Nyangana ('Little Moon')
Abantwana baseNyangana bafuna ukufundaLiteracy scaffolds: strategies for first and second language readers
Owen F. Boyle & Suzanne F. Peregoy
in `The Reading Teacher’ Vol 44. No. 3. Teachers’ Choices Best New Children’s Books (Nov., 1990) pp 194-200
Literacy scaffolding is a tool used by teachers to enhance the abilities of children in the process of literacy development that is easily transferrable to the context of a project like Little Moon.
What are literacy scaffolds? They describe temporary frameworks that offer students immediate access to the meaning and pleasure of print. Scaffolding refers to the special ways that adults elaborate and expand upon children’s early attempts to use language, thereby facilitating effective communication at a level somewhat beyond the child’s actual linguistic capability. Two central ways that this occurs are firstly, in conversations where the adult shows an understanding of the child’s meaning and elaborates on it. Secondly, storybook reading provides a scaffold by modeling language and story patterns through a pleasurable experience.
Central to the the idea of scaffolding is a whole language approach that learning is embedded within natural social interactions aimed at sharing communication and negotiating meaning. By focusing on meaning, whole language activities give children a self-motivated purpose for reading and writing, boosting their comprehension and sustaining interest in composing. In contexts where English proficiency is limited, applying this method is useful as each additional cue provided by scaffolding increases a child’s chances of making sense of print. Reading in a second language further provides an excellent source of input for further second-language development. The research demonstrates that students can profitably engage in reading and writing in their second language well before they have gained full proficiency in it.
How can we use literacy scaffolds? There are two central ways: firstly, through scaffolds that make use of sentence patterns and secondly, those that make use of discourse patterns.
Patterned reading and writing :
Sentence patterns in reading and writing are language patterns that generate questions, statements or commands and make use of repeated phrases, refrains and sometimes rhymes. The predictability of these patterns allows the children to become immediately involved in the event. One way to promote this is to encourage children to write their own poems based on the patterns, sharing them with one another in peer editing groups and in class room publications. E.g starting lines with , “ I used to be…, but now I am…” and “I am the one who….” The repetition of the pattern lends a poetic quality to the full piece of writing. Books with repetition function in a similar way. These patterns offer scaffolds that are abondoned naturally as the child becomes more proficient.
Literacy scaffolds that make use of discourse patterns
One way to use discourse patterns is through Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA) whereby the teacher asks questions at different logical points throughout the story, guiding children to make predictions and then to monitor their predictions as subsequent text is provided. The teacher usually asks more questions at the beginning of the activity, encouraging children to generate their own questions as the story proceeds. E.g, Ms. Dee: “What do you expect to find in a story titled ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’? Who knows what an apprentice is? So what do you think this story is going to be about?” When a second-language child uses English forms that are not grammatical, the teacher attends to the child’s message without correcting grammar or pronunciation. Sometimes, if the child is hard to understand, she repeats her sense of the meaning to verify and clarify it for the rest of the class. The children are allowed to participate or remain silent as they wish.
A second way to scaffold using discourse patterns is through story mapping, which teaches story structure to children, helping them make predictions and enhances comprehension and retention. Many children’s stories have a basic skeletal structure consisting of a major character or two, a goal the character wishes to achieve, an obstacle, and a resolution of the conflict between the goal and the obstacle. This structure can then be incorporated into a map (eg. someone/wants/but/so) which can help students focus their attention on important parts of a story. For example, a situation where a teacher read Little Red Riding Hood produced, “The Wolf/ wanted to eat Little Red Riding Hood/but the woodcutter killed him/so Little Red lived happily ever after.” These maps can then be illustrated.
Teachers using the scaffolding approach have found that these activities facilitate successful encounters with print and encourge a joy of reading from the beginning. These scaffolds stretch children’s competence so as to enhance reading and writing.
Tips:
- As a base, teachers need to have an understanding of the background knowledge and experinces of the learners and find ways to make learning correspond to the these.
- Teachers should be conscious of speaking clearly, paraphrasing where necessary and supporting their talk through non-linguistic means, such as pictures, gestures and visuals
- Oral and written communication can be suplemented with dramatization and art
Education more valuable than Oil?
Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the PISA exams for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.) examines the relation between a country’s growth and it’s investment in education as opposed to it’s endowment of natural resources:
“If you really want to know how a country is going to do in the 21st century, don’t count its oil reserves or gold mines, count its highly effective teachers, involved parents and committed students. Today’s learning outcomes at school are a powerful predictor for the wealth and social outcomes that countries will reap in the long run.”
