Physical fitness an academic achievement in Tanzanian children

Abstract

As you read this thesis right now you are applying the skill learned from childhood. Children starts reading by age of 5 by recognizing letters, learning single letters and develop the skill further by decoding words. Children are expected to read independently by age of 10 years. We would like to explore Tanzanian children read skills. Tanzanian government has made a great progress in basic education in the past years. Children are enrolled in both primary and secondary school. Tanzania is ahead of time when it comes to theMillennium Development Goals related to education access and gender parity. The country spends over a billion dollars annual of its budget on education (UWEZO, 2010). The challenge is providing quality service in education. There is a difference from rural and urban schools when it comes to learning and access to educational supplies. We found a great interest to study this country in particular to find out how they cope up with their education system. How Tanzanian children learn to read and are there any gender differences? From different literature it is recommended physical activity for improvement of academic achievement. We are hoping to find if physical activity can benefit children in Tanzania to achieve reading task. The test results from this thesis shows that physical fitness cannot improve reading skills. Since physical activity has other health benefits it should be included in school curriculum. Great health does promote better learning by reducing number of absence days at school. We would recommend school to train children into reading. There should be more hours to train reading skills. Children should be learned according to their level of literacy. Different methods should be applied to learn children in order to minimize gender gap. Boys and girls have different neuronal development and that has to be taken into account. Before both genders are learned to use other reading strategies phonetic approach can benefit them highly.This will also promote great achievement into reading tasks for boys.