CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
5.3 H OW R EADING IS T AUGHT IN THIS C ASE
5.3.2 Quantitative analysis of texts displayed in this case
on the board, saying the name of each letter as she writes it. ―Let us write on air,‖ says the teacher in English, and, facing the children, she proceeds to write ―omisa‖ with her hand in the air, naming the letters as she writes them. The children do the same. Some are copying her directly, although because she is facing them, they are writing the letters in reverse. This is repeated a few times.
Ms G. then puts up a picture of children crossing a river. ―What are the children doing?‖ she asks in isiZulu, receiving the chorused reply, ―Bayawela (they are crossing).‖ No-one replies in more than this one word. Thereafter follows a set piece: the teacher says ―wela‖ and children spell ―W, E, L, A, wela‖, repeating the routine three times. The names of the letters are the same as in English. It sounds almost like drum beats. The children are (mostly) still sitting still at their desks. A similar process is followed for the remaining words on the list on the board. As the word ―yeka‖ is spelled aloud, Ms G. notices that some children are saying,
―E‖ instead of, ―A‖ at the end of the word. She corrects, and asks for repeat spelling. Finally, the boys in the class are instructed to read the whole list of words together as Ms G. points to the words with her stick. Then, in English, she calls on the boys to, ―Look who is not reading‖ while the girls read the list. Homework is then given: the task is to ―find‖ words by replacing the vowels in the list words with other vowels. The children are not told whether these words should be written down or not.
which far outnumbered texts which did change. Teachers explained that they put up their
―teaching aids‖ at the start of the school year to make their classrooms ―look attractive‖ (A, interview) and to ―decorate the room‖ (G, interview). Table 4 presents an overview of the texts visible in each classroom on one day in August 2006. Items which were removed/added at some stage during the data collection period are marked (*), while items which were permanently displayed throughout the data collection period are not marked.
Table 4 is arranged broadly according to the teachers‘ ranking of the importance of different types of texts, with subcategories introduced from my own analysis. These subcategories are drawn from the theories of reading presented in Chapter 2, so as to enable analysis through the lens of reading theory. For purposes of cross-reference, as discussed in Section 4.5.1, categories used in the TEX-IN3 instrument for analysis of text in classrooms are also included where appropriate for cross reference purposes.
While my analysis of the texts involved different categories from the TEX-IN3, comparison with the TEX-IN3 is instructive for three reasons. First, it shows up a range of text types which were not present in this case, such as audio recordings, levelled readers, electronic texts, serials and journals. The absence of such texts was attributed by teachers to lack of finance (A, interview), but teachers also expressed wariness of having equipment such as tape recorders and audio recordings or electronic texts in the classroom, fearing that children would break them (N, interview). In other words, the absence of particular types of text did not necessarily indicate anything about teachers‘ beliefs about teaching reading and was more likely to be a pragmatic absence. This did not apply, however, to students‘ journals, which teachers did not regard as appropriate for Grade 1 pupils (N, G, A, interviews).
The comparison shows up a second category of texts not found in this case, namely texts created to guide students to follow certain procedures, or ―process charts.‖ The TEX-IN3 distinguishes between extended text process charts and limited text charts. Extended text process charts, of which none were found in this case, are multi-sentence, connected texts that guide students on the use of particular strategies for reading, writing or mathematics.
Examples would be assessment rubrics, or explanations of strategies which can be used to figure out unknown words. The absence of such texts in this case signals the fact that reading is seldom taught explicitly, as will be detailed below. Limited text process charts are letter or word level texts that guide students in the use of a particular strategy. In this case study,
examples were the alphabet charts and the word-family charts. Word Walls could be described as limited text process charts depending on how words are arranged on them. In this case, words were arranged haphazardly on Word Walls, as is discussed in the next section, and are therefore not classed as process charts in this case.
A third gap illuminated by comparing my categorisation of texts with the a-priori classification system from TEX-IN3 is the absence of organisational management texts. A class timetable would be one example, or a chart showing tasks for groups of children through the course of a day or week. Such an organisational chart would indicate, for example, when certain groups of children would read aloud to the teacher. Other possible examples, also not seen in this case could relate to classroom management, such as texts saying ―Put pens in this tin‖ or ―Put rubbish in the bin.‖ The absence of organisational management texts signals the fact that the teaching in these rooms happened almost entirely on a whole-class basis, the fact that children did not routinely read to the teacher and that text was not used for meaningful communicative purposes in the classrooms.