On improving living standard conditions: “The only sustainable way is to grow our way out by giving more people the knowledge and skills to compete, collaborate and connect in a way that drives our countries forward,” argues Schleicher.
On education as a currency: “Knowledge and skills have become the global currency of 21st-century economies, but there is no central bank that prints this currency. Everyone has to decide on their own how much they will print.”
Language Policy
Language policy is a matter of much contention in South Africa, especially given the country’s political history. English is widely viewed as the superior language as it provides access to the global economy and way of life. While we acknowledge the importance of English for the children in our project, we aim to stimulate their use of their mother tongue, which carries traditional and culture.
Below are articles by Neville Alexander and Paulo Freire on the debate:
Neville Alexander:
Language, Class and Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa
English Unassailable but Unattainable: The Dilemma of Language Policy in South African Education
Paulo Freire’s educational writings have been a seminal feature of many societies struggling for social justice. The following are papers by Freire:
Race, Pedagogy, and Paulo Freire
A Review of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed
How to improve reading fluency
How to improve reading fluency:
1) Repeated readings: reading the same material more than once will familiarise the child with how the phrases work
2) Read-alongs: reading along (out loud) with the child help them to hear where they are going wrong.
3) Teacher modelling: reading to the child regularly will teach him/her aural clues such a pitch, stress and sentence flow.
4) Silent reading time: giving the child their own space to explore phrasing and sentence tempo will give them more time to pick up visual cues (such as punctuation) and transfer them into aural cues.
Lack of fluency in oral reading is often noted as a characteristic of poor readers, but it is seldom treated. The article explains that a lack of fluency is mistakenly viewed as simply symptomatic of poor reading, suggesting that the poor reader is inefficient in word recognition or analysis. Good word recognition doesn’t result in oral fluency: children are often able to recognise words in isolation but aren’t able to group them into phrases with meaning. Lack of aural cues (such as pitch and stress) in written language cause the disconnection between word recognition and oral fluency. There is also large discrepancy between grade 1 readers and grade 2 readers: the former are stuck on word level whilst the latter are comfortable on phrase level.
Possible reasons for this issue include: Firstly, lack of aural reading background (children who aren’t read to at home). Secondly, poor readers are told to focus on letter, sound and word recognition as opposed to good readers who are told to read with expression and told to find meaning in what they’re reading. Thirdly, reading material that is too difficult stunts the child’s ability to focus on fluency and meaning. Fourthly, Good readers are given more time to read on their own and develop a sense of how phrases work. Lastly, poor readers view reading as an exercise in accuracy rather than one in finding meaning.
Fluency: The Neglected Reading Goal
Richard L. Allington
The Reading Teacher , Vol. 36, No. 6 (Feb., 1983), pp. 556-561
Published by: International Reading Association
Article Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/20198272
Kudaladala II: 2 March 2012
Every fairytale has a beginning
Once upon a time, on a fundraising Friday night at Mercury, a prophecy was foretold. In the middle of sound check, a gust of voice and the words “make sure that you make money” came from Jon Shaban’s mic. Huddled backstage, The Little Moon team was banking on this lyrical premonition. The road to Kudaladala had been paved with promotional balloons, posters, flyers, e-mails and Facebook shares. Posters dangled from trees, flyers were snuck into hands and sponsored Facebook shares went towards raising capital for this children’s literacy project. Red stag lent their antlers and donated some of their product, whose sales went towards buying some much-appreciated books. Little Moon’s PR mastermind, Jess Robey, even put her marketing talents on air, sharing details about the project on 2Oceansvibe.
Jon Shaban, of Captain Stu fame, returned to stage to kick off the show. It was a set about hard lessons learnt, unfulfilled expectations and trying to get things right. Every chest could feel the double bass and its bursts of volume were chased by Jon’s fingers on the acoustic guitar. It was a performance deserving of a name – which the band is still trying to find. Next up, UCT boys, Rosemary Townsend took to the stage. The bassist and guitarist shared the duties on the mic and their line-up of two voices got the crowd moving. The fresh face of the band, their new drummer, grew shy at the shout for more coming from the jiving mosh pit. But the boys obliged, and gave a song on their setlist another go.
Rosemary Towns End on fire!
La.Vi was next to entertain. Chantel van Tonder, the only female vocalist of the night, wrangled in her band mates with a tambourine and the crowd with her warm vocals. This former acoustic outfit has graduated into a territory of their own. The addition of bassist and a drummer has crafted their intriguing sound which is touted as ‘earthy blues/ upbeat alternative’.
La.Vi making wonderful music in style
Next to grace the stage was Toby2shoes who immediately had the crowd bouncing and twirling to his infectious tunes. Of international acclaim and famous in Cape Town for his Balkanology sets, Toby can get any crowd moving and smiling. His music kept people dancing long into the night and sent everyone home happy.
