as a platform for sharing inspiration about maternal and child health, education, scholarships, and parenting tips. This time, it features two speakers: education practitioner and master’s degree holder in Educational Planning from University College London (UCL), Galih Sulistyaningra, and public figure who actively shares parenting tips on her social media, Sophie Navita. The podcast, held at the Tanoto Foundation Impact Gallery, is hosted by Nucha Bachri, founder of Parentalk, a digital parenting community platform.

The podcast, themed “Building Literacy and Numeracy for Children’s Future,” was interactive and informative. Both speakers shared parenting tips on how to instill a love for reading and sharpen literacy and numeracy skills from an early age. In the discussion, Galih Sulistyaningra stated that literacy and numeracy skills go beyond just reading, writing, and arithmetic (calistung) as they involve the ability to understand lessons. “Thus, literacy and numeracy are not only the responsibility of Indonesian language and mathematics teachers but all teachers, including parents and policymakers,” she explained.

According to Galih, who is also an elementary school teacher, literacy skills are developed not only by learning to read letters but also through skills in seeing, listening, speaking, and writing. All of these are built through intense interaction with teachers and parents at home. Therefore, solid involvement from both teachers and parents is needed. Thus, when asked by teachers about tips to make students more enthusiastic about learning literacy and numeracy, Galih mentioned that teachers need to be more creative to foster a child’s interest in reading.

For example, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia provides various digital books on the Sistem Informasi Perbukuan Indonesia (SIBI) platform that can be accessed for free by students and teachers. For English reading materials, there are free resources available on platforms like Letsreadasia.org. To enhance numeracy skills, an engaging teaching scheme is needed so that students are not afraid of or can even enjoy learning mathematics. One initiative by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia and Tanoto Foundation is the development of the Creative Mathematics Teacher System (Gureametiks).

So, what should parents do to build their children’s literacy and numeracy skills? Sophie Navita, a public figure who actively shares parenting tips on her social media, stated that the key to teaching literacy and numeracy is discipline. “Discipline is the main and toughest key,” she explained. According to Sophie, when children reach the age of 3, the introduction to letters and numbers should begin, such as counting from 1 to 10. Therefore, discipline is necessary for children to sit quietly and pay attention to what their parents are teaching. “For example, if today it’s only 5 seconds, tomorrow it could be longer, progressing every day,” she explained.

Watch the full discussion in the following video!
https://bit.ly/3WI9jbP