In Table 4 and the discussion which follows I distinguish between commercial (bought) and local (homemade) texts. A false legacy of apartheid education is the general assumption that because they cost less and look homemade, locally produced materials are somehow inferior to commercially produced materials. However, locally made texts such as Language Experience charts are extremely valuable in the teaching of reading in that the teacher is able to use them to show the relationship between speech and text in a dynamic way linked to learners‘ interests and experience. They therefore have the potential to be more responsive to context than commercial texts.
Photographs of some of the items listed in Table 4 can be found in other sections of this chapter where they are used to illustrate the discussion. In such cases, cross-references to the photographs are included in Table 4.
Table 4: Texts visible in classrooms on one day
Text type Total
incidence Description
(* refers to items added or removed during the six-month data collection period.
Abbreviations marked # are defined in the table of Acronyms and Abbreviations.)
Photographs
Ms A.’s classroom Ms G.’s classroom Ms N.’s classroom Texts focusing on letters and sounds
Alphabet charts/friezes (TEX-IN 3 : Limited text process charts)
11 sets5 (note:
words are never in sentences)
Frieze with capital and l/c# letters only
Commercial alphabet frieze6 with letter, word &
pic# (English)
Bilingual alphabet frieze with letter, English word, isiZulu translation & pic
Commercial alphabet chart (English)
Frieze with capital and l/c letters only
Commercial alphabet frieze with letter, word &
pic (English)
Bilingual alphabet frieze with letter, English word, isiZulu translation & pic
Commercial alphabet chart(English)
Frieze with capital and l/c letters only
Commercial alphabet frieze with letter, word & pic (English)
Bilingual alphabet frieze with letter, English word, isiZulu translation & pic
4 6
Phonics teaching materials
(clearly focusing on sound-letter correspondence) (TEX-IN 3 : Limited text process charts)
5 sets ―Our sound tree‖
Set of isiZulu diphthongs with action word, English translation and illustration
Word families (English cvc # words with short vowels)
Set of isiZulu diphthongs with action word, English translation and illustration
Set of isiZulu diphthongs with action word, English translation and illustration
7 11 31
5 The word ―set‖ in this context refers to a frieze consisting of all the letters of the alphabet, or a number of flashcards used together for sightword drill, or a number of isiZulu diphthongs. The components of these sets are not counted individually but as a set.
6 An alphabet frieze is a set of pages arranged alongside one another in a long strip. Each page relates to one letter of the alphabet. In contrast an alphabet chart is a large
poster, divided into rows and columns, with each resulting cell containing details relating to one letter. 177
Text type Incidence Ms A.’s classroom Ms G.’s classroom Ms N.’s classroom Photograph Materials for ―sight word‖
drill
(TEX-IN 3 : Limited text process charts)
2 sets Flash cards for sight drill (*)
Texts focusing on isolated words / vocabulary Labels7
(TEX-IN3: Instructional Aids)
13 Chair
chalkboard
―Reading‖ (for Reading Corner)
Name labels on 5 children‘s desks
Name labels on 3 children‘s desks
Reading corner
cupboard
1 10 18 Lists of words
displayed on walls on one day
(TEX-IN3: Instructional Aids)
26 lists Days of the week
Colours
Seasons and months of the year
Birthday chart with months and names
Commercial opposites poster (continued)
Commercial shapes poster
Parts of the body
Commercial picture of classroom with lists of items
Words from the Tortoise and Rabbit story
Word Wall
Words on alphabet frieze (English and isiZulu)
Names of numbers 1-10
Parts of the body
List of isiZulu words on board (*)
Words on alphabet frieze (English and isiZulu)
Names of numbers 1-10
Days of the week
Colours
Birthday chart with months and names
Parts of the body
Words from the Tortoise and Rabbit story
Word Wall
Words on alphabet frieze (English and isiZulu)
Rooms in the home poster
5 unrelated isiZulu words on poster
Names of numbers 1-10
3 7 9 11 28
7 Labels are recorded here with the same capitalisation as used in the classroom.
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