Two days before the gyrating crowd, the kids at Walter Teka primary school sat at their desks and outlined the word ‘Enkosi’ with multi-coloured crayons. This group of young children from Nyanga will benefit from every note sung and every outstretched arm that got Mercury stamped on their wrist that night. Their library will receive new reading material from book organisation, Biblionef. The students who volunteer for this project will also have more to choose from during story time with the Grade 1s and 2s. Little Moon (or Nyangana as it is known in Xhosa) gives UCT students a chance to play, draw and share stories with these young kids in order to foster a love of reading. This SHAWCO initiative began last year and continues to grow. The word ‘Kudaladala’ (long, long ago) signals the beginning of a Xhosa story and Little Moon’s event was definitely the start of something great.
Like this:
A bigger bus, a bigger circle: Day 1 (22 Feb 2012)
“Rain clouds and dark skies”: an opening line that seldom leads to a happy ending. On this particular Wednesday, forty blue-clad volunteers were ducking the torrent as they jumped onto the SHAWCO buses. These volunteers were making their first trip to Nyanga – the first outing of the year for Little Moon. Two buses stood at the Sandown pick up point. Last year, the mini bus served as Nyangana’s command centre, housing both our volunteers and a crate of books. This year, the big bus belongs to us and the volunteer overflow now occupies the “mini mini”.
Despite the gloom looming overhead, the bus doors opened to the usual big eyes, gleaming smiles and stolen hugs. Due to the downpour, the Little Moon team broke with tradition and gathered indoors. Nyangana volunteers weren’t the only ones who’ve grown in number- the kids had doubled too. This year, the project has taken on more children – moving up a grade with our little ones from last year and taking on a new group of grade ones. Two circles formed inside the classroom: a ring of excited kids surrounded by a ring of awestruck volunteers. Space constraints got in the way of the two circles joining hands but this only meant that the older kids could lead from the front. The Grade twos sang all of last year’s greatest hits: educating the younger kids about big red buses, crocodiles and what to do when someone points a magic finger at you.
- Songs and games – having fun learning vocabulary
After the song and dance, the grades and the volunteers were split up. The grade twos chanted the numbers “1, 2, 3” and marched in a line to their next destination. The little make-believe soldiers marched into their home base just in time for story time. They were treated to the tale of a thieving spider. The message was clear: crime doesn’t pay…you might just get all eight of your legs stuck in a honey tree.
The Grade Ones went to their classroom almost unnoticeably. They were a
“quiet train”, going from station to station murmuring only a gentle “shhh… shhhh”. Once in class they were spellbound by a story of a mischievous hare who tricked Elephant and Hippo, showing that it is brains and not brawn that delivers the goods.
- Spell bound by the story
After a bit of shuffling around, it was time for the day’s activity. Crayons and square pieces of blue paper were handed out. The kids were told to make name tags with pictures of all the things they love. Their personalised ID cards were finished off with a gold sticker and plastic lanyard – to make everything official.
- Nametags – a great functional writing exercise
The session ended with each child picking a book and voice after voice was heard telling a story. After one last song and dance, and then the goodbyes, it was clear that a couple of raindrops could never dampen an eagerness to read.
- Loving reading
- Choosing a book
- The final song and dance
Chalk and tarmac: teaching body parts
The Grade 1′s had a huge amount of fun learning their body parts with the simple resources of chalk, tarmac and some paper labels.
We pre-taught the lesson through songs such as “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and a simple activity of tying oneself up in knots through instructions such as “Put your hand on your knee”, “Put your elbow on your toe”
After the songs, the children divided into groups and each group traced a child in chalk. The group then labelled the body in Xhosa and English.
This activity can be followed by a group running game where everyone must run until the leader shouts a body part and everyone must stand on that body part on the ground.
Writing thank you cards
We feel that it is important that the children view writing as a functional exercise. We need write for many reasons – and this week our reason was to say a big THANK YOU to all the people who have made Kudaladala possible. The children coloured in beautiful cards and wrote a big THANK YOU or ENKOSI.
Thank you, ENKOSI! to everyone who is working so hard at making Kudaladala another great success!
Evaluation
Evaluation is obviously important for progress and accountability. However, our project faces a number of challenges with it.
Firstly, what we’re trying to achieve is somewhat difficult to evaluate quantitatively: a love for reading. Although being able to read well may be correlated with enjoying reading, it is possible that some children are good at reading but do not enjoy it while others enjoy it despite lacking ability. Indeed, if our project succeeds then our children should enjoy reading regardless of their ability.
Secondly, some types of reading tests may hinder promoting a love for reading. Any test that is scary and unpleasant may do more harm than good insofar as achieving the project’s goal of fostering a love for reading.
Thirdly, our contact time with the children is relatively small is relation to other activities; one and a half hours a week is likely to produce an improvement, but it is possible that such an improvement would be statistically insignificant.
Any evaluation would thus have to consider these factors. With this in mind we’ve starting researching evaluation methods that may work for our project. We’re doing this both through academic research and contact with similar organisations in order to find out what is best practice. This post will look at the academic research we’ve done so far.
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Measuring Attitude toward Reading: A New Tool for Teachers
Michael C. McKenna and Dennis J. Kear
The Reading Teacher, Vol. 43, No. 9 (May, 1990), pp. 626-639
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20200500
McKenna and Kear propose using a survey which asks children how the feel about certain literacy related practices (such as reading a book in their free time). Children response by marking which expression of Garfield’s best matches how they feel (very happy, somewhat happy, somewhat sad, very sad). The questions are separated into recreational and academic, which gives more information into the nature of child’s relationship with reading. The survey is administered to the entire group and takes about 10 minutes, and although each child has the survey and Garfield pictures in front of them the questions are read out loud by the teacher.
This approach is appealing. Firstly, it makes the assessment non-threatening and fun as the children have to think how they would like to express themselves through a comical cat. Secondly, it is easy to administer and so could be done regularly and with a number of control groups in order to get more accurate results. Furthermore, the training required of the person evaluating is minimal. Thirdly, it specifically attempts to measure motivation rather than competence, which is what we are trying to achieve.
However, it is somewhat concerning that this article was written 21 years ago. It is likely that an improved version exists.
A number of changes may have to be made as well. Firstly, the questions would have to be translated into Xhosa in order for the results to be more accurate. Furthermore, a number of the questions may have to be changed in order to make them more appropriate to our project (for instance, one question refers to ‘summer vacation’ rather than holidays, and another implicitly suggests that reading and play are different things). Also, it is worth thinking about whether Garfield is appropriate. The authors of the study chose him because he would be easily recognizable by American children, and this is unlikely to be the same with our children. However, it is unclear whether this is important.
The cost of this approach is very small. We would have to print out the sheets, train a teacher to administer the test during classroom hours, take 20 minutes out of classroom time (this way be a problem), and analyse and interpret the results.
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The Home Literacy Environment
The Role of Home Literacy Environment in the Development of Language Ability in Preschool Children from Low-income Families
Adam C. Payne, Grover J. Whitehurst, L. Angell
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 9, 427-440 (1994)
This study looked at the effect of literacy practices at home on a child’s language ability for pre-schoolers. It found that 12% to 18.5% of the variance in a child’s language scores was accounted for by the literacy environment at home. The study focused solely on working class families.
What is important about this study is that it shows that it is possible for working class families to improve the language ability of their children by improving their home literacy environment, which (very broadly) is the level of exposure to books that their children have both through direct interaction between caregiver and child and the frequency of a child’s private play with books.
Although this may seem obvious, it is important because it shows three things.
Firstly, it shows that socio-economic class is not a direct determinant of a child’s language ability and home literacy environment. Although class may be a proxy insofar as working class families generally read less with their children than affluent ones, it is nonetheless possible for working class families to improve their children’s language ability through improving their home literacy environment.
Secondly, it provides evidence against the argument that it is unlikely that interventions that seek to improve home literacy are unlikely to succeed unless they address the family’s poverty, because poor families are less likely to have the time, energy or resources to improve literacy practices. The variance in child language ability based on home literacy environment within working class communities shows that it is possible for improve literacy practices without having to tackle to far greater task of direct poverty alleviation.
Thirdly, it also provides evidence against the argument that the effect of a home literacy environment on a child’s language ability is exaggerated in studies because studies tend to invariably include other factors related to socio-economic class that are not directly caused by one’s home literacy environment. However, this study focused solely on working class families and yet still found a significant relationship between home literacy environment and a child’s language ability.
Why is this important to Nyangana?
Firstly, it shows the importance of what we do. Nyangana provides exposure to literacy activities which many of its participents are otherwise lacking at home. Although the study focused of pre-schooler children and not Grade Ones to Three, there is little reason to suspect that the findings would differ. Furthermore, the importance of this exposure (although our programme unlikely provides enough of it) is significant.
Secondly, it shows what more needs to be done. Our programme would be infinitely more effective if it worked in conjunction with a family literacy project. We’re looking for ways of making this happen.
